Sync

What do you see?



People have discovered in a number of locations around the world such as Thailand and Tennessee where groups of fireflies independently flashing will emergently synchronize their flashes. This is one video of this emergent phenomena.

So is the whole simply the sum of the parts? Is the whole something more? Or is it both?

G Factor Intelligence

First let me state two things very clearly so there is absolutely no misunderstanding.

One: I think human biodiversity bloggers are simply modern Social Darwinists. And as I will say till I'm blue in the face, at its most flattering, Social Darwinism is pseudoscience. And as I will say in less flattering terms... well, let me just say I'd be happy to indulge any who want to go all ape $#!*&!! on them.

Two: any discussion on what I call "information structures" such as intelligence or consciousness is still bounded with the same communication aspect problem that is inherent to all other communication. And fundamental to any issue concerning aspect is my old friend cooperation. For as Bill Clinton wonderfully illustrated with his "it depends on what the meaning of the word is is", one person can be absolutely truthful, yet not particularly helpful, when they do not cooperate to eliminate aspect problems. And while cooperating communicators usually recognize and automatically adjust to minimize mis-communication around this problem, non-cooperative communicators rarely do, as any trial lawyer will clearly tell you. Hence discussions on intelligence often get plagued with emotional aspects and two people talking about the same thing leave with very different take away messages.

Kind of a version of that old saying you get what you put in.

So let me just say for the record I do not think intelligence is either etched in stone (the endless nature-nurture rabbit hole), nor do I think it particularly useful in predicting a particular individual's future, nor do I think it indicative of "better" or "worse" on any absolute cosmic scale. The universe could care less what your IQ is.

I do however think it can be a useful epidemiological tool when examining groups of people- again you need to be careful how you define this. But I want to be clear, I think it very dangerous when used in the context of any one particular individual, just like sending a patient with chest pain and a normal EKG home can be very risky as well.

... Enough said on this other than I might point out things like this bug me (e.g. the school's use of IQ tests in determining admission), but it is what it is and clearly people are going to do what they are going to do regardless of what I say.

Yet to get back to my post's original point, like everything else in life, the issue of intelligence is "complex", and even an immoral blind squirrel can catch a few nuts now an then. And in particular, I think HBD bloggers have caught a rather interesting nut with their metaphor of an iterative building block they call "g" as the most atomic or irreducible of intelligence sub-structures. And whether g does or does not represent a neuron or something even more atomic, still as a hopeless fractalholic, I think g a wonderful visual metaphor for the fractal nature of the mind and its meta-output information structures we call behavior, intelligence, emotion, judgment, consciousness, etc...

I am very interested in your thoughts and opinions at this point before we move on.

Cliff Notes on Fractals

Okie shared the following video with us a while ago; it is a great intro if you need one.





PS- use this link if the video will not work, I am having a little trouble embedding so this is a backup.

Mysticism and Venereal Disease

What could POSSIBLY be the relation between mysticism and venereal disease ??...

It took me a long long time to realize what mysticism was, and that I was a mystic.

Oddly enough, you MAY NOT BELIEVE THIS, BUT...

If I said that I was a mystic in the Bible belt, in the company of some of those people who I get the feeling that most people reading this blog don't understand and can't even believe exist, they would probably eye me strangely, and move stealthily towards the edge of their seats in much the same way that...

You get the point.

I had my first mystical experience when I was 14 years old.

It was pretty exciting, and did not scare me at all.

It was outside my piano teacher's house, while waiting for a lesson.

I was standing underneath his weeping willow, and all of a sudden...

No, the heavens did NOT open, and I did NOT see a vision of the Father, the Son, etc etc.

Something about the structure of that willow's leaves (are they leaves ?).

The... MATHEMATICAL regularity of those willow leaves looked a lot like what I saw in Van Gogh's paintings.

So, obviously, TO ME, I was seeing this scene LIKE Van Gogh had seen it.

I was seeing LIKE Van Gogh saw.

(The mystical experience was in the WAY that I was seeing, not in seeing LIKE Van Gogh.)

Lots of people think that Van Gogh was a loony. Probably Van Gogh thought he was a loony too. His family.

Not me.

I think that Van Gogh had mystical experiences of SEEING THE WORLD in a DIFFERENT WAY. Particularly nature, of course. And that unfortunately, he did NOT have access to a mentor who could help him understand the nature of his gift, and his severely... PROTESTANT upbringing must have made it very very difficult for him to understand what was happening to him. Like another man. Carl Gustav Jung.

Of course... this is ANOTHER form the question of POINT OF VIEW takes.

Consciousness, if you like.

Which brings us back to Doctor John's post on ketchup a short while ago, and his commentary on direct vs indirect experience. You cannot learn mysticism from a book, not from reading ABOUT it.

There is NO MORE DIRECT experience than mystical experience, I believe. There is no ABOUT in mystical experience.

(What is the DIFFERENCE BETWEEN I believe and I think ? Another.. rabbit hole.)

These days, my mystical experiences have become an integrated part of my existence.

This WAY OF SEEING is like a warp that goes through my entire existence. It bears my.. DAILY, ROUTINE EXISTENCE up. Gives it intense meaning.

It.. scares some people.

It used to scare me. Not any more.

Of course, one of the BIGGEST PROBLEMS with mystical experiences is that they exist at the very spot where language.. comes together ? Fails ?

You can't talk ABOUT them.

So... what do you do ?

You make the words do what mystical experience does.

You.. LET the words do what mystical experience does.

You let the.. notes, the fingers do what mystical experience does.

A translation ? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know.

One last thing.

Lots of people seem to think that mysticism=God.

Na. It's a lot more complicated than that. A LOT more.

Who knows ?... YOU may be having mystical experiences, but you don't recognize them as such.

Are they mystical EVEN IF YOU DON'T RECOGNIZE THEM AS SUCH ?

Those rabbit holes...

Part II of Consciousness... Scale Free Networks

Per Dr. John, Part II of my consciousness posts explaining why I think B-E condensates explains consciousness will continue...



... And just like the last post, the issue of where to begin this discussion is not entirely clear.

Yet we have to start somewhere, so I will take an additional detour into netork theory, and to a particular kind of network known as scale free networks, a classic example of which might be the world wide web.

As there are many types of networks (the above diagram is a simple example), and any discussion on networks is rabbit hole in itself; still I will gloss over this line of discussion in the interest of brevity.

... But I would like to comment that scale free networks are unique as they follow power law distributions. And power laws are laws- or relationships- which follow powers of an original template no matter a template's size or shape- e.g. power laws are self similar or fractal (no matter how much they fracture, the still look the same). A classic example is the formula for the area of a circle: the formula for the area of a circle is the same no matter how large or small the circle is (Πrˆ2 is always true).

PS- If you notice a certain similarity to self similar and self-referential, I would suggest you hold on to your hat as others have noticed this similarity too. I should be obvious that self referential similarly holds true no matter how large or small an individual is. ;-)

Anyway, any discussion of networks and scale free might occupy many posts, and as we need to move on, lets do so with the understanding that I will answer whatever questions I can in comments.

It has been along day so I will stop here but I will add that if you have trouble following this, let me know in comments.

Be well

PS- this is a very good Scientific American article for those unfamiliar with scale free networks (it is a .pdf and therefore takes a little while to download with online viewing)

Pop Physics... Or otherwise known as aspect or "under certain conditions"

Not knowing where to begin this post, I shall instead pick up from where Dr. John responded to Dink's question on consciousness, namely: "We talk of consciousness when we really have not even agreed on what that means."

For although I have had zero formal linguistic training, and am probably therefore on very shaky ground- still I think it important to remember that an inability to get agreement on this issue should be very little cause for alarm.

For one of the greatest problems inherent in all communication is my old friend grammatical aspect... or sometimes referred to as point of view or frame of references.

I have read that English is apparently a particularly bad language at reminding its users of the inherent problems of aspect/point of view in communication. Not knowing if this is true or not, I will chose to believe it until I learn otherwise. Still I suspect that aspect causes communication errors in any language. It seems so easy to forget the aspect or vector of approach when we communicate, etc...

Further, as I am visual/geometric thinker, and tend to think of all things using geometry as metaphor, and in particular tend to visualize aspect as akin to an incoming/approaching jet airplane attempting to land on a runway. Clearly some angles of approach will lead to safety, others to disaster.


Perhaps the most famous recent example of how aspect is often ignored at our own peril occurred when Bill Clinton correctly made the following famous comment:



Clearly linguists everywhere smiled in ironic acknowledgment as they realized Bill Clinton must have paid very close attention in class. ;-)



Anyway, I say all this as introduction to the subject of consciousness, which I hope we will all explore together in coming posts. I will share with you why I think consciousness is a quantum phenomena of a particular type of scale free network called a Boze-Einstein Condensate and would very much appreciate your thoughts on this matter. I hope you'll also all come to understand my reference to "under certain conditions" in relation to "aspect"; clearly I am no expert on consciousness.

Until next post, be well all.

The Most Fabulous Object In The World

(The title of this post pays homage to the great movie "Time Bandits")

Our recent discussions involving consciousness got me curious about what other people have thought up so far. So I type "theories of consciousness" into Google. As always, wikipedia popped up close to the top and lured me in with a nice summary of the situation.

Under the Evolutionary Biology section I found this:

Budiansky, by contrast, limits consciousness to humans, proposing that human consciousness may have evolved as an adaptation to anticipate and counter social strategems of other humans, predators, and prey.[38] Alternatively, it has been argued that the recursive circuitry underwriting consciousness is much more primitive, having evolved initially in premammalian species because it improves the capacity for interaction with both social and natural environments by providing an energy-saving "neutral" gear in an otherwise energy-expensive motor output machine

This is alluring. Adaptation loves energy-saving devices. Elsewhere in the wiki someone posited that consciousness wasn't needed until "culture" came about (I interpret this as group selection literally guiding physical changes).

Another section brought up Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I've never read this book, but I keep coming across it. Smart people have heralded it and then denounced it. Its weird. But could it fit with the Stroke of Insight author's experience? I may have to breakdown and buy the weird thing. Stolen sentences include:

Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up like a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioral processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision.
...and page 65...

It operates by way of analogy, by way of constructing an analog space with an analog "I" that can observe that space, and move metaphorically in it.
...and perhaps most tellingly, page 66...

there is nothing in consciousness that is not an analog of something that was in behavior first.

Really, what is the use of all the other wonders of the world if we don't have a conscious to admire them with? Hence, it is The Most Fabulous Object In The World.

"Good" Friday

Sorry for being testy this week.

This is a rough time of year for me.

This week is Passion week.

The week where we celebrate the major events in the last week of Jesus Christ's life.

His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey on Palm Sunday (last Sunday in the calendar), was an open declaration of war to the Jewish authorities.

He knew his texts. The Messiah was supposed to enter Jerusalem on the back of a donkey in the texts...

And today is the anniversary of his Crucifixion....

This week, at the same time I mourn the ultimate injustice of a mock trial, a political farce, beating, scapegoating an innocent man, a painful, drawn out public execution, I mourn my dead parents, and remember others around me who have died. I also think of the countless others, the named and nameless others who have suffered Jesus Christ's fate, and who are YET to suffer his death (in my mother country, in China, in Saudi Arabia, by lethal injection, hanging, beheading, who knows...).

And my two precious religious traditions, Catholic and Protestant, and their very different ways of commemorating Jesus' death.

If you take a look at Hieronymus Bosch's "Carrying of the Cross", a small panel, you will see a pale faced Jesus, eyes closed, clutching the cross, while around him the bestial figures of men and women excited like bloodhounds at the prospect of what's to come. To the side, Veronika holds the handkerchief that she used to wipe the sweat from Jesus's face. (Catholic tradition)

Jesus is like a... Eucharistic wafer gleaming in the midst of an impenetrable darkness.

What did he say ? "I am the Light". Yes, in this painting, he is the ONLY light.

Cut to the Matthaus Passion. Johann Sebastian Bach.

Another great mystic, albeit a Protestant one.

No idols, no pictures, no.. cathedrals for the Protestants.

But... the Matthaus Passion is one enormous cathedral built to house Jesus Christ.

And right smack dab in the middle of this cathedral there is a triptych.

A choral part, where the choir is the crowd, and they scream "Crucify him".

Music as modern, as gut wrenching as any that has ever been written. Terrifying.

And you can.. hear the people in Bosch's painting.

You can hear how they have become ? not animal... just another facet of human, which means.. US, and not THEM. (Remember the Milgram experiment...)

Right after you hear the soprano aria : "Aus liebe will mein Heiland sterben". Out of love my Savior is willing to die. And this aria represents... the small, quiet nest of calm right in the middle of that terrible storm, that nest where Veronika takes out her handkerchief and wipes the sweat from Jesus' face. A tender, merciful gesture.

Music which is almost atonal, almost outside the system, that's how moved Bach is to be recounting this episode from HIS point of view. What founds his faith. What he believes in, right down to the roots of his being.

Then the choir picks up again, and the moment is engulfed in "Crucify him" again..

This is Good Friday.

The day that I remember that I am constantly called on to choose between playing the part of... Veronika, or the crowd that screams "crucify him".

That I am constantly called on to try to see Jesus Christ in my neighbor, even when I want to see one of the members of the crowd.

When I try to remember how weak I am to achieve this, even when I am congratulating myself about how well I am doing it.

And of course, all of this would be intolerable without the promise of the Resurrection.

An even greater mystery. THE mystery.

Lest you think that I am trying to convert you..

How could I be trying to convert you when I am understanding this AS I GO ALONG ?

"Making it up" as I go along ?

Be well, as Thai says.

April Fools

Hey... one of my unreachable goals in life has always been to...LIGHTEN UP.

This is something that I don't do well at all. I have been trying for years. It doesn't get any easier...

It is April Fools Day today.

A great tradition.

If I were running for political office, I think that I would decree that the first day of every month should be April Fools Day.

Way back when in France, when French television was STILL a public service, STILL EXCELLENT, I used to love poring over our rather intellectual weekly TV magazine on April Fools week to try to find the "canular". The joke.

Sometimes it was really sophisticated stuff. You had to exercise your neurons to pick up WHERE the joke was. It was not immediately obvious.

I wish somebody here (Thai ? Dink ?) would stick down a link with some famous April Fools jobs.

A couple memorable ones... (a gift from my loony forum. Can't stick down the link cause it's all in French, and you wouldn't understand, I assume.)

In 1957 the BBC announced that the Italian spaghetti trees were doing nicely, and that the upcoming spaghetti harvest was going to be fabulous (can't find a good word here.. a bumper crop ?? maybe like a... BULL crop...)

The BBC got tons of mail. People, uh, really believed that spaghetti grew on trees...

(Amazing what people will believe when they want to, right ?)

And in France, one of the papers announced that the Elysée had decided to unbuild the Tour Eiffel and move it to Disneyland where it would be reconstructed. Replacing the Tour Eiffel on site with a giant stadium for the 1992 Olympics (I could be wrong on the date...). Lots of mail on that one too...

I think that we could bring back the Roman Saturnalias with great profit...

Think of it... a MONTH where all of the big bosses, the.. Presidents, the heads of state, the PEOPLE WHO COUNT, the stars, would trade places with... janitors. Loonies. The little guys. The down and outs. The less down and outs. The middle class... (well, not JUST the middle class, we already saw this act during the French revolution, and look where it got us...)

I think that this kind of social regulation would be a very good idea.

Beyond the fact that it would do our leaders a world of good getting some hands on direct experience of down and out--

It would do worlds of good combating scapegoating, for example.

When you got fed up, you would say to yourself... "just one more week, one more day, one more month and I get to parade around as Barack..."

Wouldn't that be fun now ?

(A week ? A month, the Saturnalias ? I will stand corrected if anybody wants to correct...)

My loony forum (continued)

For Doctor John.

Shop talk. (JP, mea culpa, but you're not here, and it looks like dink is on vacation too...)

Three years ago when I got sucked into the maelstrom of a major spiritual crisis, I was wallowing in self pity and surfing from Internet site to Internet site, reading about the newest in treatment of schizophrenia, and psychosis, and the whole bit. And I hooked up with a big French public forum on health care that I promptly proceeded to get tossed out of (wonder why, right, Dinky ??), but fortunately there was a handful of people who appreciated my.. cantakerousness, my honesty, my ability to call a spade a spade, to disturb the peace, and they invited me onto a private forum where I have been writing and working ever since.

This is a democratic forum. I don't pull rank (very often, at any case...). I participate alongside of the others. I offer my advice. I encourage. I hold hands. I even occasionally tell off. (Yes, that can happen...) I offer these people my rather unique point of view.. that of someone who willingly hangs out with them, and takes great pleasure in their company (most of them). And... I reveal to them what is going on in the heads of the couch crowd.

I am a firm believer in democracy (I can already hear Thai's disbelief...). Even if I sometimes get nostalgic for the Ancien Regime (the ideal of the Ancien Regime, not the reality of it...).

I tell them that what is going on in their heads is not too far away from what is going on in the heads of their shrinks, and the people who are taking care of them.

I remind them that it is proverbial to say... "it takes one to know one".

That there are good reasons why we say "it takes one to know one".

That the people who hang out with people who are labeled "mentally ill" have their own personal, private agenda for "taking care of", for "protecting" the vulnerable "mentally ill".

I tell them that we live in a society that is obsessed with autonomy when we come into the world naked, mewing, and our dependancy just shifts places, moves around with time.

I tell them that we live in an incredibly punitive society where, as more and more people can't make ends meet by working, and are whiling away their existences in hand to mouth fashion, the more and more privileged few who have jobs take out their incredible agressivity, and unhappiness by pointing fingers at those who are more vulnerable, and cannot keep up the inhuman pace of all of this.

I tell them that they are not worthless louts because they are not working, or because they are vulnerable.

I bolster their opinions of themselves, WHILE ENCOURAGING THEM SOMETIMES to do something about their situations IF THEY ARE UNHAPPY IN THEM.

I tell them that in a society where we have accepted as a religion that full employment is not possible, WHY SHOULD THEY NECESSARILY FEEL GUILTY ABOUT NOT HAVING A JOB ?

When the machines have destroyed work, when people with literary, artistic bents are laughed at, and scorned.. WHY SHOULD THEY FEEL GUILTY ABOUT DROPPING OUT ?

So I tell them... WHY NOT take your allocation, for example, and PRODUCE in an immaterial way ?

You can be "productive" without producing something for the numbers charts...

You can "produce"... tenderness. Joy. You can "produce".. a smile.

And I have learned that beating people around the head while telling them that they SHOULD be doing this and that is really counterproductive. Playing on guilt produces more guilt which produces more guilt.

And... they stay in the same ruts...

This is NOT WHAT WE WANT, right ???

That's all for now...

Everybody is doing MUCH MUCH better.

And... at least they feel better. The first step, I say.

AND... they are taking fewer drugs. They are looking for competent therapists, and not pill pushers, or chart readers.

Good... JOB, right ?

I almost forgot... my goal. My priority... To teach them how to think critically.

To question their prejudices. To question.. MY prejudices too.

Pretty much the same.. goal I have here.

While having fun, of course...

Mary and The Problem of Qualia or John and His Ketchup Problem

On the tail of Dink's last post on layers and our discussion of consciousness I thought I might offer what I have felt to be perhaps the most compelling argument against complete understanding of such experiential phenomena. It was first put forth by the philosopher of mind Frank Jackson in the early 1980's. This is a thought experiment so we must have a bit of latitude with it. It goes like this: Mary is born. From the second she exits the birth canal she lives only and is raised only in a world without color. She is not allowed outside nor is she exposed to anything but black and white indoors. Mary is a very bright child and is educated by those who care for her. Again this education takes place through a black and white TV and in a room with no color. Mary is an exceptionally bright child. Her teachers teach her EVERY conceivable bit of information about color. She is an expert in optics and the behavior of light and acquires all that can possibly understood about how color is created in the eye and transmitted to the brain. Again on every level there is no more physical information about the process of colors being created and visualized by human beings that Mary can absorb. Her understanding of the physical process of human color visualization is complete. After this occurs, Mary is released out into the yard behind the place where she has been raised and acquired her complete knowledge on color. She visualizes color for the first time after. Just prior to her experience of color she has already acquired all possible knowledge about the process of color experience but can it be said that Mary really knows everything about the perception of color before she goes into the yard? Change the story to a boy named Dr John who is not nearly as bright but instead has devoted his life to the the study of ketchup and the physiologic process of the taste sensation of it. Again, can it be said that John knows everything about ketchup until he has experienced it? And than after what can both Mary or John offer to others in regards to truly shared knowledge about what their experience "is" and what it is to see color or taste ketchup ? ....It was good for me. I hope it was for you. John

Levels

So with Thai baking in AZ I think I'll step up as the fractal prophet for a while.

I worry that when people think of fractals that they think of Legos. A rectangular Lego piece is the base unit, a rectangular train car made out of these units is a large and more complex replication, and a giant rectangular train car made of base train cars is the next and similar level of complexity.

Its not wrong, its just not impressive. And the concept really can be mind-blowing.

You start with base unit of elements. They have their octet and charge rules. But once carbon and hydrogen get mixing up for some crazy length molecules we enter a new level.

These organic molecules start have their own rules and eventually settle down into something stable.

Nervous systems develop on top of that.

Then consciousness.

Then groups of sapients working in cohesion.

There may be patterns in the rules/systems of each level that are similar to the other levels (therefore fractal). But the difference in complexity is astounding. And we really need to take care of the "supporting" levels (i.e. Earth) if we want to enjoy the benefits of our current level of complexity (Netflix).

New subject- Dr John mentioned in his last comment the need to embrace community. Cooperation is another big Thai theme. So Saturday I go to a local parade. Shins bruised from countless strollers, dozens of bassett hounds dressed in costume, local crafts (I am not paying $40 for a tye-dye t-shirt!), high school marching bands, and firemen making pancakes. People are strange, but I generally like them.

The Magiquest Thing in the World

Last night when I came back home after my daily loaf, I was blown away by the comments here.

Yep, the blog has gone into warp drive. That's great.

After the initial giddy exhilaration of the banter, I started to feel the need to... grip the sides of a capsizing boat.

Dinky tells me that "over there" where you are, REASONABLE PEOPLE say things in an "elegant STRAIGHTFORWARD manner, and "get to the point".

I SAY... that that is the erector set way of doing things.

I CAN do things the erector set way, but perso, I don't find that very much fun. Not very.. CREATIVE. BUSINESSLIKE, yes. "EFFICIENT" ? Maybe. But just not FUN.

And I'm the kind of person who likes to have my cake and eat it too, and.. AS LONG AS I CAN HAVE MY CAKE AND EAT IT TOO without wresting it away from my neighbor... why not ?

So... here goes at doing on this blog ONE of the things that I like to do, and do well (well, most of the time).

(Don't worry, the magiquest thing is going to come up at one point or another in this post. Learn to be patient.)

Yesterday Thai stuck a comment over there in the jungle (by the way, Doctor John, in all fairness, you should check out the jungle, Sudden Debt (( so you can thank ME the way I thank Thai for opening up the doors on blogouniverse)). A link to a piece of innuendo about the current financial situation. And last night, Thai gave us yet another piece, complete with photo.

... (not)computation... The light bulb flashes...

HEY, Thai has just woke up to the fact that it's spring outside !! The time of the year when the little birds are singing, the ducks are chasing after each other, you get the point. (The lyrical poets do this much better than I. I will stick down ANOTHER post by Will while Thai is gone... Well, when I WANT to, I can write poetry that is a LITTLE better than a pale copy of John Donne. If you're extra special good on this blog, maybe I will stick one of my lyric poems down. But you're going to have to make progress in patience before.)

Spring has a definite relation to the magiquest thing in the world.

And point of view, too..

The magiquest thing in the world from MY point of view, is that thing that is not a thing, that thing that is sometimes high, sometimes low, that thing that (sometimes) is so big that I can't hold it in my hand, and other times is so small that it is like a featherless baby sparrow, just demanding my crooning mothering. That thing that is a tangible link between me and my man, and without which we would not get or be together.

Pretty magic, huh ?? What did I say ? Magiquest.

Thought for the day

Structural Linguistics 101

Before you zap because this is dry, dusty stuff...

Have I got a scoop for you..

Today I'm going to do better than Wiki for you.

In a comment on Okie's last post, I told him that "it all hangs together".

That sounds mystico-religious to most of you, but verily I say unto you, it is NOT JUST mystico-religious. If you want to, you can also connect to this from a scientific point of you. It depends on... how much of an open mind you have. Let's see.

A little while ago I did a post on synchrony/diachrony, which are also concepts coming from structural linguistics. Recap : for any given phenomenon, you can look at it from two different points of view (at least, but I'm interested in these two here). Diachrony, which is a way of situating it in history. Like, for example examining the way fiat money has evolved OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME. And, you can look at fiat money NOW, in our society (synchrony). And I said that these points of view are like axes, an ordinate and an abcissa. In order to get the WHOLE picture, you have to examine phenomena from BOTH POINTS OF VIEW. Under these conditions... PERSPECTIVE opens up.

Next chapter.

We are going atomic in language.

Let's start with this little paradigm. (I'm looking at oral language, and at sounds.)

bet

bit

lit

lid

Take a look at the first two "words". Both of those words are different.

HOW DO YOU DETERMINE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE TWO WORDS ? (The first step in assigning meaning.)

The first sound and the last sound in each of those two words is the same. (I have held them constant, see, just like in a scientific experiment ?)

But there is a difference, and you can tell it.

The answer is in the question : the difference BETWEEN.

You are comparing those two words, and you hear the difference in that middle sound, the vowel sound. Bravo. You knew the DIFFERENCE. Almost automatically.

Let's go on to the second and third word.

Compare again. You hear the difference again. This time it is not in the vowel sound, but in the initial consonant. You were comparing again.

Third and fourth. You're picking up quickly. This time the DIFFERENCE is in the final consonant.

This is the atomic level. So that you can understand how you understand with the MOST ELEMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS, what are called phonemes in the jargon.

Now.... if I take away that little paradigm, constructed that way, how do you know which word is which, when you are listening, which word fits ?

You know it because you have the SYSTEM in your head, and you are constantly comparing the SOUND YOU HEAR (the one PRESENT) to all the other ABSENT sounds that are part of the system, but that are possible. And dink ? There are complicated rules that determine which sound fits where. Not all sounds are possible everywhere, but... you KNOW this. Without ever having learned it in a book either...

Pretty nifty, huh ? Just at the most elemental level, it is ALREADY ASTOUNDINGLY COMPLEX.

And you see that in order for you to be able to TELL THE DIFFERENCE, all the sounds are in relation, they are all OPPOSED to each other in a particular way. Without this opposition, YOU CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE, and what you hear is mumbo jumbo.

Let's go to the molecular level.

John drinks Coca Cola.

Mary drinks Coca Cola.

Mary sells Coca Cola.

Mary sells French bread.

Now.. that looks like what you saw at the atomic level, doesn't it ?

It is the most basic structure of all the Indo European languages : subject/verb/object.

With this basic structure, and with VARIATIONS on this structure, I CAN GENERATE ALL OF THE SENTENCES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Pretty nifty, huh ?

And I can even generate sentences like...

The cat ate the tree.. or

The car drank Coca Cola.

Pretty nifty too, huh ?

That's a big problem, those sentences...

For RATIONAL people. Perso, I think they're fun. And humbling..

So... ALL OF OUR SOCIAL STRUCTURES ARE BASED ON LANGUAGE...

I'll let YOU draw the conclusion...

(For you, Thai sweetie. You've been asking for this one for a while, right ? ;-) )