Rick Mabry wrote:

>Of course, it is undoubtedly true that much of our thought is verbal.
>(I often wondered if that is why I can recall so little of my pre-language
>experience.) But to say all thought is verbal strikes me as wrong,
>especially given our giant visual cortices.  One reason we teach
>mathematics with so many pictures is surely that much of our thinking
>is spatial, for instance.  And we have many, many nonverbal aspects to
>our communication.  A good scowl is worth a thousand gruff words, so to
>"speak".  I say our languages are multisensorial.  (And I think it, too.)
>Of course, I am no neuro-linguist, but that doesn't stop me from suggesting
>that even if the nerves of the larynx get excited every time we think,
>it doesn't mean we are using verbal thought, just that we are ready to
>deploy it.

Reading this somehow triggered another "thought." Do we not learn more
quickly from what we see versus what we hear.  Is it the process of
learning that makes the understanding of music more difficult that
understanding ideas that are expressed in written language and the visual
arts?

Karl