Language: The "Ultimate Artifact"

The first part of this article will introduce to worldviews from an ecocognitive and semiophysical perspective, also taking advantage of the intermediate concepts of cosmovision and of abduction in their relationship with language and knowledge. The concept of natural language and of its function in building worldviews can be usefully deepened taking advantage of Thom’s catastrophe theory. The concepts of catastrophe theory are difficult but we think they are rewarding, because they permit us to first of all grasp the naturalness of natural language as an ordinary semiophysical process. Furthermore, in the framework of catastrophe theory, also thanks to the key concepts of salience and pregnance, together with the role of abductive cognition it will appear easy to understand the problem of the emergence of language, vocal and written language as a “tool”, the role of abduction in language acquisition and, also taking advantage of perspectives related to the theory of extended mind and of distributed cognition, the status of language as an “ultimate arfifact” to encapsulate worldviews