Symbol

The symbol is with the clean and original direction in Greece Antique a shard of pottery broken in two pieces shared between two contractors. To liquidate the contract, it was necessary to be the proof of its quality of contractor (or of having right) by bringing closer the two pieces which were to be encased perfectly. With appeared, the symbol becomes the unit which binds two representations of the same significance. By derivation, the symbol is reduced to the picturesque or audible element which is connected to a hidden direction that it means. In semiology, the symbol is a representation carrying direction. It is a concerning system meaning connotation, analogy. Operations of distinction and relation/unification produce direction for an individual or a social group. The symbol appears thus as the visible Réalité (accessible to the five directions) which invites to discover invisible realities; it does only one with symbolized. This unit is not done by a fusional mode but by adjustment ( sumbolh ). All two element (visible and invisible) form a whole and one is not included/understood without the other. According to Creuzer, the symbol would be “  located between the form and the being, the expression and the idée  ” (R.  Alleau, Of the nature of the symbols , Paris, Bridge-Royal, 1964, page 20).

By extension, the symbol came from there to indicate any reality which evokes others of them , absent or abstract, using an implicit analogy. The symbol becomes a Représentation of absent and the unperceivable one. Thus, all the systems symbolic systems try to express Idée S, Concept S, etc With the difference in the code, univocal, the symbol appears polysemous, understandable according to the system of representations in which it fits. In the psychoanalysis freudienne, this system functions starting from the coding of unconscious and the application of the rules of metaphor and metonymy, inside the personal history, structured in particular by the Oedipus complex. At Carl Gustav Jung, the individual symbols concern the unconscious collective and join by there the universal one by where they can be deciphered like prototypes.

A symbol establishes a relation of analogy between two elements. It takes its form meaning by widened mental representation, where the system symbolic system and symbolized can have elements of close or remote analogy. Example: the couple the sun-moon representing the couple man-woman, light-darkness, and truth-lie.

Correspondence between two elements, the symbol is sometimes used a such synonym of Allégorie, Métaphore, Métonymie, Synecdoque, emblem, sign, code, icon, fetish. Examples: a character with the bandaged eyes carrying a balance and a sword is used as allegory for justice; the bay-trees in crown are the emblem of glory.

Origin

The word symbol drift of the Greek sumbolon who derives from the verb sumbalein ( symballein ) (of syn-, with, and - ballein, to throw] meaning “to put together”, “to join”, “to compare”, “to exchange”, “to meet”, “to explain”.

The “sumbolon” was consisted of the two pieces of an object broken , so that their meeting, by a perfect assembly, constituted a proof of their common origin and thus a very sure sign of recognition . The term “symbol” appeared in 1380.

Thereafter, of the forms of abstraction, like the language or the gestural one could replace the objects in their function to represent an engagement , a promise, an alliance, a contract, a pact sealed between two partners (for example, a handshake will be the symbol of an agreement). In this direction, a symbol is thus a sensitive object which one “poses side by side with” a reality abstract or supernatural that it is intended to represent. The symbol is the visible term of a comparison whose other term is invisible.

Remarque: Close relations of the Greek symbolein , the acts symbolic systems suitable for the Christian life are called sacramenta as of the 3rd century. Among Romans, sacramentum indicates the pledge of fidelity, the oath lent to the Emperor. Tertullien which introduced the first this term into the Christian vocabulary explains why if the sacramentum is the sign of an irrevocable engagement to the service of Christ, this engagement is only one answer to the sacramenta of God himself which engaged the first towards us and which gave us pledges of the hello as a Jesus Christ. It immediately corrected what there could be the unilateral one in the military sacramentum .

(The antonym of the symbolic system, it is the diabolic one: what divides. The diabolic one is with the clean direction for the Greeks the stick which seems broken when it is plunged in water; with the illustrated direction, it is misleading appearance. What is misleading, makes accept the break and raises of the illusion of the directions is about the diabolic one; what brings closer, reconstitutes the unit or original totality by revealing direction is about the symbolic system. The Christian concept of devil tempter is resulting from the confusion of this significance with those of the deposed revolted Angel (Lucifer) of the Judaism, of Cheytan/Satan of Egyptian origin (Seth), and of the Malignant Manichean.

Scientific symbols

Examples:
  • \ alpha, \ beta, \ gamma… angle
  • V volume
  • t time, lasted
  • v speed
  • a terrestrial acceleration
  • g acceleration
  • f frequency
  • \ lambda wavelength
  • m mass
  • \ varrho density
  • F force
  • G weight
  • W work, energy

Symbol of unit

The symbols used in sciences are used to indicate measurement. They represent a value, an entity. They are thus quite univocal and cannot merge not with the concept of Signe . This symbol is invariable in kind and of number and never takes abbreviatory point.

Generally, the physical symbols are written into tiny except when the entity is directly derived or indirectly of a proper name, in this case, the first letter is written in capital. This rule makes it possible to rather quickly know the way of writing the symbol.

Examples of symbols derived from names communs :

Examples of symbols derived from names propres : See also Measuring unit.

Symbols and anthropology

With the Prehistory, the Homo sapiens inherited the technique of the parietal Art and the funerary Rites of the Man of Néanderthal which disappeared towards -30.000 during the paleolithic superior. The animals which they drove out (mainly bisons) and those that they observed (cat-like, horses) were drawn with a high degree of accuracy on the walls, the vaults and the ground of caves, with almost inaccessible depths where the prehistoric man had not established a habitat. These drawings undoubtedly had a symbolic range and magic. The professor Henri Breuil speaks about “magic of hunting”, on the other hand the men were drawn voluntarily fuzzy, deformed, just as of the semi-human beings semi-animals were represented. In certain caves one finds marks of hands per hundreds, perhaps with a therapeutic goal, all that probably implying that rites of Chamanisme took place.

Then at the beginning of the Neolithic the Homo sapiens left the natural caves and their sanctuaries to build in space external of the monuments out of ground, stones or out of cement like the dolmens and the megaliths as well as collective burials with an institutional purpose aiming at the cohesion of a stable community and sedentary whom one can regard as a company with whole share with his religious symbolism, his magic rites and ceremonies and his culture. The monuments megalithic as well as the majority of the temples had an astronomical symbolism which made it possible to the religious leaders to discover the basic principles of the Astronomie (Solar year, lunar Cycle, celestial cartography, measurement of the Temps), of the Mathématiques, the Astrologie and the divinations, then towards -1800 with the invention of the writing with Sumer appeared the first traces of the first myths founders and magic Récit S, of course of a Culture with the other (Mayas, Égyptiens, Greek) the Mythe S, Ceremony S, Rite S, and popular beliefs vary but the astronomical and mathematical discoveries were compatible. A little all that remained in the culture of the people, was maintained until our days in the form of Folklore or then was marginalized as a Superstition or Hérésie.

The anthropologist, as opposed to what the Doxa proposes, “ must initially try to exceed the barrier of incomprehension which comes from the spontaneous judgment, it must adopt the attitude of the Science, to seek the causes of the phenomenon met. It is only then that it will be able (and will have) to put forth a judgment on this phenomenon. This judgment will be a judgment of rationality and at the same time an ethical judgment: we always judge feel and the value, the cogency because and the moral cogency of a behavior. The question which arises naturally this judgment of rationality, because does one have is on which criteria rationality to sit the same ones in all the existing cultures? ” (Monica Heintz)

The problem of the magic, of the esotericism, the myths, the rites, the religions, the ceremonies, of the beliefs and symbolisms, it is that all these elements form part with whole share of the popular culture. For example the Cœur symbolizes the love and the round totality, but they can be deviated of their function of Social cohesion by the sects. Thus, the Swatiska or swastika which is turned towards the line symbolizes the life, (in Sanskrit, swatiska means literally good omen: the sign was an amulet in China, in India, in Greece, and on the coasts of the Mediterranean) was deviated of its use by Hitler, as by Claude Vorilhon whose symbol according to him, was communicated to him by telepathy by the extraterrestrial ones and who founded the sect of Raël. old symbol amérindien" (sic).

In esotericism, these symbols, like so much of others, are used to manufacture amulets and Talisman S because they are justified, at the base there is a presumedly universal deep sense which transcend them from where the loan of these symbols towards other fields is very frequent: logo S of a company, stamps for clothing, Religious art and crowned because their value is with range of all. The money is itself a symbol as a social convention, at the physical level it is anything else only one printed paper, but on the level of the Inconscient collective, the money has a value, it is credible. And it is this credibility which the companies, the sacred art and the sects seek by summarizing their institutions in a unifying symbol. Symbolism is a popular Tradition. But all is in the had aim.

The symbols represent, in picturesque and often whimsical form, an object or an event which one does not have, or more, the real vision and to which one wants to give a particular direction or to induce a belief to him; example: the tower of Babel , painted by the artists according to their imaginations, and which expresses, according to the Bible, the incomprehension of the languages during its construction, which would have involved its destruction.

It is obvious that it was about a ziggourat of very an other form which we can restore now, and which its destruction is due to the crumbling of the raw bricks which composed it, though its builders were probably different origins and varied languages.

However the symbol entirely keeps its value and its moral direction.

In addition, " was also called; symbolisme" the psycho-spiritual function which would allow, in the presence of a significant form (object, animal, left the body, etc) to be by là-même in the presence of the invisible Réalité symbolized by this form (cf Anagogie, Exemplarisme, Archétype).

See too

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