ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the three aspects of language that seem to be major importance for human learning: that it has meaning (it symbolizes concepts); that it is a system (the concepts are ordered according to grammatical convention); and that it makes reference to things remote in time and space. The crucial implication of social inheritance for human learning is that each new development makes new demands in terms of skills to be learned. The chapter has been concerned in one way or another with the relationship between language and thinking. The argument has been that language has a profound influence on an individual's learning, through the effects of cultural accretion and also through the way it facilitates concept formation by its process function. Words as labels sometimes positively hinder learning and understanding. Generations of children in schools throughout the world have learned names for countless concepts, and nothing else.
