"I knew it, but couldn't write it."
Noa said frustratedly. After the exam.
Ren was interested. "What did you know?"
"As a feeling. But I couldn't put it into words."
"Did you really 'know' it?"
Noa was surprised. "Huh?"
"If you can't verbalize it, perhaps you didn't understand it?" Ren asked.
"That's not true." Noa objected. "Listening to music moves you. But you can't explain that emotion. Yet you definitely feel it."
Ren pondered. "That's a sharp example."
"Thought and language are different." Noa continued. "Language only captures part of thought."
"Captures?"
"Thought is fluid. Language is fixed. Like trying to put flowing water into a shaped container."
Ren almost agreed, then stopped. "But Wittgenstein said, 'The limits of language are the limits of the world.'"
"I know." Noa smiled. "But later Wittgenstein revised that."
"Revised?"
"Language game theory. Language is one way to capture the world. But not the only way."
Ren was surprised. "You know philosophy history well."
"Because I'm interested." Noa felt embarrassed. "So, what do you think is the identity of thoughts that can't be verbalized?"
"Several possibilities." Ren opened his notebook. "First, undifferentiated thought."
"Undifferentiated?"
"Not yet formed, vague ideas. Close to intuition or sensation."
Noa nodded. "I understand that. But that's not all."
"What else?"
"Thoughts too complex." Noa proposed. "Too many elements to express with linear language."
Ren understood. "The difficulty of expressing parallel-processing thought with serial-processing language."
"Yes. Music too. Chords are multiple sounds simultaneously. But words can only be spoken one at a time."
"Media constraints."
Noa continued. "Another: tacit knowledge."
"Polanyi's concept." Ren recognized. "'We can know more than we can tell.'"
"Can't explain how to ride a bicycle in words. But the body knows."
Ren thought. "So three types of unverbalizable thought. Undifferentiated, complex, tacit."
"But," Noa said carefully, "I feel there's one more."
"What?"
"Thought beyond language."
Ren became serious. "Beyond language?"
"Realms language can't capture. Mystical experiences, deep aesthetic emotion, direct experience of existence."
"That's metaphysical."
"But undeniable." Noa said quietly. "There's no guarantee language can capture everything."
Ren admitted. "True. Science too can't handle what can't be measured. But that doesn't mean unmeasurable things don't exist."
"Same structure." Noa pointed out. "What can't be verbalized doesn't mean it doesn't exist."
The two fell silent for a while.
Ren asked. "So what do we do with thoughts we can't verbalize?"
"Don't force verbalization." Noa answered. "Use other means of expression."
"Music, painting, dance."
"Yes. Or give up verbalizing and just feel."
Ren objected. "But exams require verbalization."
Noa laughed. "True. Then approximate."
"Approximate?"
"Can't verbalize perfectly. But can get closer. From multiple angles, little by little."
Ren understood. "The strategy of poetic language."
"Poets know. The limits of language. So they use metaphor, rhythm, silence."
"Silence is also language?"
"Part of language." Noa asserted. "Like rests are part of music."
Ren was impressed. "The contradiction of trying to verbalize what can't be verbalized."
"Carrying contradiction, continuing to try. That's human."
Noa wrote something in her notebook. Ren tried to peek, but Noa hid it.
"What did you write?"
"What can't be put into words." Noa smiled.
Ren laughed. "That's contradictory."
"Contradictory. But trying."
The two laughed together. There are thoughts that can't be verbalized. But the attempt to verbalize has value. In that attempt, thought gradually takes shape.