Edgar J. Ridley & Associates

August 13, 2010

THE CASE FOR THE EXPANDED USE OF SYMPTOMATIC SIGNS

Copyright Edgar J. Ridley 2010

Medical experts have long pursued methods to develop tests that will show who will potentially develop Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms actually occur.  Recent research reveals that a spinal fluid test can identify those patients who will eventually develop Alzheimer’s disease.  This new test provides 100% accuracy. 

This recent research is but one more significant indicator that science, and indeed all of academia, has been providing a disservice by the limited approach to symptomatic signs.   It has long been understood that disease symptoms are a natural occurrence.  Reading these symptoms accurately to initiate proper medical treatment has cured many diseases.  What has not been understood is that the testing procedures that locate disease states - before symptoms occur -  are actually using symptomatic signs from early medical testing that clearly shows the potential for the future disease state.  It is imperative that the symptomatic signs that result from diagnostic testing be read correctly.  (As Harvard professor Marjorie Garber stated in her book, Symptoms of Culture, that becomes a “reading practice”). 

It has been traditionally understood in academic circles that symbols are inherently more valuable than symptoms.  A recently-aired public television program, The Human Spark, stated that the most important ingredient that separates human animals from non-human animals is the humans’ ability to symbolize; indeed,  that symbols are the origin of science, religion, and what makes humans creative and innovative.  Crossing over from science to business, even the often-utilized concept of root cause analysis suggests that symptoms should be subordinated in problem-solving when seeking the root cause of a dilemma.[1]  But symptoms, which were first used in antiquity as cultural indicators, are innate products of the neurological processes of the human brain, and are unavoidable in their usage.  Conversely, symbols are not innate to the human brain – they are learned,  developed and are actually artificial constructs.  Therefore,  all clinical tests that yield results provide symptomatic signs, and those symptomatic signs can never be replaced by symbolic signs. 

Accordingly,  it is imperative that scholars and researchers begin to understand that the very tests and procedures that they come up with to diagnose and eliminate disease states are dependent on the correct reading of symptomatic signs to not only solve medical problems but every problem that humans encounter in the universe.  These symptomatic signs can be used on an interdisciplinary basis.  For instance, one method that shows the importance of symptomatic signs is DNA testing.  The results of those DNA testing are symptomatic signs of the problem that calls for the DNA testing in the first place.   

Traditionally, academia and scholars have gone the route of symbolic thinking and symbolic behavior.  That same symbolic behavior has produced superstition and mythology – ingredients that play a considerable role in some disease states such as psychological problems that cause obesity, drug use, and mental illness.  It is critical that symptomatic behavior patterns replace the traditional symbolic behavior that is the real cause for the problems that we face in civilization.  An outstanding example of symptomatic behavior has to be the unprecedented collaboration between science and industry in the collection of data that led to the recent research on Alzheimer’s.  Egos and personal agendas were set aside in the search for a solution.  Scientists Neil Buckholtz and William Potter revealed a behavior without symbolic intent as they affirmed that collaboration to solve the Alzheimer’s dilemma was more important than individual fame.  Their behavior was indeed symptomatic behavior, which is the kind that will produce effective results in the problems that affect civilization.

SANKOFA RESPONSE

Edgar J. Ridley ©2010

 These thoughts are in response to the New York Times article titled “Coffin’s Emblem Defies Certainty”, dated 27 January  2010.

This is another unfortunate example of the propensity of many Western scholars to deny the African origin, by way of diffusion, of all symbolic phenomena that has arrived in the new world.   To reassign the sankofa symbol, of the African burial ground, to Anglo-American phenomena, is another tragic, yet inept, attempt to disregard African contributions to civilization. 

To move this discussion along the continuum, the fact is that symbols, due to their mythological content, can be interpreted in a million different ways.   Indeed, that is what symbols are:  myths that are at the mercy of the beholder.  However, the fact remains that symbolism originated in Africa by way of a neurological misadventure.   The antiquity and design of the symbol sankofa leaves no doubt that it is African.  Symbols, such as this emblem found at Manhattan’s African burial ground, possess historical signposts which have their origins in an African symbolic thought process. 

However, there is a larger problem at hand, and that would be the unproductive, superstitious tendency for Western academia to dismiss any thought of major African influences in western culture.  That state of denial is due to racist thought patterns that are extremely difficult to abolish.  The historian, Erik Seeman, unfortunately is part of a pattern that noted Egyptologist Cheikh Anta Diop called the “problem of the most monstrous falsification in the history of humanity by modern scholars.”  Diop  described a continuing pillaging of history that is carried on by academia in their analysis of African contributions to civilization.  With the exception of  outstanding archaeologists such as Christopher Henshilwood and Alison Brooks (of University of Bergen, Norway and University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; and George Washington University, respectively), this racist mindset must be attacked and shown for what it is - the continual miseducation of the public at large.   It is a pedagogy that filters down to the general population and inherently produces a symbolic behavior that will continually lead to the decaying of civilization as a whole and western civilization in particular.