The Emergence of the Objective World Sensory Processing and Motor Activity

Abstract

The capability of speech to transmit thoughts of an almost infinite variety, and often with potent consequences, but in an intangible form with nothing connecting speaker and listener other than the air between them—or so it seems—gives it a magical quality. Language has become separated off and elevated above the perceptual and cognitive processes of mental activity so that in many people’s minds it is autonomous, with its own rules and organization, owing nothing to the ordinary, mundane world. But this is to misunderstand the extraordinary power and versatility of cognitive activity, which is the source rather than the servant of language. If we want to examine the origins of language we must look—not at the child’s first attempts to talk—but at the whole pattern of cognitive development in the child, from the moment he first opens his eyes on his new-born world.