Symbolic Systems Quotes

One of the interesting applications of symbolic systems is artificial intelligence, and I spent some time thinking about how to create a brain that operates the way ours does.

I loved Stanford and symbolic systems. For me, I came to Stanford assuming I would be a doctor and got really deep into chemistry and biology, but I noticed everyone who was on the same track as me was taking the exact same classes. I wanted to do something more unique.

Name me any liquid — except our own blood — that flows more intimately and incessantly through the labyrinth of symbols we have conceived to mark our status as human beings, from the rudest peasant festival to the mystery of the Eucharist.

Ritual and myth are like seed crystals of new patterns that can eventually reshape culture around them.

Logic and mathematics are nothing but specialised linguistic structures.

Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.

Cultures are virtual realities made of language.

What is unusual about Earth is that language, literally, has become alive. It has infested matter. It is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us.

Studying anthropology, I developed a kind of holistic view of human existence, in which the dichotomies you listed are all necessary and vital aspects of life.

I honestly think anthropology is one of the most useful fields a fantasy writer can study, more so even than history.

There is a logic of language and a logic of mathematics.

Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols.... we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us.

All systems require myths for their longevity.