Scientific evidence for the origin of speech is abundant, but evidence for the origin of language as separate from speech as a naming system remains speculative. What evidence can be utilized that will furnish relevant insights on the origin or language? This book attempts to provide an answer by suggesting that the first riddles of humanity, along with the first myths, reveal that language may have emerged as a mode of reflection via metaphor—a mode that involves blending speech forms together to produce complex, abstract cognition.
This book treats eighteenth-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico’s theory of poetic logic for the first time as the originating force in mathematics, transforming instinctive counting and spatial perception into poetic (metaphorical) symbolism that dovetails with the origin of language. It looks at current work on mathematical cognition (from Lakoff and Núñez to Butterworth, Dehaene, and beyond), matching it against the poetic logic paradigm. In a sense, it continues from where Kasner and Newman left off, connecting contemporary research on the mathematical mind to the idea that the products of early mathematics were virtually identical to the first forms of poetic language. As such, this book informs the current research on mathematical cognition from a different angle, by looking back at a still relatively unknown philosopher within mathematics. The aim of this volume is to look broadly at what constitutes the mathematical mind through the Vichian lens of poetic logic. Vico was among the first to suggest that the essential nature of mind could be unraveled indirectly by reconstructing the sources of its “modifications” (his term for “creations”); that is, by examining the creation and function of symbols, words, and all the other uniquely human artifacts—including mathematics—the mind has allowed humans to establish “the world of civil society,” Vico’s term for culture and civilization. The book is of interest to cognitive scientists working on math cognition. It presents the theory of poetic logic as Vico articulated it in his book The New Science, examining its main premises and then applying it to an interpretation of the ongoing work in math cognition. It will also be of interest to the general public, since it presents a history of early mathematics through the lens of an idea that has borne fruit in understanding the origin of language and symbols more broadly.
For the folklorists and linguists who are serious students of what has been designated "a minor genre," the riddle is, in fact, a complex linguistic and aesthetic structure that, when subjected to systematic and scientific study, reveals a great deal about the major human systems-such as language, culture, and art-with which it is inextricably bound up. Riddles conform to a model of communication made up of a code and an encoded message that is first transmitted and then decoded. As what Professors Pepicello and Green term "a licensed artful communication," the riddle employs quite ordinary language in conventional ways to satisfy the demands placed upon it as the art form that it is. And as an art form, the riddle is subject to constraints that are semiotic (some primary graphic, aural, or other code), aesthetic (artistic conventions that are also semiotic), and grammatical (linguistic restrictions). The riddle operates, therefore, within a cultural framework that is entirely predetermined, and represents what Pepicello and Green designate "a conventional performance." The signified of riddles is not easily defined; and indeed it is possible-perhaps even necessary-to distinguish several signata. All riddles, the authors point out, whether they are based on grammatical or metaphorical ambiguity or represent one of the transitional types they identify, are solvable within the confines of the culture in which they have been constructed and in which they are posed. But the signified of a riddle is not its answer. Nor is it an object or a situation. Rather it is the code employed by the riddle itself. Riddles are therefore metalinguistic: ways of using language to deal with language-ways of using language to gain mastery over language. W. J. Pepicello is director of humanities and social sciences in the School of Allied Health Professions at Hahnemann University in Philadelphia. Thomas A. Green is associate professor of English at Texas A&M University.
Riddles are a journey into a fascinating world rich in delightful metaphors and ambiguity. This book is based on material drawn from all over the world and analyses both traditional true riddles and contemporary joking questions. It introduces the reader to different riddling situations and the many functions of riddles, wich vary from education to teasing, and from defusing a heated situation to entertainment. In addition to providing a survey of international riddle scholarship, the book has a comprehensive bibliography with suggestions for further reading.
This book offers a new way of doing African philosophy by building on an analysis of the way people talk. The author bases his investigation on the belief that traditional African philosophy is hidden in expressions used in ordinary language. As a result, he argues that people are engaging in a philosophical activity when they use expressions such as taboos, proverbs, idioms, riddles, and metaphors. The analysis investigates proverbs using the ordinary language approach and Speech Act theory. Next, the author looks at taboos using counterfactual logic, which studies the meaning of taboo expressions by departing from a consideration of their structure and use. He argues that the study of these figurative expressions using the counterfactual framework offers a particular understanding of African philosophy and belief systems. The study also investigates issues of meaning and rationality departing from a study on riddles, explores conceptual metaphors used in conceptualizing the notion of politics in modern African political thought, and examines language and marginalization of women and people with disabilities. The book differs from other works in African philosophy in the sense that it does not claim that Africans have a philosophy as is commonly done in most studies. Rather, it reflects and unfolds philosophical elements in ordinary language use. The book also builds African Conception of beauty and truth through the study of language.
Reading Riddles: Rhetorics of Obscurity from Romanticism to Freud explores how the riddle becomes a figure for reading and writing in early German Romanticism and how this model then enables Sigmund Freud's approach to the psyche. It traces a migration of ideas from literature to psychoanalysis and argues that the relationship between them must be situated at the methodological level. Through readings of texts by August Wilhelm, Friedrich Schlegel, G.W.F. Hegel, and Ludwig Tieck Reading Riddles documents how the Romantics expand the field of poetic signification to include obscure, distorted signs and how they applied this rhetoric of obscurity to the self. The book argues that this model of self and signification plays a central role in the formulation of Freud's psychoanalytic theory. If the self is a riddle, as many in the nineteenth century claim, Freud takes the figure seriously and interprets the mind according to all the structures and techniques of that textual genre.
Part history book, part puzzle book, The Curious History of the Riddle is fully illustrated with over 250 riddles interspersed throughout the text for solving, so get ready to put on your thinking cap! The Curious History of the Riddle investigates the fascinating origin and history of the riddle, from the very first riddle (the Riddle of the Sphinx) to the twenty-first century, with riddles found in pop culture, including movies, books, and video games. Riddles are ageless, timeless, and so common that we hardly ever reflect upon what they are and how they originated. Riddles come in all languages and from all eras of human history, making them a truly “curious” history. In The Curious History of the Riddle, puzzle expert Marcel Danesi delves deep into the riddle's origin and offers a concise snapshot of riddles throughout time—from the Riddle of the Sphinx, to the riddles in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack and Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, to those found in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings book series, and much more—covering these fascinating topics: Ancient riddles Medieval riddles Riddles in the Renaissance Riddles as part of leisure culture Riddles in literature Riddles in popular culture Rebuses as visual riddles The Puzzlecraft series from Wellfleet Press tackles some of the greatest conundrums of our time. Learn how to navigate the world’s trickiest mazes, solve the most complex crosswords, and finally get the answer to “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Follow literature’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, as he guides you through hundreds of challenging cross-fitness brain exercises inspired by his most popular cases and adventures. You can also train your memory to perform better and learn the meanings behind your own personality traits or the traits of others. These handy and portable paperbacks are sized perfectly to travel, whether on vacation or just for your daily commute. The intricately designed covers and bold colors will capture your attention as much as the engaging content inside. Other titles in the series include: The Curious History of Mazes; The Curious History of the Crossword; Escape from Sherlock Holmes; Sherlock Holmes Puzzles: Code Breakers; Sherlock Holmes Puzzles: Math & Logic Games; Sherlock Holmes Puzzles: Visual Puzzles; Sherlock Holmes Puzzles: Lateral Brain Teasers; Solving Sherlock Homes; Solving Sherlock Holmes Volume II; Maximize Your Memory; and The Book of Personality Tests.
The vibrant and enigmatic Exeter Riddles (ca. 960–980) are among the most compelling texts in the field of medieval studies, in part because they lack textually supplied solutions. Indeed, these ninety-five Old English riddles have become so popular that they have even been featured on posters for the London Underground and have inspired a sculpture in downtown Exeter. Modern scholars have responded enthusiastically to the challenge of solving the Riddles, but have generally examined them individually. Few have considered the collection as a whole or in a broader context. In this book, Patrick Murphy takes an innovative approach, arguing that in order to understand the Riddles more fully, we must step back from the individual puzzles and consider the group in light of the textual and oral traditions from which they emerged. He offers fresh insights into the nature of the Exeter Riddles’ complexity, their intellectual foundations, and their lively use of metaphor.
Early Welsh and Old English poetry are rarely spoken of together, but when they are, they have been described as like or different from one another. Sarah Higley breaks this cycle of mutual marginalization by examining what it means to read otherness or sameness into a text, concluding that too much of our reading is "anglo-centric" in its expectations and dictated by invisible ideological agendas. Examinations of the Llywarch Hen Corpus, for instance, have sought comparisons among the Old English elegies, but mainly for the purpose of demonstrating how the Welsh are of a color with them: derived from the same penitential genre merely less explicit in their penitential thrust. Scholars have been reluctant to acknowledge the secular nature of these Welsh laments, which are discomfitingly silent about divine solace and which, like the Old English poems, do not cooperate with our efforts to categorize them. The author reexamines notions of genre, category, and poetic "explicitness" and how they snare us. Higley sees the English and Welsh traditions as foils to one another rather than as template and variation, and she starts with the connection of natural image and emotion, employed differently in these two contiguous but separate traditions. She shows how the English poems, long thought to be disjointed and cryptic, are invested in explanation and disclosure to a degree that the Welsh are not. The Welsh "omissions" might be better understood as dynamic juxtapositions wherein other poetic aspects (metrics, imagery, context) serve to link ideas, perhaps even to disrupt them. She sees difficulty, ambiguity, and dialogism as loci of power - neither accidents of our reading distance nor defects in other classical standards of wholeness. Reading the English and the Welsh together with a respect for the mutual differences helps us to get beyond some of the cliche's about what is English and "familiar" and what is Celtic and "other." Her argument revolves around the plight of the lone human as he or she is depicted in these texts in a precarious state of connection with the rest of the world: caught between society and wilderness, inside and outside, sacred and secular, meaning and nonmeaning. This focus on connection informs the title as well: "between languages" expresses our position as readers reading two different cultures together, reading ancient literature mediated through modern poetic theory, and the position of medieval scholarship in its struggle between traditional and postmodern approaches. Between Languages brings obscure and moving poems into a wider academic orbit, offering new editions and translations of Old English and Early Welsh elegies, wisdom poems, and enigmata, including one of the few complete English translations in this century of a vatic text from The Book of Taliesin.
