Ryan Conrad Davis
Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Symbols, Sermons, and Settings, edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-symbols-sermons-and-settings/.
“Comparison is at the heart of understanding the world. In fact, the father of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, has shown that meaning is created through difference. It is only when one recognizes difference that meaning emerges. Or, as Lehi put it, “it must needs be, that there is an opposition,” or an opposite, “in all things”; if something does not have an opposite, or something to contrast with, then “all things must needs be a compound in one.” Thus, in order to fully appreciate one thing, one must see another thing that the first is not.”
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About the Interpreter Foundation Book Chapter Reprint Series
The purpose of this reprint series is to make individual chapters from books published by The Interpreter Foundation more accessible to readers. Although in some instances the formatting and pagination may have been changed, the content of this chapter, like others in this reprint series, is identical to what appeared in its original book publication. It has not been updated to incorporate research that has appeared subsequently nor to reflect the current practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to use the full name of the Church and to avoid terms such as “Mormon” and “LDS.”
