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