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XFilesGeek
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31 Jul 2011, 12:55 pm

Verdandi wrote:
Numbers are abstract concepts that are easily represented by concrete objects. The fact that nine can represent a quantity of nine apples, nine cars, nine buildings, nine puppies, makes it possible to grasp it in the same way as having an oak tree representing something as abstract as love or a relationship. They are, as far as my brain is concerned, entirely different things.


I see "love" and "relationships" as "things." They're comprised of physical actions, brain chemicals, ect.

Anyway, a symbol is something that "stands in" for another idea. It's a pointer used to direct a person to another concept. Whether that concept is abstract or concrete, the function of the symbol itself remains the same, which is why I've always told people that math and art aren't quite as far apart as many assume. It depends on how one chooses to think about the world.

Numbers can represent abstract concepts, and literary symbolism can represent concrete things (depending on how you define each). The primary difference is IMHO that the former generally only represents one thing and the latter can represent many things. A teacher once explained that literary symbolism can mean many things, so I just took her word for it and ran with that idea. Symbolism is symbolism.

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For what it's worth, what tripped math for me - what switched it on from something I had a lot of trouble understanding to doing mental arithmetic was being able to relate numbers to concrete objects.

Also, algebra was extremely difficult for me. Geometry was extremely easy.


My math ability is so uneven and situation-dependent that it's not worth attempting to describe. As for literature, I took to it easily because I discovered I could make my own rules and not have to care about anyone else's opinion. It suited my self-centered, bull-headed viewpoint. :twisted:

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Anyway, it can both be an autism thing and not an autism thing. It seems to me that it is in large part a concrete thinking thing which is more common in autistic people than in NTs (but not just autistic people), but it is a thing you can find in most segments of the population.


Honestly, I have no idea. Just going on personal experience. I've been asked to tutor students who were failing in English class. Most of them (NTs) couldn't grasp abstract symbolism, or various elements of literary interpretation.


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antonblock
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03 Aug 2011, 2:13 am

XFilesGeek wrote:
matt wrote:
I'm not interested in reading most fiction, but I read news and I read a lot of research materials.

Personally, I always had trouble in literature classes deciphering what the intended meaning was. I always took it to mean exactly what it said.
In most cases when literature teachers would talk about one thing meaning another and imagery, I thought that they were delusional, that if the authors had meant to express things that they would have just said them, and that the teachers were the only people in the classrooms who actually believed the things in the stories represented other things. I thought that the real point of those classes was to come up with creative comparisons, and the teacher would give points based on how creative you were in coming up with such comparisons or how closely you could repeat back the teachers' respective own interpretations.

I was very good at repeating the teachers' explanations back to them, but I actually only very infrequently read the stories assigned.


I never quite understood why some people have trouble with symbolism in literature.

By contrast, numbers don't really "exist" either. They're just squiggles and lines on paper meant to represent other concepts, usually quantities. If you understand that the number "9" can represent a quantity of nine apples, what's difficult about an oak tree representing "love," or the relationship between the story's protagonist and his sister? It's all just abstract symbolism. The primary difference is "literary symbolism" generally has more possible interpretations than mathematical symbolism. It's like me saying, "The number nine doesn't represent anything, it's just a squiggly line on paper! It certainly has nothing to do with oranges."

Honestly, I don't think it's an "autism" thing. Most people seem to be pretty clueless when it comes to literary theory.[/quote]


very interesting! Can you give us some hints, how you can better learn the literary symbolism?

thanks,
anton



Last edited by antonblock on 03 Aug 2011, 2:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

antonblock
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03 Aug 2011, 2:14 am

memesplice wrote:
I like fiction. Paradox is you can sometimes express meaning and ideas better in fiction than in social science.


hi memesplice :),

can you give an example for this?

greets,
anton



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03 Aug 2011, 7:03 pm

Fiction is often more “real” than nonfiction, because fiction authors are writing from the heart, but there are so many factors ensuring that nonfiction is never totally accurate, whether it’s the writer’s bias or the simple fact that the details of history can never be known with complete accuracy. For example, it’s impossible to write about the John F. Kennedy assassination or 9/11 with accuracy because we simply don’t know what the hell happened in either case, aside from a few basic inarguable facts, and everyone's got an agenda and a theory that they want to promote. But if you write a fictional novel about similar events, it’s going to be completely genuine. Hope that makes sense.