If we examine each sphere of human intellectual activity, we find that history reveals humanity’s extensive and persistent efforts to understand everything related to the individual, society, and nature. Throughout history, new problems arise while old ones change; interpretations consequently undergo transformation, and different paths are pursued until humanity succeeds in solving a new problem.
Yet, taken as a whole, a gradual process—full of contradictions but continuous—moves forward, constantly expanding human knowledge and bringing it, in certain fields, to definitive conclusions. We now see knowledge engaged in the efforts confronting a nation or, more generally, humanity as a whole. These efforts continually increase and become more intricate and complex. By absorbing all its accumulated experiences, human intellectual activity remains capable, within certain limits, of identifying the ways and means through which these efforts can be brought to fruition.
The products of human intellectual activity, in turn, exert an influence upon humanity itself. If human beings are the creators of history, history is also, in its turn, a maker of human beings. A social system created by human beings likewise plays a role in shaping them. Humanity creates knowledge, but this knowledge, in turn, also helps shape human consciousness. It is for this reason that, throughout its historical existence, humanity advances its life through social and economic activities that are continually connected with its intellectual activities.
The advancement of life takes place on two levels: first, the development of the human being as an intelligent creature; and second, the development of the human being as a social being. The expansion of human intellectual activity is also clearly demonstrated by the evolution of language. Language is the clearest and most immediate indication of the development of human thought.
Human knowledge and understanding are the products of human thought, and thought itself, like a “material” phenomenon, assumes a definite form only when it is clothed in language. For this reason, human thought and the degree of its development can be measured through language.
Therefore, language is not merely a means of communication and connection between human activities; it also expresses the shared intellectual life of a particular group of people. It is consequently no surprise that language is regarded as a key to identifying a nation—that is, the highest and most comprehensive totality of social institutions that humanity has created to date.
Submitted by: Idris Arib
Source: History of the Ancient World, Volume One
Authors: A. Kazhdan, N. Nikolsky, A. Abramovich, Zh. Ilyin, and A. Filippov