The Story That Learned to Think: I. The World Before Its Name

Before there were names, there was a world.

Nothing was missing from it.

The waters moved.

The winds crossed the land.

Light came and went.

Things grew, things moved, things died.

Everything was happening.

But nothing was distinguished from anything else by a name.

A river was water moving through a valley.

A tree was something that grew.

A bird was something that flew.

The river did not know it was a river.

The tree did not know it was a tree.

The bird did not know it was a bird.

Nor did the world know itself as a world.

There were differences everywhere, but no one had yet gathered them into distinctions.

There were relations everywhere, but nothing had yet made them visible.

There were patterns everywhere, but no one had yet said that there were patterns.

And so the world was full.

Yet it had not become intelligible.

Then, one day, something happened that had never happened before.

A sound arose.

It was not the cry of a bird, nor the roar of the wind, nor the breaking of water.

It was a sound that said something.

And for the first time, one thing became distinguishable from another.

The sound passed across the world.

The river remained a river.

The tree remained a tree.

The bird remained a bird.

But now they could be said.

And the world, without becoming anything other than it was, had begun to become a world.