Theory of Symbols

An epistemological theory in opposition to the materialist theory of reflection. It advocates that man’s sensations and ideas are not copies of things in the external world, but only signs, symbols, hieroglyphs that have no similarity or equivalence to what they represent in the external world, which leads to agnosticism and idealism.

The representative figure of “the theory of symbols” was Helmholtz, a German physiologist and physicist of the 19th century. When explaining the experimental materials of sensory physiology, he separated human sensations from external objects they represent, and declared sensations to be only symbols of the things signified, thus denying the objective properties and basis of sensations. Based on his theory, the British subjective idealist Berkeley put forward the “theory of natural signs”. To wit, the ideas of men are not reflections of the objective things, but God-given signs or marks that help people to understand things.

P. Yushkevich, a Russian Machist, put forward the theory of “Empirio- symbolism”, that is, experience or theory is not a reflection of the material world—they do not have any objective content, but are only symbols and marks randomly created by people.

“The theory of symbols” cuts off the connection between knowledge and objective things and regards knowledge as something subjective and self-made, thus falling into idealism. At the same time, it draws an absolute boundary between knowledge and objective things, denying that people can understand the world correctly through sensations, thus becoming agnosticism. Lenin pointed out: “The recognition of theory as a copy, as an approximate copy of objective reality, is materialism.” “The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it ‘images’. ‘Conventional sign’, symbol, hieroglyph are concepts which introduce an entirely unnecessary element of agnosticism.”