Try to imagine a world without logos, flags, patches, labels, marks, codes, signals, ciphers, tattoos, traffic signals, numbers, notes in music, official seals, or the millions of symbols we see in movies, video games, cartoons, or advertising.

When we the read the numbers displayed on the face of a clock, wave hello to a friend across the street, or post an emoticon on Facebook we are thinking and acting symbolically. Symbolic thinking is inextricably and intimately connected to what it means to be human and no other animal on the planet has this same capacity. Yes, birds sing, dogs bark, and chimpanzees mimic, but humans beings are truly unique when it comes to communicating with one another.

The human mind processes information by sensing, selecting, and perceiving information from the surrounding environment and then transforms and codes it to construct meaning. Defining human beings as symbol-makers and symbol-users is a bit problematic since there is a tendency to reduce something very complex into what may at first glance seem fairly basic and simple. Basically, sign systems are the way we deal with what we perceive as reality