Cut out a “small piece” of the continuous world, compress it, and make it into a symbol. By assembling these symbols, the world is reconstructed.
Our world and the world around us are, depending on how you look at it, continuous. It can be said that there is no end to nature. From this seamless nature, we dare to cut out and take out a single piece of something by focusing on something. Then, we give each thing a compressed and coherent meaning. If the compression goes to the extreme, we end up giving it a symbol, such as a word or a symbol. In short, the process is cutting] → compression → [symbolization. Then, by assembling these symbols, we reconstruct this world that has been assimilated and given meaning to us. - Exploratory Studies of Knowledge p.106
This page is auto-translated from /nishio/ひとくぎり using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.