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“Evoluzione” è una parola usata ormai frequentemente dall’uomo comune nonché in tutte le discipline, umanistiche e scientifiche. Culturalmente radicata, è diventata una metafora potente. Una definizione corrente è “sviluppo lento e graduale; svolgimento da una forma a un’altra, generalmente più completa e perfetta” (Garzanti). In questi termini non si parla soltanto dell’evoluzione biologica dell’uomo, ma anche dell’evoluzione del linguaggio, della società, della cognizione umana – a prescindere da un’effettiva conoscenza delle teorie evoluzionistiche. L’evoluzione, in quanto teoria biologica, rimanda quasi automaticamente alla teoria di Darwin, il quale, tuttavia, ha usato il termine solo una volta, nel paragrafo finale del suo celeberrimo L’origine delle specie (1859). Nel concetto di evoluzione è comunemente implicato il passaggio da una specie “primitiva” ad una specie “progredita”, più avanzata o sofisticata e strutturalmente più complessa. Nei suoi scritti, Darwin preferiva parlare di “discendenza con modificazioni” anziché di “evoluzione”, termine usato invece da Bonnet (1762) nella sua teoria dell’homunculus, proprio perché portatore della valenza semantica di “progresso”, non presente nella teoria che Darwin proponeva. Infatti, per quest’ultimo “evoluzione” ha più a che fare con il cambiamento (x --> y) che con il progresso (x --> x+1). L’idea che il concetto di evoluzione abbia a che fare con quello di progresso è in realtà posteriore: nell’accezione più comune del termine è presente l’idea di una temporalità lineare, nella quale l’hic et nunc è visto come la massima compiutezza dello sviluppo, della complessità e della “modernità”, e il passato è visto da un punto di vista situato in un setting storico del presente (antropo-, etno-, euro-, ego-centrico etc), in un’opposizione binaria tra “adesso” e “allora”, tra “noi” e “loro”, tra “progredito” e “primitivo”. Eppure l’evoluzione, in senso stretto, non è teleologica e non c’è un “avanti” o un “indietro”, c’è solo un cambiamento causato dall’adattamento nell’ecosistema in cui l’essere storico si trova. Evoluzione non è necessariamente sinonimo di ottimizzazione (chi può dire che la “prossima generazione” sarà migliore?). La mia ipotesi è che questa metafora (linguaggio) influenza il nostro modo di concepire e ragionare circa un oggetto (pensiero). Anticipando qualche dato, mi avvalgo delle discipline linguistiche, nell’ambito delle quali si parla dell’evoluzione non solo del linguaggio, ma anche della lingua. Ad esempio l’idea che una lingua sia meno complessa sintatticamente, come nel caso della lingua dei Pirahã del Sudamerica, ha generato il giudizio di “primitivismo” nei confronti del popolo che la parla da parte soprattutto di alcuni filochomskyiani e altri1. In altre scienze sociali, alcune manifestazioni culturali, come l’arte, vengono intese come “primitive” o “moderne”, oppure si parla di evoluzione di generi letterari. La dimostrazione forse più eclatante di questo antropocentrismo riguarda il problema del genere Homo, in cui l’avvento dell’Uomo Anatomicamente Moderno si fa coincidere con la nascita della cultura, utilizzando un doppio standard di modernità, visto che Neandertal fu probabilmente molto più simile a noi di quanto si tende a pensare2. L’utilizzo dell’idea di evoluzione come metafora può essere estremamente potente nell’ambiente accademico, ma occorre prestare attenzione alle sue possibili implicazioni. Il mio intento è quello di analizzare questa metafora usata comunemente all’interno delle varie discipline dal punto di vista della linguistica cognitiva (frames e metafore concettuali), mettendo in evidenza come il concetto target eredita delle implicazioni che emergono a causa delle qualità proprie del concetto source, per dimostrare che il modo in cui avviene il framing del concetto condiziona sovente la metodologia di studio, nonché la tassonomia applicata all’oggetto studiato.

Cognitive Linguistics as an enterprise provides new theoretical and methodological instruments in understanding the relationship between people’s thoughts and the language they use. Spiritual and religious experiences (particularly the ones involving some type of revelation from or communication with a transcendent being) are especially interesting since they involve some type of external, physically invisible force or agent, contributing an “ineffable” quality to the phenomenon. However, people can and do describe such events, and metaphors and blends pervade the representations of certain concepts of the transcendental when attempting to talk about such abstract ideas. One of the main tenants of Cognitive Linguistics is that people’s views about themselves and the world around them are deeply rooted in their conceptual systems, created by their experiences and their bodily interactions with the world, whether they be physical, psychological or social. People who practice spirituality reach certain states by means of personal or collective rituals, such as prayer, meditation, and bodily procedures involving discipline, as is the case of fasting or re-understanding pain. When they then communicate certain religious and spiritual concepts, they are revealing a great deal about themselves and their world and the way they interact with it. Concepts dealing with people’s system of beliefs are very “meaningful” for the individual, and the more entrenched a frame of mind is, the less plastic it is, a fact confirmed by the neurosciences which claim that it is difficult to break down and reconstruct certain synaptic structures of the brain. But how do people who have had such awesome experiences represent these supernatural encounters and their states of being? What is the relationship between the concepts of body and soul in devotees who torture their bodies, who have out of body experiences or who describe a body possessed by other spirits? What does the language they use say about the individuals’ concept of themselves and their world? I will present some of my own research data containing conceptual metaphors and blends collected in various sacred texts and during a series of interviews of people who claim to have had such supernatural experiences. The data includes linguistic expressions as well as gesture. Moreover, the interviewees were asked to draw on paper certain experiences of spiritual nature and then to describe their pictures. My investigation will try to shed new light on the phenomenology of spiritual experiences and personhood, using cognitive linguistics as a prime tool of analysis.

I will explore some of my conclusions concerning conceptual metaphors collected during a series of interviews, in particular with two Christian street preachers. The data includes speech, gesture, and commented drawings of God, themselves and paradise. Some of the metaphors analyzed are: metaphors for God (FATHER, SHEPHERD, LOVER, etc); GOOD/GOD IS UP; BAD IS DOWN; STRICT FATHER vs. NURTURING PARENT; MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY. This data demonstrates that the more entrenched a frame of mind is, the less plastic it is, because the primary source domain of our habitual conceptual metaphor will always motivate any other “laminated domain mappings”, or blends, especially for such meaningful concepts like personhood or belief systems. My investigation will try to shed new light on the phenomenology of religious experiences and personhood, using cognitive linguistics as a prime tool of analysis.

Traditionally, spiritual experiences have been considered "ineffable," but metaphors pervade the representations of certain concepts of the transcendental in an attempt to talk about such abstract ideas. Whether it be during the description of a vision or simply talking about morality, people use conceptual metaphors to reason and talk about these concepts. Many representations of God, spirits, or the afterlife are culturally based, but whereas some may differ based on individual experiences, others seem to have a more universal character. From a phenomenological point of view, it seems that the descriptions are contingent and not necessary, that is, the language a believer is exposed to may influence, but not condition a priori, his or her own spiritual experience as Constructivists have thought. People's views about themselves and the world around them are deeply rooted in their conceptual systems, which are created by their experiences and their bodily interactions with the world, whether it's having to do with gravity in the case of UP and DOWN, or what our individual and social concepts are. When people talk about religious and spiritual concepts, they are revealing a great deal about their world and themselves and the way they interact with it. Concepts dealing with people's system of beliefs are very "meaningful" for the individual, and the more entrenched a frame of mind is, the less plastic it is, a fact confirmed by the neurosciences, which claim that it is difficult to break down and reconstruct certain synaptic structures of the brain. How do today's common "faithful" relate to certain metaphors about spiritual concepts transmitted by their faiths? What do these metaphors say about the individuals' concepts of themselves and their world? I will explore some of my own conclusions concerning conceptual metaphors and figurative language collected in various sacred texts and during a series of interviews of religious people with different backgrounds of religious systems. The data include linguistic expressions as well as gesture. Moreover, the interviewees were asked to draw on paper certain experiences of religious nature and then to describe their pictures. My investigation will try to shed new light on the phenomenology of religious experiences and personhood, using cognitive linguistics as a prime tool of analysis.

A philological and comparative analysis of the lexical items concerning personhood in Ancient Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Modern English reveals semantic shifts concerning the relative lexical concepts. Ancient Hebrew presents an essentially holistic idea of personhood, whereas, via Biblical translations and Greek philosophical influences, the Western World has conceptualized humans as being dualistic in nature. I analyze the polysemy and semantic shifts in the lexicon used for "body" and "soul" in Ancient Hebrew and Ancient Greek, which are the two linguistic systems known by St. Paul of Tarsus, and then confront them with Paul's usage context, and finally with Modern English, hypothesizing a possible case of linguistic relativity.

Historically Christianity owes much to Judaism. St. Paul’s Christianity, however, changed the way of thinking of many of the first Jews because of a new way of reasoning about selfhood, the human body, and human cognition. Without wanting to treat certain theological concepts, I want to underline how modern science’s view of the person is closer to traditional Judaism than it is to Christianity, and how Paul’s “error” was diffused throughout the Western world, by analyzing the semantics of linguistic references to the body, the soul, and emotions. What was St. Paul’s error? The question means to be both allusive and provocative. He was born by the name Saul in the city of Tarsus, in modern Turkey, during the height of its splendour as a Roman-Greek city. Paul grew up as a “free man”, that is, as a Roman citizen in a cosmopolitan environment. He is considered to be the most influential and productive of the testimonies of the Christian thought throughout Asia Minor and Western Europe. His epistles circulated throughout his time and continue to influence millions of followers, who often interpret his thoughts in contrasting manner, but nonetheless attest to his authority. An erudite Greek-Roman, persecutor of the first Christians, Paul battled to spread the story of Jesus of Nazareth. His ideology, indeed, is a blend of Greek-Roman thought and of what he learned from the first Christians. The Hellenic characteristics of his faith created a divergence from traditional Judaic thought within what was to become the Christian creed though his influence. As a matter of fact, Christianity came to have a more coherent structure because of Paul, and Christian belief in a way is more Paul’s thought than it is Jesus’. Jewish teaching circa selfhood was quite holistic. The Hebrew word nephesh is often translated as “soul” but also means “body”, whereas Paul clearly distinguishes the two, talking about a co-existence, “concupiscence” and the necessity of dominating the body to exalt the spirit. I will examine the semantic changes in words dealing with body and soul, and how Paul’s authority eventually influenced the Western world’s way of reasoning about such concepts.

Storicamente il cristianesimo deve molto al giudaismo. Il cristianesimo di San Paolo, tuttavia, ha cambiato il modo di ragionare su concetti come il sé, il corpo, e la cognizione umana. Senza volere trattare certi concetti teologici, mi prefiggo di sottolineare come il punto di vista della scienza moderna è più vicino al giudaismo tradizionale che al cristianesimo, e di spiegare la diffusione dell’“errore” di Paolo nel mondo occidentale, analizzando la semantica dei riferimenti linguistici (e in particolar modo le metafore e le metonimie) dei concetti anima e corpo e del rapporto con la concezione del sé. Cresciuto da “uomo franco” cioè, da cittadino romano in un ambiente cosmopolita, Paolo è considerato il testimone più influente e produttivo del pensiero cristiano nell’Asia Minore e nell’Europa Occidentale. Le sue epistole circolarono durante la sua vita e continuano ad influenzare miliardi di seguaci, i quali spesso interpretano le sue idee in modo contrastante, ma ciononostante attestando una specifica autorevolezza. Erudito greco-romano, inizialmente persecutore dei primi Cristiani, Paolo ha lottato per diffondere la storia di Gesù di Nazareth. La sua ideologia, infatti, è stata vista da molti come un amalgama tra il pensiero greco-romano e ciò che egli stesso ha appreso dai primi cristiani. Queste caratteristiche elleniche, più o meno reali, del sistema religioso introdussero una differenza significativa all’interno del pensiero giudaico tradizionale, dal quale, per mezzo dell’influenza dei suoi scritti, si sarebbe sviluppato il credo cristiano. Di fatti, il cristianesimo ha acquisito una struttura più coerente grazie a Paolo, quasi da inferire che la fede cristiana deve più a Paolo che a Gesù. Quale era l’errore di San Paolo? La domanda vuole essere sia allusiva che provocatoria. L’insegnamento giudaico a proposito del concetto del sé era piuttosto olistico. Per esempio, la parola ebraica nephesh è spesso tradotta come “anima” ma, metaforicamente, significa anche “corpo”, mentre, secondo i suoi interpreti, Paolo chiaramente fa delle distinzioni dualistiche, e parlando della “concupiscenza” predica la necessità di dominare la carne per esaltare lo spirito. Con gli strumenti della linguistica cognitiva, propongo un’analisi della polisemia e degli slittamenti semantici nei concetti di ANIMA e CORPO, e come l’autorità attribuita a Paolo eventualmente ha influenzato il pensiero occidentale sul ragionare di queste rappresentazioni mentali.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SYMBOLIC-RELIGIOUS COGNITION - Cognitive Archeology and Cognitive Fluidity: About 30,000 years ago (70,000 years after the fossil records of the anatomically modern human), religious thought and symbolic conceptual activity arose from the capacity of integrating specific-domain a process called "cognitive fluidity" (Mithen 1996). Metaphor, Anthropomorphism and Cognitive Science: Metaphor is a basic mental capacity by which people understand themselves and the world around them through conceptual mappings of knowledge between mental spaces, using everyday knowledge to reason about more abstract concepts. Of all the templates for supernatural concepts, the ones that seriously matter to people are invariably person-like, because people are the most complex type of object that people know (Boyer 2001). WHY GOD AS AN EROTIC LOVER? - Diffusion and elaboration of religious memes: To reason about the ties between divine and human, man looks at his repertoire of human relationships, and the more significant ones are used to explain and speak of re-ligio. There are many metaphors used to represent the relationship between the divinity and the devotee (father/child, doctor/patient, teacher/pupil, etc.) The most significant relationship chosen by the mystic in terms of balance is Lover-Beloved. Blending between God and Lover: The idealized conceptual models of the Divinity/beloved and of a devotee/lover began to blend through composition, completion and elaboration. The concept of human love relationship of these ancient cultures probably needs to be re-evaluated by modern students if it had become such an entrenched concept to be used as a source for a cognitive input space. BLENDING THE EROTIC AND THE RELIGIOUS - Examples of erotic religious texts and emergent structure: Sir hassirim, or Song of Songs (Judeo-Christian); Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda (Hindu); Rumi’s Mathanawi (Islam). Strongly erotic in content, these are part of the canons of the respective religious traditions, and so have deeply influenced subsequent elaboration of the erotic symbolism The lover (the faithful) and the Beloved (the Divinity) are usually on a par, and the domination of one is hardly ever present. Poetic descriptions include psychological states of jealousy, passion, separation and reunion, and ultimate union. The time of reunion is spring and the place is nature. What emerges is a relationship that not only unilaterally satisfies the material and spiritual needs of the religious person, but is reciprocal. In other words, the needs of both parties are fulfilled (devotee: food, explanations; god: praise, sacrifice). Moreover, due to the blend, an emotional need is also fulfilled. The dignity of the woman is finding her place in society, like the devotee finds his/her place in his/her creator’s creation, and so their relationship must be lived in the same natural setting. Because of the fusion between counterpart input spaces, there is a completion that humanizes the divinity so it becomes a he, the Man, motivated by the dominating role. However the elaboration of the blend tends to eliminate any domination in the relationship, as the needs of both sides are equal, and only when they are united do they feel completely realized. Their place is in nature, at it’s most energetic and vibrant moment of springtime (ideally the time of life), and the time is eternal.

Why do some people have life-changing experiences when reading sacred texts, and what makes them so differently significant readings as opposed to reading the newspaper or any kind of book? Exploring a set of metaphors used in the literature of mysticism, and in particular in the canonical literature of world religions, I use the instruments provided by conceptual integration and empirical data of the neurosciences to offer a hermeneutic model of the higher level understanding construed during on-line reading by devotees of their respective sacred literature. Constructivists of the past two decades have considered the mystical experience as a form of "reconditioning of consciousness," (the concepts condition a priori the experience), arguing that there are no pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences. I believe cognitive science helps prove that the description of the experience is contingent and not necessary; the language used in devotional literature to describe mystical experience influences the way of living the experience, but it is also motivated by its representing reality. Ultimately I will look at the model of erotic relationship in mystical literature and how it serves as evidence of non-reductive physicalism, seeing the human being as a multilevel psychosomatic unity.