0276 Why do I mention this post-truth business?

From the 1950s until 1989, Juri Lotman (1922-1993) is a professor in a Soviet Socialist academic system.  He does not cross the line while… at the same time… tunnels a way under the line that cannot be crossed.

Of course, it is funny to describe academic tunneling, but the further that Lotman digs into a scientific explanation for human conditions, the closer Lotman gets to popping up on the other side of the Marxist line.

0277 Here is a picture of the tunnel.

0278 If structuralism is a thing, then its matter is semiology and its form is aesthetics.

Why is that?

The recognition of structure… of a system… is aesthetic.  This is how humans work, in our current Lebenswelt.  We recognize structure_3b and apply a label_1b.  That label is validated when it gets applied over and over again to similar structures.  For example, every literary text_2bf is different.  However, every literary text belongs to a genre_3b.  

0279 The tunnel?

Aesthetics as form entangles cultural studies as matter.

The thing part of this confounding is the topic of sections one and two of the article (1 and 2).  At this point, reviewing the first two sections of the article under examination may prove valuable.  This examination adds value to the authors’ text.

0280 Lotman starts as a traditional literary historian, working in Moscow, the hub of a centralized empire that purports to embody Marxist theory.  Authorities are hell bent on changing material arrangements.  They anticipate changes in the human condition, according to their Marxist overlay of civilizational history itself (the model overlaying the noumenon).

0281 Lotman becomes a literary structuralist (1960s), leading the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics (er… Semiology) and initiating the University of Tartu Summer School.  During this time, the School produces a remarkable langue(three-level interscope) that culminates in the parole of a semiological_3a structuralist_3b model_2c.

0282 The examiner has already derived the following diagram of the fundament interscope.

0283 Theoretically (A), the perspective-level actuality_2c should serve as a science-friendly model that can overlay the noumenon of literature within the Slavic civilization.

But, that does not occur.

Instead, the so-called “Prague Spring”, nudges (B) the network of researchers (who are increasingly touching base with Lotman, whose voluminous correspondences currently reside at the Lotman Archives in Estonia) towards a different opportunity.

0284 What do I mean by that?

First, let me discuss the “should” (A).

Note how the three-level interscope depicted above is sustained by a Saussurean_3a content-level actuality_2a, arising from the potential of ‘the signifier and the signified’_1a.

0285 The actuality_2a itself exhibits material causation.  That means that the substance, an arbitrary relation, is real.

Of course, this makes no sense, because how can an arbitrary relation be adaptive?

Okay, that is another story.  See Razie Mah’s e-book, The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.

0286 The normal context_3a and the actuality_3af involves formal causes.  Surely, if parole_2af manifests as a system of differences, then langue_2am must as well.

0287 Efficient causes couple actuality_2a and potential_1a.  The potential_1a reminds me of the potential that underlies language_2am on the content-level of the derivative interscope.  Meaning_1a?  What is it_1a?  Well, it must involve the interplay between signified and signifier_1a in the human mind.

0288 Here, I can harken back to human evolutionary history, by claiming that this interplay differs between implicit and explicit abstraction.  Implicit abstraction is the sole province of hand- and hand-speech talk, belonging to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Explicit abstraction is an opportunity available for speech-alone talk, belonging to our current Lebenswelt.

The actualization of langue_2am and parole_2af from the potential of ‘signified [&] signifier’_1a serves as an example of explicit abstraction.

See Razie Mah’s e-book, A Primer on Implicit and Explicit Abstraction, available at smashwords and other e-book venues. 

0289 Doesn’t this claim sound like a huge research project?

0290 Efficient causes work in alignment with final causation.  

Consider the following category-based nested form: A mechanical decoding and encoding process_3a brings the actuality of {neural networks corresponding to three-level interscopes (langue_2am) substantiating vocal utterances (parole_2af)} into relation with the potential of positive and negative feedback loops_1a.

0291 Compare the efficient causalities involved in the actuality_2a, {neural network_2am [substantiates] vocal utterance_2af}, emerging from and situating the potential_1a of the final causalities inherent in the following two statements.

The signifier_1a associates to parole_2af, the spoken word.

The signified_1a goes with langue_2am, which turns out to be a purely relational structure, such as a three-level interscope.

0292 On the semiological or content level, langue_2am is like an impression_2am that substantiates a parole_2af, a spoken word_2af.  Consequently, the fundament interscope is founded in the same way that a person generates a written text.  One must take a pen and inscribe the spoken word_2af.  So, the semiological level goes with what I think_2am and what I say_2af… er… write_2af.

0293 On the structural or situation level, inscription_2af has the potential of following (and thus revealing) the laws of a semiological system_1b (or “genre_3b“).  Language_2bm [substantiates] a literary text_2bf (a new signifier, one worth showing to others).  So, the structural level recapitulates what I say_2af as a literary text_2bf.

0294 The words in my literary text_2b carry the potential to be regarded as phenomena of the text as a noumenon_1c.  This potential_1c introduces the unfolded empirio-schematic judgment as the perspective level of the fundament interscope.

0295 Overall, this is what took place and would have continued uninterrupted (A), if it were not for the so-called “Prague spring” (B).

0296 The so-called “Prague spring” (B) occurs in the middle of the first iteration of the TMS.

1968 runs into a disturbance, a black swan event, and…

0297 …the path changes, from a movement that would have mimicked triumphalist science to something far more confounding.

0298 Remember, the perspective level of the fundament three-level interscope presents a model (from the empirio-schematic judgment) that should overlay the noumenon (in the Positivist’s judgment).

0299 The perspective-level actuality_2c (what ought to be, Positivist’s judgment) should have proceeded to overlay the noumenon_1a (what is, Positivist’s judgment), but that would produce an obvious discrepancy with the Marxist theory of the substantiation of human conditions by material arrangements.

0300 Instead (C), the perspective-level model_2c enters the content level of a new derivative interscope, that will eventually constellate the claim.

Furthermore (D), the entangled matter gets confounded with the contiguities in a two level interscope that coheres to Lotman’s move to include cultural studies (described in section six (6)), in a way that does not make a claim contradicting regime sustaining Marxist models.

0301 Let me dwell on the instead (C).

The entrance follows the path of the interventional-sign relation, which is discussed in Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog for October, 2023.

0302 Here is a diagram.

0303 In the triadic structure of a sign-relation, a sign-vehicle (SV) stands for a sign-object (SO) in regards to a sign-interpretant (SI).

This interventional sign relation crosses from the perspective-level of the fundament interscope to the content-level of the derivative interscope.

It also passes from the empirio-schematic judgment to the Positivist’s judgment.

0304 A semiological_2a structuralist_2b model_2c (SV_i) stands for the dyad, {literary text as form_2af (SO_i) [entangles] language as matter_2am} in regards to the TMS positivist intellect_3a operating on the potential of ‘meaning’_1a (SI_i).

0305 In short, Lotman and his collaborators make an intuitive leap from the language of the mother-tongue, the subject matter for semiology and structuralism, to a language of meaning, presence and message that will… um… act as matterthat substantiates forms that are relevant to… hmmm… the entangled claim.

0306 Now, I proceed to the derivative interscope.

0307 The content level deals with semasiological issues.  Given the words of a literary text_2af, how do we discuss_2amthese words_2af by way of meaning_1a?

Or should I ask, “Given a signifier_2af, then what is the proper signification_2am?”

The literary text as semiological structuralist form_2af [presents signifiers that entangle] positivist language as matter_2am.

Given a positivist language as matter_2am, then what corresponds to its meaning_1a?

0308 Does the correspondence reflect the nature of explicit abstraction?

Does the model-regarded parole_2af of the literary text_2af entangle a language_2am, displaying the attributes of a langue_2am emerging from (and situating) the possibility of ‘positivist meaning’_1a?

Given the parole_2af of a literary text_2af, what does the entangled language_2am corresponding to langue_2am suggest by way of meaning_1a?

0309 What type of confounding is this?

The single form is in red.  The originating matter is language_2bm (fundament).  The entangled matter is language_2am(derivative).

0310 The onamasiological question concerns whether there is a spoken parole corresponding to a particular (and perhaps, yet to be fully articulated) positivist langue.

When applied to the situation-level of the derivative interscope, the onamasiological question transforms into a cultural query, asking “Is there a presence_1b to attach to the meaning_1a underlying the content-level positivist langauge_2am?”

0311 Say what?

Oh my.  I now proceed step by step.

0312 Step one, the literary text_2af (the SO_i for the semiological_2a structuralist_2b model_2c as SV_i) entangles an explicit abstraction_2am consisting of a label_2am emerging from (and situating) a positivist_3a meaning_1a.

In this entanglement, the fundament is confounded with the derivative.

0313 In step two, I compare the two content-level actualities.

In the fundament interscope, langue_2am (more or less actualizing a signified_1a) [substantiates] parole_2af (more or less serving as a signifier_1a).

In the derivative interscope, the literary text_2af, that was originally substantiated by the language_2bm of the mother tongue, now serves as the form_2af  (perhaps, as a semiological_2a structuralist_2b model_2c substituting for the literary text_2bf) entangling an expert language_2am that emerges from and situates the possibility of ‘positivist_3a meaning’_1a.

0314 This directly calls to mind the semasiological question, “Given a spoken word_2am, then what is its meaning_1a?”

In other words, what is the meaning_1a (associated to signifier_1a) of the explicit abstraction_2am (associated to parole_2af) in the derivative interscope?

0315 For the fundament, definition is regarded as implicit for the originating language_2bm, specified by a text’s {langue_2am [substantiates] parole_2af}.

For the derivative, definition must be explicit, leading to the semasiological question.  An explicit abstraction_2am (a label, parallel to parole_2af) is entertained (or entangled).  However, the positivist meaning_1a, which may serve as a metaphorical signifier_1a for the explicit label_2am resides in the domain of possibility₁. An explicit abstraction_2amemerges from (and situates) the potential of positivist meaning_1a in the normal context of the TMS intellect_3a.

0316 Step three, the derivative’s explicit abstraction_2am manifests as a label_2am arising (like a parole_2af) from the potential of ‘positivist_3a meaning’_1a (serving as a metaphorical signifier_1a).  The label_2am (the fundament’s parole_2afserves as a metaphor) emerges from a meaning_1a (the fundament’s signifier_1a serves as a metaphor) and its signified_1acarries the potential of ‘exhibiting explicit positivist_3a meaning’_1a (and the fundament’s signified_1a serves as a metaphor).

0317 In short, the entangled language_2am seems like parole_2af.

Plus, positivist meaning_1a seems like a signifier_1a.

The language_2am of the explicit abstraction_2am (the metaphorical parole_2af) appears to do justice to the TMS positivist intellect_3a and the potential of ‘meaning’_1a (the metaphorical signifier_1a).

How about a diagram of four elements of the derivative interscope?

0318 So far, step three covers the content-level elements.

0319 Once again, Saussure’s langue_2am (for the fundament interscope) also serves as a metaphor for the literary text_2af(for the derivative interscope).  The literary text_2af (perhaps, now a semiological_2a structuralist_2b model_2c substituting for the literary text_2bf) is formally contextualized by the TMS positivist intellect_3a and is alchemically enclosed in the scholar’s inquiry as a metaphorical langue_1am, corresponding to the possibility of a ‘signified’_1a.

Saussure’s parole_2af serves as a metaphor for the language_2am that is entangled by the literary text_2af.  This metaphorical parole_2am is both finally and efficiently related to the potential of a ‘positivist_3a signifier’_1a“ by way of definition₃.

Of course, this sounds a little goofy, since an explicit abstraction_2am emerges from a metaphorical signifier_1a, and I am not sure what the corresponding ‘signified’₁ might be.

0320 For the fundament interscope, I know that langue_2am [substantiates] parole_2af.

For the derivative interscope, I suspect that the literary text (semiological structuralist model)_2af as metaphorical langue_2am [now appears to substantiate] a language_2am as a metaphorical parole_2af, offering an explicit label_2amallowing a positivist signifier to constellate_1a.

Does that imply that the label_2am (metaphorical parole_2af, associated to signifier_1a) precedes its meaning_1a(metaphorical langue_2am, associated to signified_1a)?

That is a very good question.

0321 In step four, I ask, “If the explicit abstraction_2am that labels a positivist meaning_1a constellates the potential of ‘a signifier’_1a, then what is the corresponding ‘signified₁‘?”

It cannot be the literary text_2af, because the literary text_2af is the metaphorical langue_2am that corresponds to… um… the interventional sign-object (SO_i) of the structuralist_3a semiological_2a model_2c (SV_i).

If that is the case, then the corresponding signified₁ may be something_1b that acknowledges the presence of the entangled language_2am.  Plus, it_1b should show up on the situation level.

0322 Ah, I have arrived at the situation level.

If the onomasiological question concerns whether there is a spoken parole_2af corresponding to a particular langue_2am, then how does the question apply to a situation where the presence of a signifier_1a, underlying an explicit abstraction_2am, requires a corresponding situation-located signified_1b?

Given the presence_1b of a metaphorical signifier_1a, then what technical term might label that presence_1b as a signified_1b?

Would such a signified_1b support a referent_2b as the situation-level actuality_2b that virtually situates the entangled explicit abstraction_2am?

0323 So maybe, the onamosiological question may be reframed by the situation-level of the derivative interscope.

Does the presence_1b of a label_2am associated to the entangled language_2am of positivist signifiers_1a in the derivative interscope serve as a signified_1b that is situated by cognition_2am, as a situation-level actuality_2b in the normal context of cultural studies_3b?

0324 Well, if that reframed question sounds plausible, then I can offer the following conclusions.

The fundament interscope operates as an empirio-schematic description of what is going on in any particular literary text.  What is going on when an author writes and a reader reads entails implicit abstraction, for the most part.  In other words, the writer conveys a text and the reader uses the same text in order to fill in the elements of a purely relational structure associated with langue.

This implicit process is the subject matter for semiology_3a and structuralism_3b.  These two fields of inquiry culminate ina judgment, actualized as a model_2c.

The derivative interscope serves as a Positivist description of what is going on when writing and reading a particular literary text.  This description uses explicit labels_2am, bearing the qualities of a metaphorical parole_2af (that is, of a positivist signifier_1a), that will be virtually situated by a cultural thing_2b.  In short, an explicit abstraction_2am (SV_s) broadly stands for a cultural thing_2b (SO_s) in regards to cultural studies_3b operating on the potential of a signified_1b(virtually situating a positivist signifier_1a)’ (SI_s).

0325 Thus, the situation level of the derivative wrestles with onomasiological issues in a strange manner.

Given a signified_1b, then what is the name of the corresponding referent_2b?

Does cognition_2bm, as a situation-level actuality_2b in the normal context of cultural studies_3b, virtually situate the presence_1b of a label_2am associated to the entangled language_2am of positivist signifiers_1a in the derivative interscope?

0326 {Cognition as matter_2bm [substantiates] social and cultural interaction as form_2bf} situates the presence_1b of positivist_3a meaning_1a in the normal context of cultural studies_3b.

0327 May I further transform the onomasiological question and ask, “Is the situation-level actuality of cognition_2bmand social interaction_2bf  the referent of an explicit abstraction_2am (or label_2am) that is entangled by a literary text_2af?”

The answer is, “Yeah, just watch what people do after they read a particular text.”

Do actions speak louder than words?

Hmmm.

0329 The story does not stop there.

Notably, this following two-level interscope does not have a perspective level.  A perspective is required to complete a langue, a three-level interscope.

Here is a picture of what I am talking about.

0330 What fills the void of the perspective level?

Before 1989, Lotman has a ready-at-hand perspective level that satisfies any Soviet authority who may be asking.

Who is going to argue with the following?

Certainly not a poorly educated rube with a rubber stamp.

0331 What does this imply?

Those summer schools in Estonia must have been amazing.

On the one hand, international and intellectual “students” are free to play, because the perspective level is missing.  Discourse consists of sensible construction, because the missing perspective level is… um… somehow benevolent.

Benevolent?

No rubber-stamper is going to argue with the prior figure.

0332 Marxism is the ideological currency of the USSR before 1989.  The value of that currency begins to decline after 1968.  But that does not mean… you know… that one can directly deceive the ones who are charged with supervision of intellectual giants like Juri Lotman and his cohorts.

The mantra is “appease, not deceive”.

0333 At the same time, the missing perspective level is benevolent in a complete different fashion.

The gathering scholars study a civilization that converts to Christianity through the charisma of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and other saints (depending on the nation), in the 800s AD.  Cyril translates the Bible.  The Cyrillic alphabet (the raw material of the written words under investigation) is forged at this time.

0334 Most importantly, these missionaries hail from Byzantium.  They grow up on the Greek side of the formerly “Roman Empire”.  They are familiar with Aristotle.

In contrast, in the West, familiarity with Aristotle is… um… lost… then regained.  In the 600s, Boethius, who intends to translate classical Greek philosophy into Latin, croaks.  Aristotle does not get translated into Latin.  In the 1200s, the Crusaders bring Greek and Arabic texts from the Levant.  Aristotle finally gets translated and Saint Thomas Aquinas “baptizes” Aristotle’s philosophy, amidst controversy.

0335 Differences between Slavic and Western civilizations show up in subtle ways.  Hylomorphic structures occupy almost every slot for actuality in the above figures.  Westerners would put a single word into each slot.  They would not ideate the hylomorphe that expresses Peirce’s category of secondness.

0336 Appease.

Don’t deceive.

Confound.

Don’t confront.

There is a rubber-stamper who needs answers to questions like, “Comrade, does your theory reveal how material arrangements [substantiate] humans conditions_2c?”

0337 Sections seven and eight (7 & 8) offer three ideations that dwell within the ambiguity depicted above.

Section seven (7) first discusses Poldmae’s theory of verse.

0338 Jaak Poldmae (1942-1979) considers poetry in the Slavic and German civilizations.  To me, it looks like his interest in metrics goes with the signifier and his interest in poetics associates to the signified.  Once these substitutions are made, the following derivative interscope is readily completed from the authors’ brief description of verse theory.

0339 While Poldmae may come unnervingly close to the old formalist habit of finding the literary devices, the above interscope is not a mere collection of mechanisms.  Verse theory is an organic whole.  Plus, the perspective-level category-based nested form looks like a clone of Marxist theory.

0340 To me, this begs the question, asking, “What happened to the content and situation levels of Marxist theory?”

Did they somehow deplete themselves?

Plus, the rubberstamper is uncharacteristically uninterested, because Poldmae asserts that poetry_2c somehow corresponds to… or reveals… or depicts… the human condition_2c.

Isn’t that what any Slav already appreciates?

0341 Section seven (7) next discusses the phenomenon… er… model substituting for the noumenon (?)… of intertextuality.  Intertextuality delocalizes the poet, because the poet produces a text in relation to other (prior) texts.  In a sense, a contemporary poet joins the conversation of other poets.  The contemporary poet responds to the poetics and the metrics of… what?… civilization, past and present?

0342 Uh oh, remember Saints Cyril and Methodius?

Where did they come from?

The Byzantine civilization is a fusion of Greek and Jewish civilizations, made possible by the Christianization of the Roman Empire.

0343 Unlike America, Russia is not made of new cloth.  The Slavic civilization is cut from old cloth, over and over again, in a theodrama that the American Empire simply wants to ignore.

Oh, I should say, “the USSA”?

0344 The term “intertextuality” is a beautiful Platonic term, offered by Julie Kristeva, a French linguist, that serves to cover over the perspective-level actuality of the following three-level interscope, in such a manner as to comport with the actuality_2c of Marxist theory_3c.

0345 To appreciate the rhizomic character of intertextuality, an inquirer may consider Razie Mah’s blog for August 2025, titled Looking at Slavoj Zizek’s Book (2024) “Christian Atheism”.

Zizek is a philosopher, not a poet, but he sounds like a poet some of the time.  He writes like a poet, even though he doesn’t know it.  Only a poet would make “Christ”, the adjective, and our human condition, the noun.  Isn’t that what the story of the Garden of Eden tells us?  We have been kicked out of the Garden because we can now challenge God Himself.  Now, outside of His Domain, we are “a-” (“without”) “-theists” (“God”).

Does Zizek suggest that Christian Atheism can stand in for… material arrangements_2c?

0346 As if to confirm, Zizek concludes with a reflection on Alexandr Blok’s poem, The Twelve, written in 1918, depicting Christ as a holy ghost leading twelve Red Guards on their patrol of revolutionary Petrograd.   Of course, Soviet authorities later replaced the word, “Christ”, with “sun”, because they were too embarrassed to substitute in “material arrangements”.

0347 Zizek aside, intertextuality and verse theory both cohere to the reality of Lotman’s and Jakobson’s legacy.  Plus, they do not cross the line that Lotman’s derivative interscope tunnels under.

0010 Okay, so there is a off-chance that there is wisdom… or… superstitious nonsense… that is independent of science, comes from the realm of theology, appears in the mirror of science and provides a weirdly compelling impression.  After all, the start of the Developed Neolithic (projected into the mirror of theology) enhances the impressiveness of Genesis 1:30 (projected into the mirror of science).  How can it be superstitious nonsense, when the Genesis verse sounds like a sign of the corresponding evolutionary period?

0011 With this impressiveness in mind, I reiterate the following.

Currently, the biological sciences present all evolution as continuous developments in time, although there are moments of radical… um… “re-organization”, hence the theory of punctuated equilibrium.  When the evolutionary sciences cast their image of human evolution into the mirror, the theologian sees a picture that does not quite sync with the wild change of… um… “genre” that occurs the moment after God wraps up the Creation Story, by telling humans that they should give food to the animals (Genesis 1:30).

So, the question arises, “Is there a scientific proposal that would be in sync with this change in genre?

Yes, there is.  It is called the hypothesis of the first singularity.

0012 Both human evolution and chapters one through three of Genesis portray two phases.

0013 Razie Mah offers three scientific masterworks that project well in the mirror of theology.

The first work is titled, The Human Niche.  The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.  This e-book covers the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

The second work is titled, An Archaeology of the Fall.  It dramatizes the scientific discovery of the first singularity.  But, for those who prefer not to dally in fiction, there is The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.  In the series, “Crystallizations of the Fall”, this essay is paired with Original Sin and Original Death: Romans 5:12-19.  

The third work is titled, How To Define the Word “Religion”.  The accompanying course includes ten primers, starting with A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.  This course concerns our current Lebenswelt.  It introduces the category-based nested form, which encompasses three logics, corresponding to firstness, secondness and thirdness.  Thirdness brings secondness into relation with firstness.

Yes, these terms come from the philosophy of Charles Peirce.  The logic of firstness is inclusive and allows contradictions.  The logic of secondness is where the logics of contradiction and non-contradiction apply.  The logics of thirdness are exclusion, complement and alignment.

0014 In sum, human evolution comes with a twist.

That twist is mirrored in the sudden shift of genres in the first two chapter of Genesis.

0015 Our current Lebenswelt starts with the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

Do the stories of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2.4 on) associate to the events early in the “history” of the Ubaid?

“History”?

The term, “history”, typically refers to written documentation that serves as evidence of trends and events.

Perhaps, I can qualify stories about trends and events of times before the invention of writing in the Uruk period of southern Mesopotamia as “pre-history”.

0016 Arnold prefers the term, “mytho-history”.

0017 Yet, even here, science adds to the picture.

No one in the world would know about the mythic origin stories of the ancient Near East were it not for intrepid archaeologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (who, ironically, were funded by wealthy people interested in the origins of civilization, of the Bible, of the Iliad and Odyssey, and so on).  One could say that our knowledge of these origin stories is “fragmentary”, because it is read off of fragments of cuneiform-bearing clay tablets that were fired into bricks when royal libraries burned, thousands of years before the modern age.

Some tablets date over two-thousand years before Socrates.

Indeed, the start of our current Lebenswelt is nominally set at 7824 years ago at 0 U0′ (Ubaid Zero-Prime).  The Uruk invented writing around 1800 U0′.  The Sumerian civilization officially starts around 2800 U0′.  Christ lives around 5800 U0′.  Our year is nominally 7824 U0′, but maybe astrologers who hear about the hypothesis of the first singularity can cast for an appropriate celestial inauguration marking the start of the Ubaid, the first culture to practice speech-alone talk.

0018 The list of mythic origin stories of the ancient Near East and Egypt, is not long.  Arnold goes through the trouble of naming them and identifying them with Sumerian, Akkadian and Egyptian sources.  As it turns out, both the Creation Story and the Primeval History share the same genre of this “literature of the ancient Near East”.

Here is a picture of reflections in the mirrors of science and theology.

Remember that the theologian sees what science projects into the mirror of theology and the scientist sees what theology projects into the mirror of science.

Do I have that correctly?

Does the mirror of theology stand in the domain of theology?

Does science project into the mirror of theology?

Does the mirror of science stand in the domain of science?

Does theology project into the mirror of science?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Now, where was I?

0019 During the past two centuries, the early stories of Genesis are liberated from a literal reading.  These tales do not explicitly reveal a beginning.  Rather, they portray the beginning of some sort of revelation.  If the Creation Story and Primeval History exhibit not only the style, but some of the content, of the excavated written origin stories of the ancient Near East, then some conclude that the Genesis text derives from these even more ancient written sources.

But, that is not the case.  One cannot confidently claim that the living oral traditions that give rise to the written Genesis text in, say 5200 U0′, are derived from a literary tradition among elites that was written, say as early as 2800 U0′.  No, the style and material are so entangled, that the family oral tradition and the elite written traditions, must have been already established by the time of Ur III.  Ur III is the last flowering of the Sumerian civilization.  After that, the Sumerian language is dead.  It is no longer a living language.

Terah leaves Ur of the Chaldeans.

And Abram leaves his father, Terah, in the land that his kin lived in for so many generations.

0020 A daring exposition of the implications of these two reflections is found in chapter 13C of An Archaeology of the Fall (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

Here is another example of the strange double-reflection between the hypothesis of the first singularity and the stories of Adam and Eve.  The infilling of the Persian Gulf occurs during the Wet Neolithic.

0021 One scholar proposes that the correspondences between Genesis and written origin stories of the ancient Near Eastare due to myth-making.  Myth-making produces certain literary characteristics, such as ascribing personality to nature, describing the world phenomenologically, rather than analytically, and a lack of interest in the linearity that we attribute to modern history and historiography.  Arnold adds one other literary feature to Oswalt’s list.  Arnold adds “the etiological dimension”.

0022 Etiology?

Etiology is the study of the world today in terms of what happened long ago.

The Ubaid, the Uruk and the Sumerian Dynastic have no interest in describing the world in a fashion that is acceptable to modern historians.  Why?  There are no modern historians.  Instead, there are people who are dealing with cycles of civilization that are really spirals of unconstrained social complexity.  These folks are caught in the tourbillion and are holding on for dear life.

0023 Indeed, if history is like matter, and myth is like form, the Arnold’s “etiological dimension” is the contiguity between real events as they would be recorded by a modern historian and the mythic telling of events from long ago that explain why the world is the way it is today.

Here is a picture.

0024 Indeed, Arnold calls the etiological dimension an “ideological substance”.

0025 Now, let me apply Oswalt’s and Arnold’s myth-making hypothesis to the thing that both Genesis and the written stories of the ancient Near East have in common.

0026 What is the thing?

The esse_ce, prehistory [etiology], consists of events corresponding to the emergence of unconstrained social complexity in a speech-alone talking culture.  It just happens that the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the first culture on Earth to practice speech-alone talk.  At the time, all other cultures practice hand-speech talk.  Soon, cultures adjacent to the Ubaidwill drop the hand-component of their hand-speech talk in order to imitate their civilizing brethren.  But, they will not be able to catch up in social complexity for thousands of years.

The essence, [etiology] ancient myth, consists of stories in oral, then later, written traditions.  The ideological substance that binds the matter of prehistory to the form of ancient myth, cannot be anything like the modern historian’s pretensions that history proceeds linearly.  In fact, if one looks at a recitation of events in modern times, one finds that the recitation does not grant the same insights as (even) the literature of the day, which wrestles with past, present and future.

Perhaps, that is why modern histories can be so boring.

0027 The question arises, “How do we understand this thing?”

In the 7750s, theologian William F. Albright makes an attempt.  He places the thing₂ into the normal context of evolution₃operating on the potential of phases of human reason₁.

Here is a diagram.

0027 Albright suggests that the thing belongs to the first of three phases: (1) the proto-logical, (2) the empirical and (3) the formally logical.

0028 Of course, seventy years later, scholars chuckle, but there is a doom to this first guess.

0029 By way of formal logic, we know that there are phases of human reason.

By way of the empirical, we know that each phase supports its own actuality₂, its own “thing”.

By way of the proto-logical, we all know that each phase is decreed by the gods. 

3, 2, 1 then 0?

0030 For moderns, matter is more like history.  Form is more like knowledge.  The contiguity is more like [explanation].

For those who live before the formalization of logic, matter is still like history, but flavored with the spice of fate.  Surely, fate is empirical.  Form is still like knowledge, but containing a degree of moralization that moderns are not accustomed to.  Surely, moral strength and weakness allows one to act wisely, rather than foolishly.

For those who live before the empirical phase, matter is all about fate and form is all about heroic strengths and weaknesses, along with wisdom and foolishness.

0031 That brings me to the doom of Albright’s initial guess.

If one tracks these phases back from say, the writing of the Bible (where formal logic is apparent in later writings), to the oral histories of Moses (where the law is written in a fashion that does not sound formally logical, but exhibits a certain empiricism), to the stories of Abraham and earlier, all the way to the mythic Adam and Eve (where each figure lives out a theological drama), there is one more story left.

Yes, it is the Creation Story.

0032 The Creation Story may tell of the construction of the tent of the heavens and the earth.  But, in terms of where Albright’s initial guess ends, the Creation Story is what stands before the manufacture of Adam and Eve in the Primeval History.

The Creation Story stands at 0, the null.

0033 Albright imagines that civilizational development is the same as human evolution.

It is not.

So, his guess is doomed.

Doomed to flower into another guess.