We live in a concept-mediated and concept-loaded world. We cannot escape concepts. Indeed, mixed into our physical Earth and its airy atmosphere is another sphere -- a component of a much larger sphere that I have elsewhere called the memetic sphere. Things of planet Earth, and of the universe at large, are of course out there in the material sphere (and ipso facto outside of the mind), but don't mean a thing to us until we process them in the mind and give them a name of sorts -- that is, until we thus attach to them a set or sets of concepts (that is, memes), which is the only available path to actualizing our sense impressions.
Likewise, alleged 'figments' of the imagination cease to be figments and become real 'things' just as soon as we're able to observe the facts that underpin the claims they embody, and can affirm our 'encounter' with them -- and, more importantly, tag them with a name. Incidentally, figments of the imagination and other un-grounded products of thought may pass as concepts too, but only as meta versions and as 'material' for artistic production and reproduction or for philosophical engagement.
Concepts are in their own universe, as well -- and thus a universe of sorts. Without concepts, there would be no learning, and nothing akin to what we call intelligence, and even what we call community. There would be no capacity to tell what there would be to tell, and what there (ever) was to pass on.
Concepts are key to all understanding -- and all missed understandings. Without them, language and speech would be preemptively gibberish, and could not arise from, after all, a non-existent language -- even for potentially the most eloquent and the most erudite individuals. Without concepts, all bodies of knowledge would be formless and one big mess of nothing without anchor. In a word, their efficacy presupposes some kind of anchoring on arrays of conceptualization.
Our concepts have raced well ahead of us. They have reached the farthest known and imaginable realms of Being (of existence and reality) -- and even Nothingness, as Marcuse and others sought to see them. They've gone to places we ourselves (we humans) will never, may never, physically be. They've even ventured into the sun's core and into Black Holes, and on to dying stars and stars just fixing to be born -- and to galaxies which answer back in tongues, after a fashion. They have gone back in Time to Big Bang's singular and very own moment -- or so they say.
As several scholars such as Dawkins and others (discussed in Yambo, 2012) have noted already, concepts are, for bodies of knowledge, gene-equivalents in the cultural universe. That is, they are memes which make everything make any sense at all in the physical and the social and the spiritual worlds. Concepts empower us to achieve the transition from the raw to the cooked -- that is, to the nets and webs of insight and understanding essential to apprehending our diverse realities and mastering our ever-present challenges.
It is for these reasons that we start (indeed, must start) our journey, in any field of learning or problem-solving, armed with a set of concepts that we will need (and need to build on and add to in ever more specialized ways) along the way -- that is, Key Concepts. Key concepts may sound like a tiresome cliche, but they are, singularly or in bunches, truly key to understanding both seemingly simple and manifestly complex ideas, and to solving the associated theoretical, methodological and practical problems.
UPDATED: March 5, 2018.
It is for these reasons that we start (indeed, must start) our journey, in any field of learning or problem-solving, armed with a set of concepts that we will need (and need to build on and add to in ever more specialized ways) along the way -- that is, Key Concepts. Key concepts may sound like a tiresome cliche, but they are, singularly or in bunches, truly key to understanding both seemingly simple and manifestly complex ideas, and to solving the associated theoretical, methodological and practical problems.
UPDATED: March 5, 2018.
