Re: Exploding Evidence of God's Hand?
Asst Prof Clarence F Sills Jr (sills@nadn.navy.mil)
Mon, 2 Oct 1995 09:22:35 -0400 (EDT)Jim, the reason it is "unreasonable" to assume that ANY cultural
development is "natural" is that the logic of culture is triadic, not
dyadic. I refer you to the discussion of Walker Percy in Lost in the
Cosmos, the section entitled "Semiotic Intermezzo." Apparently this
goes over a lot of people's heads, but the issue is not that
complicated. "Explanation" (the redescription of something we hope to
understand in terms we think we already understand) can be "dyadic"
(bi-valued) up to the level of human behavior. The most obvious version
of this is the "cause-effect" reasoning so useful in scientific
practice. When a human addresses a MESSAGE to another human, it is no
longer possible, EVEN IN THEORY, to reduce the transaction into dyadic
terms. A triadic pattern is necessary. Percy, who was trained as a
scientist and is friendly to
science in general, wrote a number of articles and delivered a number of
lectures addressing the characteristic problems which emerge when this
distinction (between dyadic and triadic interactions) is ignored.
"Naturalistic" explanation is naively dyadic, and seeks to
"reduce" dyadic to triadic or (more typically) it simply fails to see
what is at issue. I strongly urge that anyone genuinely interested in
moving past the stalemate this argument (and all such arguments) has
produced read and consider Percy's text. "In the beginning was the Word."