The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 51

Raymond Bondon, in Logique du social (translated by David and Gillian Silverman as The Logic of Social Action: An Introduction to Sociological a.n.a.lysis, London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), gives the subject a sociological perspective.

Cornel Popa, in Praxiologie si Logica (Praxiology and Logic, Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1984) deals with social action.

Authors such as D. Lewis, A. Salomaa, B.F. Chelas, R.C. Jeffrey, and Jaako Hintikka, whose contributions were reunited in a volume celebrating Stig Kanger, pay attention to semantic aspects and conditional values in many-valued propositional logics (cf.

Logical Theory and Semantic a.n.a.lysis, edited by Soren Stenlund, Dordrecht/Boston: Reidel, 1974).

The term culture originates in human practical experiences related to nature: cultivating land, breeding and rearing animals. By extension, culture (i.e., cultivating and breeding the mind) leads to the noun describing a way of life. In the late 18th century, Herder used the plural cultures to distinguish what was to become civilization. In 1883, Dilthey made the distinction between cultural sciences (Geisteswissenschaften, addressing the mind) and natural sciences. The objects of cultural sciences are man-made and the goal is understanding (Verstehen). For more information on the emergence and use of the term culture, see A.L. Kroeber and C. Kluckholm, Culture: a Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, in Peabody Museum Papers, XLVII, Harvard University Press, 1952.

Ramon Lull (Raymundus Lullus, 1235-1315) suggested a mechanical system of combining ideas, an alphabet (or repertory) and a calculus for generating all possible judgments. Called Ars Magna (The Great Art), his work attracted both ironic remarks and enthusiastic followers.

Athanasius Kircher, in Polygraphia nova et universalis ex combinatoria arte detecta (New and universal polygraphy discovered from the arts of combination, Rome, 1663), tried to introduce an arithmetic of logic.

George Delgarus, in Ars signorum (The art of signs, London, 1661), suggested a universal language of signs.

John Wilkins dealt with it as a secret language (1641, Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger, and 1668, An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language).

Lotfi Zadeh introduced fuzzy logic: a logic of vague though quantified relations among ent.i.ties and of non- clear-cut definitions (What is young? tall? bold? good?).

Felix Hausdorf/Paul Mongr. Sant 'Ilario. Gedanken aus der Landschaft Zarathustras. 1897. p. 7

W.B. Gallie (Peirce's Pragmatism, in Peirce and Pragmatism, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1952) noticed that Peirce, "in the Pragmaticism Papers, approaches the subject of vagueness from a number of different sides. He claims, for instance, that all our most deeply grounded and in practice indubitable beliefs are essentially vague" (cf. Peirce, 5.446). According to Peirce, vagueness is a question of representation, not a peculiarity of the object of the representation. He goes on to specify that the source of vagueness is the relation between the sign and the interpretant ("Indefiniteness in depth may be termed vagueness," cf. MSS 283, 141, 138-9). Additional commentary in Nadin, The Logic of Vagueness and the Category of Synechism, in The Monist, Special Issue: The Relevance of Charles Peirce, 63:3, July, 1980, pp. 351-363.

Richard Dawkins. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

-. The Extended Phenotype. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Elan Moritz, of the Inst.i.tute for Memetic Research, provides the historic and methodological background to the subject in Introduction to Memetic Science.

E.O. Wilson. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1975.

Mihai Nadin. Mind-Antic.i.p.ation and Chaos (from the series Milestones in Thought and Discovery). Stuttgart/Zurich: Belser Presse. 1991.

"Minds exist only in relation to other minds" p. 4. The book was based on a lecture delivered in January,1989 at Ohio State University.

Language as Mediating Mechanism

Richard Dawkins. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

-. The Extended Phenotype. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Elan Moritz, of the Inst.i.tute for Memetic Research, provides the historic and methodological background to the subject in Introduction to Memetic Science., a Webtext.

E.O. Wilson. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1975.

Mediation: a powerful philosophic notion reflecting interest in the many ways in which something different from what we want to know, understand, do, or act upon intercedes between the object of our interest, action, or thought.

G.W. Hegel. Hegels Werke, vollstndige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten, vols. I-XIX. Berlin. 1832-1845, 1887

The dialectics of mediation includes a non-mediated mode, generated by the suppression of mediation, leading to the Thing-in-itself: "Dieses Sein ist daher eine Sache, die an und fr sich ist die Objektivitt" (vol. V, p. 171) (This being is, henceforth, a thing in itself and for itself, it is objectivity.) Everything else is mediated.

In all post-Hegelian developments-right wing (Hinrichs, Goeschel, Gabler), left-wing (Ruge, Feuerback, Strauss), center (Bauer, Kstlin, Erdmann)-mediation is a major concept.

Emile Durkheim. De la Division du Travail Sociale. 9th ed. Paris: Presses Univrsitaires de France, 1973. (Translated as The Division of Labor in Society by W.D. Halls. New York: Free Press, 1984).

Michel Freyssenet. La Division Capitaliste du Travail. Paris: Savelli, 1977.

Elliot A. Krause. Division of Labor, A Political Perspective.

Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.

Gunnar Tornqvist, Editor. Division of Labour, Specialization, and Technical Change: Global, Regional, and Workplace Level. Malmo, Sweden: Liber, 1986.

Marcella Corsi. Division of Labour, Technical Change, and Economic Growth. Aldershot, Hants, U.K.: Avebury/Brookfield VT: Gower Publishing Co., 1991.

Leonard Bloomfield. Language. 1933. rpt. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 1964.

In this work, the author maintains that the division of labor, and with it the whole working of human society, is due to language.

Charles Sanders Peirce. "Anything that determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant becoming in turn a sign, and so on ad infinitum" (2.303). "Something which stands to somebody in some respect or capacity" (2.228).

Other sign definitions have been given: "In the language, reciprocal presuppositions are established between the expression (signifier) and the expressed (signified). The sign is the manifestation of these presuppositions," (A. J. Greimas and J. Courts, Semiotics and Language. An a.n.a.lytical Dictionary, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983, p. 296; translation of Smiotique. Dictionnaire Raisonn de la Thorie du Langage, Paris: Cla.s.sique Hachette, 1979).

According to L. Hjelmslev, the sign is the result of semiosis taking place at the time of the language act. Benveniste considers that the sign is representative of another thing, which it evokes as a subst.i.tute.

Herbert Marcuse. The One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.

Plato. Phaedrus, and The Seventh and Eighth Letters (translated from the Greek), with an introduction by Walter Hamilton.

Harmondsworth: Penguin Press, 1973.

Regarding cave paintings, see:

Mihai Nadin. Understanding prehistoric images in the post-historic age: a cognitive project, in Semiotica, 100:2-4, 1994. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 387-405 B.

Campbell. Humankind Emerging. Toronto: Little, Brown & Co.,1985.

W. Davis. The origins of image making, in Current Anthropology, 27 (1986). pp. 193-215.

Luigi Bottin. Contributi della Tradizione Greco-Latina e Arabo-Latina al Testo della Rhetorica di Aristotele. Padova: Antenore, 1977.

Marc Fumaroli. L'Age de l'loquence: Rhtorique et 'Res Literaria' de la Renaissance au Seuil de l'poque Cla.s.sique.

Geneva: Droz and Paris: Champion, 1980.

William M.A. Grimaldi. Aristotle, Rhetoric: A Commentary. New York: Fordham University Press, 1980- 1988.

Rhetoric is generally seen as the ability to persuade. Using many kinds of signs (language, images, sounds, gestures, etc.), rhetoric is connected to the pragmatic context. In ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in China and India, rhetoric was considered an art and practiced for its own sake. Some consider rhetoric as one of the sources of semiotics (together with logic, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language (cf. Tzvetan Todorov, Thorie du Symbole, Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1977). Gestures are a part of rhetoric. Quintillian, in De inst.i.tutione oratoria, dealt with the lex gestus (law of gesture). In the Renaissance, the code of gesture was studied in detail. In our days of illiterate rhetoric based on stereotypes and increasingly compressed messages, gestures gain a special status indicative of the power of non-literacy-based ceremonies. The rhetoric of advertis.e.m.e.nt pervades human interaction.

George Boole (1815-1864) conceived of a logical calculus, in An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on which are founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities (London, 1854), which eventually became the basis for digital computation.

Howard Rheingold.Virtual Reality. New York: Summit Books, 1991.

Rheingold offers a description that can subst.i.tute for a definition: "Imagine a wraparound television with programs, including three-dimensional sound, and solid objects that you can pick up and manipulate, even feel with your fingers and hands.