Grade: A

9-6-00

The Importance of Interpretation

I wish to start my paper by quoting a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow titled "The Arrow and the Song."

I shot an arrow into the air

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of a song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroken;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found in the heart of a friend.

I chose this particular poem to help illustrate my intent. In the book entitled The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination Jacob Bronowski talks about the different reasons humans and animals communicate. One interesting point he makes is that animals interpret things in the same way every time, but different people can interpret the same thing in different ways.

My example of the above poem shows how the same words can be interpreted in more than one way. To me the poem has two messages. One is that every person leaves some kind of mark on the world. This thought is conveyed in the last stanza. But in the other two stanzas, the idea that no one can know everything is conveyed. As a human I have the higher cognitive ability to reason, interpret, and decide for myself what this poem, or any other form of communication means. I also have the ability to respond to it and reflect on it.

These higher thinking skills are not present in animals, as Bronowski shows us. "Even sophisticated animals like the baboon or the rhesus monkey have a total vocabulary of at most a hundred signals." So it is not the fact that animals cannot communicate with each other, but the fact that they do not communicate in the same way that we do. Bronowski later comments on that vocabulary by saying, "every member of the tribe knows, and every member interprets the signals in exactly the same way." He even mentions a study preformed by Zhinkin who says baboons "have only one way to say any one thing." The fact that humans can interpret various forms of communication in a multiple of ways sets us apart from the rest of the animal community.

Interpretation also sets the individual person apart from everyone else. The way we think and react to things makes us unique. Through my own experiences and what I have learned from them, I know I have set myself apart from the rest of the human race. Knowing this makes me wonder a few things about the animal world. If every animal reacts the same way to the same situation, are there individuals within the species? Certainly animal lovers would agree with that, but the evidence presented by Bronowski and Zhinkin suggests otherwise. So who is right?

I also wonder, "Who is better off? The human who can interpret things or the animal that basically follows instinct?" This same discussion arose recently in my philosophy class. By being human we know what we know and know how little that is. We realize we have shortcomings and faults and have to work to improve them. We have obligations to other people. But animals are not like that. Although it is impossible to know what an animal goes through day by day or whether they really do not think like we do, we can draw conclusions from our knowledge of ourselves. We know that we have more obligations than animals and therefore we have more things to worry about. We have the ability to interpret things in different ways, therefore we have to choose our words carefully so they will be interpreted in the way we want them to be.

I do not, however, believe that I could choose between being a human or an animal because I have not experienced both options and do not know the pros and cons of each situation. My final conclusion is that, as humans we have the gift of being able to communicate our thoughts and feelings, not just information. However, with that gift come the consequences. We have to take responsibility for our actions. We have the ability to make the world as happy or as miserable for ourselves as we want it to be. We should not take our very special gifts for granted, but use them to the best of our ability.