In academia, there has always seemed to be an invisible line separating the arts and the sciences. Language belongs to the arts; mathematics and science belong to the sciences.

But I have always felt that language is not merely part of the arts. In fact, it is one of the most important foundations for learning science and mathematics well. Behind language itself lies a way of understanding and organising the world.

Learning Chinese characters is not simply about memorising symbols. It is about learning a system of logic for interpreting the world. Pictographs, phonetic-radical compounds, indicative characters, associative compounds… every method of character formation — even punctuation marks — reflects relationships between the natural world and human thought. Because of the unique structure of Chinese characters, I have watched children unconsciously learn how to classify, organise, and make connections. Without needing formal instruction, they naturally begin searching for patterns simply through exposure to language.

One child, around four or five years old, left a particularly deep impression on me. One day, he drew the “fire” radical 火 together with the character 口 (“mouth”), then proudly told me that the character meant “very spicy”. Of course, no such character actually exists.

But what fascinated me was that he had clearly understood the logic behind how Chinese characters combine and form meaning — and had begun applying that logic creatively to invent his own character. In that moment, he was no longer simply memorising characters. He was applying a system of rules.

Another time, a child asked me: “Do all characters with the water radical 氵have something to do with water?” I did not answer him immediately. Instead, I simply encouraged him to keep looking. Very seriously, he began flipping through books while reading aloud:

“River, sea, lake, wash, swim… they all really do involve water!”

Then after a while, he suddenly paused and said: “But sweat also has water in it… so shouldn’t the character for ‘sweat’ also have 氵?”

During the process of learning Chinese characters, this child had first observed a pattern, then formed a hypothesis, then tested it using new examples, and finally began refining his own understanding. That process of thinking is, in fact, remarkably similar to scientific inquiry. This child had already begun developing a STEAM mind.

Language also encourages children to think about things that cannot be directly seen.

Once children begin reading stories, they encounter another form of logic altogether. Within stories, relationships between characters, places, time, and events are all connected through clear chains of cause and effect.

Children often say while reading: “If I were him, I wouldn’t have done that.” Sometimes they continue imagining further: “If he had made a different choice, what would have happened instead?”

This kind of thinking is actually very similar to the scenario simulations found in many role-playing games today. Children place themselves into imagined situations and explore the possible consequences of different decisions.

Through this process, children practise a very important ability: reasoning and making judgements between different possibilities. At the same time, they are also repeating something human beings have done for centuries — placing themselves in another person’s position and imagining how different choices may lead to different outcomes. In this process, children are not only understanding characters in stories. They are also practising reasoning itself.

Reading becomes the starting point of logical thinking.

In today’s technological world, people increasingly rely on many forms of reasoning: perspective-taking, shifting viewpoints, decision trees, counterfactual reasoning, and more. Yet many of these abilities are quietly cultivated over time through language learning and reading.

As children learn to recognise characters and read, what they are learning is not merely language itself, but the order underlying the world.

And when children learn to read words, they also begin learning how to read the world.

Behind language ability lies, in truth, a way of thinking.

Perhaps that is why I have always believed that language is one of the most important foundations of STEAM education.