Thoughts beyond Words

    Sometimes it may seem that we can only think by using words. However, that's a misconception.
    Consider face recognition. Ask me to describe my face and I'll only be able to offer words that basically sterotype it, describing features that could match thousands of people. Yet when I see my reflection, I will recognize its trueness at once.
   Although I may have never noticed it enough to comment on it or to ascribe a name to it, I see the distance between my nose, my mouth, and my ears. And they are a couple of the distinct distances that give a face its characteristic features - but I don't have a verbal name for them in my memory.
   It's not that I don't know what my face looks like. It's that I don't know it on a verbal level.
   Try this little experiment. Consider a face you have seen often, perhaps the Mona Lisa. Describe it. Then read your description. Is it a description that would separate the Mona Lisa from the billions of people in the world?