Cassirer, Knowledge, and Symbols

Cassirer's stated purpose is to re-define the 'animal rationale' as 'animal symbolicus', based on his insight that human Knowledge is only a special case of the cultural use and development of the Symbol. For example, the highest variety of Knowledge, Scientific theory, is, according to Cassirer, impossible without symbols that can facilitate the transcendence of immediate experience, i. e. as presented in universal laws, an exaltation that surpasses even that of Mathematics. What is surprising about the subordinate status of the latter is that in, notably, the Formalistic theory, which holds that Mathematics is no more than operations rigorously defined by, and performed on, non-representing symbols, the Symbol would seem to have reached an apotheosis, revealing it as it is in itself. However, Cassirer's reluctance to recognize the essence of the Symbol in this construal of Mathematics seems based on the very consideration that in that context, the Symbol becomes emptied of significance, whereas, Scientific symbols, even if mediately, always retain content. Thus, Cassirer's criterion for the superiority of Scientific to Mathematical symbols is not some intrinsic, pan-cultural characteristic of the Symbol, but, rather, the scope of Knowledge, which would seem to undercut his stated purpose. If, instead, he had pursued the alternative, he might have discovered that at its ultimate, animal symbolicus is transformed into homo ludens. But, as is, his study of Knowledge does not demonstrate even animal rationale becoming animal symbolicus.