So, I've got quite a few white socks hangin' around
as I don't bother to sort and pair 'em up perfectly
after washing/drying 'em and I've bought them over
the years, a few here and a few there, different
types/sizes/sorts but all quite similar with minor
subtle differences such as length, ends, markings,
texture.

Now, I'm going through the clean ones this morning,
about 15 or so (there's always that lonely sock,
isn't there?) and I'm trying to find a couple that
are close to a match and after comparisons here
and close matches and wait, that one's a perfect
match, voila, here I sit with a perfectly matched
pair but ...

It dawned on me, I used no verbal processes, no
detailed verbal analysis, simply visual comparisons
and matching were used with language skills totally
absent from the picture.

Now, to convey the happenings to you, I used quite
a few language skills, but as the events occurred,
no language skills were used, and one can't help
but wonder ...

Isn't this similar to the manner in which all of
our non-language activity, and the non-language
activities of our relatives (in the animal kingdom)
with similar senses to us, takes place?

Is the non-language aspect of our human experience
part of the large body of evidence of our close
kinship with animals who have similar senses to
us with less sophisticated to no language skills?

Put another way, if you were to remove all language
skills from the human species, including thinking
with language, making symbols to convey information,
reading symbols to learn, and simply processed the
world based on the senses of sight, natural sounds,
touch, smell, doesn't that put one into a position
whereby a direct correlation to the pre-language
human condition can be related to in a meaningful
and substantive way?

In other ways, think of it as regressing to our
state of being millions of years ago prior to the
written word (6,000 years or so ago for the earliest
human symbol writers), art (over 30,000 years ago
for the earliest artists that created art that survived
in caves), spoken utterances (estimates vary widely
on when the human animal began speaking) and
what do you have?

Everything that we experience today that does not
utilize language. Of course, that over-simplifies
the parts of the human brain that have evolved in
areas other than language, as differences in those
areas would impact our perceptions, but at least
this exercise can give one a feeling of what a
world free of language would be like for our pre-
language ancestors, which reminds me ...

of a classic story regarding Helen Keller's transition
from a sightless/hearingless world to one in which
she first experienced language...

Excerpt from Carl Sagan's classic -The Dragons of Eden:
Speculation On the Evolution of Human Intelligence-,
describing Helen Keller's (who could neither hear, see,
or speak) first exposure to human language:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345346297

"One day, Miss Keller's teacher prepared to take her for
a walk:

She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out
into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless
sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and
skip with pleasure.

We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted
by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was
covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher
placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream
gushed over my hand she spelled into the other the
word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my
whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers.

Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of some-
thing forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and
somehow the mystery of language was revealed
to me. I knew then that W-A-T-E-R meant that won-
derful cool something that was flowing over my hand.

That living word awakened my soul, gave it light,
hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is
true, but barriers that in time could be swept away.

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had
a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought.
As we returned into the house, every object which I
touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because
I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had
come to me."