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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2021
At least as far back as Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals(1872) scientists have studied analogic (as distinct from digital) modes of communication. Clearly all artists other than writers are technicians of the analogic.
Analogic codification constitutes a series of symbols that in their proportions and relations are similar to the thing, idea, or event for which they stand. […] Such a form of codification deals with continuous functions, unlike digital codification, which deals with discrete step intervals. […] The principles of analogic codification as contrasted with digital codification have a central importance to students of human behavior that is still perhaps insufficiently understood. The use of words, whether in speech or writing, has certain limitations akin to those of digital computers: words remain identifying or typifying symbols that lack the impelling immediacy of analogic devices.
1 Ruesch and Kees (1972), 8.
2 Kirby (1973), 10.
3 A survey of current thinking in the field is contained in a special issue of Scientific American, Vol. 227, No. 3 (Sept., 1972), devoted to communication.
4 Birdwhistell (1964), 2.
5 Kirby (1973), 28.
6 Birdwhistell (1952), 17.
