09/30/26

Looking at Dr. D. Basak’s Book (2025) “Sumerian Mythology…” (Part 1 of 20)

0001 The full title of the book before me is Sumerian Mythology, Ancient Civilizations, and the Epic Search For Humanity’s Origins. That is a great title. This publication is the 13^th in a sequence of 37 books downloaded into the Amazon product line between the end of July, 2025, and the start of January, 2026. This literary output is staggering.

0002 Plus, it raises a question in my mind.

How does one identify an artificial intelligence (AI) produced article or book?

0003 Every sentence is well constructed. The text is highly segmented.

Are these clues?

0004 For example, the preface divides into A (5 subsections) and B (1 subsection). Each subsection contains two paragraphs. The preface also includes additional material, C, informing the reader what to expect, why this is essential reading, and how this qualifies for understanding.

Of course, this is standard textbook formatting.

However, the two clues, well-constructed sentences and high segmentation, still apply to the question at hand.

0005 Here are some other clue.

Flat statements contain no wordplay. The entire book consists of (1) direct statements and (2) a negative followed by an affirmative. No, I don’t mean to be negative, it is obviously better to be positive.

Fractal repetitions appear within the book’s organization. For example, the preface’s B subsection constitutes (what may be called) “Chapter 0”, which recapitulates the topics of the subsequent 15 chapters.

0006 Here is a picture of the list of chapters.

0007 Even though the text itself does not state that it is AI generated, one may raise the question and ponder the clues. These clues do not prove an answer, one way or another. But, they do raise another question.

If the work at hand is AI generated, then what does that imply?

0008 The postmodern scholastic will start with Aristotle’s hylomorphe, which is an exemplar of Peirce’s category of secondness. These concepts may be derived from Razie Mah’s e-books A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.

The book that I have before me is a thing. A thing is composed of two contiguous real elements. For Aristotle, the real elements are matter and form. The contiguity is placed in brackets for clear nomenclature.

0009 Here is a diagram.

0010 My question as to whether the book is AI generated and what that implies is called “an entanglement”. The following diagram is sort of confusing (something that an AI would avoid), because two expressions are linked in that they have the same form.

0011 In the hylomorphe, describing the book before me, the phrase, “AI generated”, is put into parenthesis because the question remains open. The form is a book.

In the second (upside down, so to speak) thing, the (AI generated) form entangles another matter. That “other matter” is a question about how the AI learns what it is going to say. Obviously, the answer will include the originating matter. One may wonder, “What else?”

A thing and its entanglement consists in two matters (one originating and one entangled) and one form. The technical name for this pair is “confounding”.

0012 With the above confounding in mind, I may consider Chapter 1.

Here is a list of the learning objectives.

0013 This list suggests that the search for humanity’s origins, involving the Sumerian civilization and its mythology, arises in response to the precarious and fertile landscape between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Annual floods from both rivers deliver silt. They can also deliver floods and destruction.

Excavations at locations in southern Mesopotamia find strata associated to floods during the Ubaid, Uruk, and Sumerian Dynastic archaeological periods.

0014 The irrigation systems control the rivers and redirect their water into productive agricultural uses. These systems require large scale labor under central (yet local) authority.

0015 To me, these conclusions are precisely what an AI program would deliver, after processing the literature (web-pages) cited at the end of the chapter. But, these are my suspicions. I have no proof.

0016 However, I can construct a confounding. There is one form, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. These rivers are subject to annual crests that deposit silt and may cause catastrophic flooding. The originating matter is the geology and climate of southern Mesopotamia during the Ubaid, Uruk and Early Sumerian Dynastic archaeological periods. The entangled matter is the mind of the Sumerian people, who celebrate the mythology that this book addresses.

0017 Here is a picture of the confounding.

0018 The confounding leaves this reader with a hypothesis. Sumerian mythology is an ideological component of an organizational imperative. The Sumerians must figure out how to organize to channel the rivers in order to irrigate their fields and to avoid catastrophic flooding.

In the process, the organizational imperative captures the Sumerian imagination.

09/29/26

Looking at Jess Beck, et al.’s Article (2026) “Changing the Landscape of Archaeological Publishing” (Part 2 of 20)

0019 Why am I concerned about AI?

0020 Well, I have another manuscript before me. The article appears in Current Anthropology 67(1), pages 155-180 (https://doi.org/10.1086/739789). The essay goes online in February, 2026, which is around the time when Dr. D. Basak finishes downloading his 37 books on various topics in human evolution, origins and archaeology. Surely, none of the 23 authors of the proclamation in Current Anthropology know about Dr. Basak’s efforts. Artificial intelligence is barely mentioned.

0021 If AI is not the future of publishing in Archaeology, then what is this lead essay about?

Young academics in the field of archaeology are getting crushed by their dual mandates of teaching and research.

0022 The article reminds me of when I heard about the beveled-rim bowl of Uruk. This standardized hastily spun pottery found popularity as towns were becoming cities. Some speculate that the bevel-rimmed bowl was used to measure rations of grains.

0023 The exploitation of labor by a religious and political system is not new. Archaeologists, of all experts, should know that. The irony of the contemporary complaints is startling. Postmodern academics are caught in the same dilemma as the laborers who dredged canals or cast bricks of mud and clay, thousands of years ago.

0024 The first sentence of the article reads like a manifesto. It is time to change academic publishing in archaeology.

If Dr. D. Basak has his way, it has already changed.

0025 The complaint is serious. Twenty-three authors sign the manifesto. These include Jess Beck (University of Ireland), Rowan Flad (Peabody Museum, Harvard University), Bridget Alex (Peabody Museum,), Ari Caramanic (Vanderbilt), Andre Costopoulis (University of Alberta), Nicholas Kawa (Ohio State University), Ben Marwick (University of Washington), Christina Warinner (Peabody Museum), Lewis Borck (University of Oklahoma), Kristina Douglas (Columbia Climate School), Alan Farahani (University of California, Los Angeles), Mackinley FitzPatrick (Peabody Museum), Lars Fogelin (University of Arizona), Laura F. Heath-Stout (Stanford), Scott R. Hutson (University of Kentucky), Matthew Magnani and Natalia Magnani (University of Maine), Ana Cecilia Mauricio (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Peru), Lisa Overholtzer (McGill University), Mattaus Rest (University of Fribourg), Daniel Scott Souleles (Copenhagen Business School) and Renata Verdun de Silva Carmo (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro).

I type each author’s name because each deserves a citation, adding to a number that… um… administrators might use in their promotion considerations.

0026 A citation is like a scoop of grain using a bevel-rimmed bowl.

Ironically, these academics are the winners in a “publications arms-race”. They teach. They write. They review. They work over forty hours per week. Are they investigating what they love to study? Do they feel that they are flourishing? Or are they keeping the canals clear of sediments and the dikes capable of withstanding turbulent waters?

0027 What are these academics hoping for?

They hope that their activities further their academic careers. Their rimmed-bowls of citations carry the promise of security. Some call it “tenure”. Some call it a false hope amidst economic turmoil.

0028 At the end of the introduction, the authors elevate three “tensions”.

First (1), the theory of publishing to communicate results to other scholars clashes with the practical incentives to please hiring, promotion and granting committees.

Second (2), on one hand, papers are supposed to be presentations of knowledge. On the other hand, papers are products that publishing corporations leverage for profit. There is a price that the author (or the author’s institution) must pay in order to establish open access. Otherwise, the article goes behind a paywall.

Third (3), the academic must teach classes (and perform other pedagogical duties), which are not as valued (by the aforementioned committees) as productive (paper publishing) research.

0029 To me, by the end of the introduction, these young upcoming academics in archaeology articulate the same complaints as the corvee laborers during the Uruk period, saying (more or less), “We are compelled to labor in an exploitative system that extracts profits without compensation, restricts research results from the public and biases stories about the human past.”

0030 Biased stories?

Yeah, look at chapter 1 of Dr. D. Basak’s book, which could serve as a textbook for any classroom on the subject of Sumerian mythology, ancient civilizations, and the epic quest for the origins of humanity.

09/8/26

Looking at Dr. D. Basak’s Book (2025) “Sumerian Mythology…” (Part 20 of 20)

0249 Chapters 11, 12 and 13 are devoted to debunking an agenda, called “the ancient astronaut theory”, proposed by various hucksters starting in the 1950s. This theory is multifaceted, since there is more than one proponent. Basak’s book says that the theory sweeps into public popularity because of the uncertainty following the second battle among the Enlightenment gods, the hot war among fraternal ideologies (1938-1945 AD) and leading into the third battle among the Enlightenment gods, the cold war among materialist ideologies (1945-1989).

0250 Against this interpretation, which explains this social phenomenon in terms of a model where material arrangements after the Second World War and the start of the Cold War [substantiate] conditions ripe for scam-ideas about ancient civilizations, I place a Lotmanist suggestion that the social popularity of the ancient astronaut theories is accounted for by the inadequacies of Marxist-interpretations of archaeological research into the Neolithic period.

0251 Here is a picture of the framework of the latest cycle of Neptune in Aries.

Highly successful excavations by Western archaeologists offer the promise of coming to terms with the rise of ancient civilizations, based on Marxists formulations.

The Marxist thing does not quite do the job, so alternate theories are proposed by hucksters anticipating an explanatory breakthrough. Basak’s exercise in debunking the very entertaining alternatives only replays the Marxist thing. Basak relies on the Marxist thing to debunk the alternatives that arose from the lack of explanatory power of the model that material arrangements [substantiate] human conditions.

Now, anthropologists are starting to realize that all those people who entertained the now-debunked “ancient astronaut theory” were not as stupid as the Marxist thing presumes.

0251 Once again, Razie Mah’s four part blog, Looking at Melinda A. Zeder’s Article (2025) “Unpacking the Neolithic”, offers insights. The results of anthropological research into the so-called “Neolithic” does not… indeed, cannot… account for another trend hidden within the data. That trend is towards unconstrained social complexity. Basak’s AI program (my speculation, of course) trains only on results and discussions produced by researchers interested in looking for the material arrangements that substantiate neolithic conditions. They cannot account for a change in semiotic practices. They cannot account for what Razie Mah’s hypothesis of the first singularity suggests.

0252 Therefore, why not postulate ancient astronauts?

Surely, ancient monumental constructions, such as pyramids, stone circles, and tracks of figures that can only be seen from the sky indicate ways that civilizing humans communicate with these alien beings.

0253 If this is not a cry for a semiotic accounting for the emergence of unconstrained social complexity, I don’t know what is.

0254 Chapter 14 offers a standard summary of the achievements of ancient Sumeria.

0255 Chapter 15 returns to the topic of the Sumerian creation myths. Once again, the text re-iterates established points. On one hand, the Marxist thing can provide an explanation that cannot be challenged because… well… it is supposedly just like a mathematical or mechanical natural science model. On the other hand, the Marxist thing cannot account for the emergence of unconstrained social complexity in southern Mesopotamia.

Lotman’s thing can.

0256 Here is a picture.

0257 Although this pair of options may appear stunningly simplistic, the ancient astronaut theory shows that stunningly simplistic can work. It can offer an off-ramp to the current academic highway of a publication-based arms race, where young professional archaeologists struggle to pass through the substance called “tenure” only to realize that they have merely passed from antithesis to thesis (see points 0124-0128).

0258 Beck et al.’s manifesto, “Changing the Landscape of Archaeological Publishing” (Current Anthropology 67(1) (2026), https://doi.org/10.1086/739789), is well worth contemplating as a marker for the end of one Neptune in Aries spiral and the beginning of another.

04/30/26

Looking at John H. Walton’s Book (2025) “New Explorations in the Lost World of Genesis” (Part 1 of 20)

0001 The book before me is published by Intervarsity Press. The subtitle is “Advances in the Origins Debate”. This work is the latest in the “Lost World Series” that delves into how Genesis should be regarded in light of the archaeological discoveries of the past three centuries.

Of course, “new explorations” implies “advances”. Advances adjust previous positions. The reader is advised to consult the conclusion immediately after the introduction, and before the section on methodology.

An examination of a prior work can be found in Looking at John Walton’s Book (2015) “The Lost World of Adam and Eve” appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in August 2022. The review is updated and fashioned as the first and fifth chapters in Razie Mah’s 2024 e-book, Exercises In Artistic Concordism, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0002 The term, “literature of the ancient Near East” is somewhat awkward, because the writings of the ancient Near East were buried in the ruins of royal libraries throughout Egypt and the Levant. The writings are in cuneiform, wedge impressions on clay tablets. The clay fires into brick when the royal library burns, along with the rest of the royal city. Then, the ruins get buried in vegetation, and later human settlements, and so on. Then, the tells (or hills) are excavated by modern archaeologists. Archaeologists discover thousands of cuneiform tablets and learn how to translate them. These translations constitute “the literature of the ancient Near East”.

0003 Of course, this story sounds implausible.

However, God tends to manifest the implausible.

0004 In fact, if God only performs sensible… what is the correct term?… “interventions”, then no one would notice. If anyone could turn water into wine, then the miracle at Cana would be ho-hum.

The Uruk culture invents writing by impressing tokens onto the surface of clay balls (which then contain the impressed tokens). That seems sensible. Centuries later, a Sumerians scribe uses a reed stylus to create impressions on a clay surface that is curved, like the surface of a ball. That seems sensible, also. Then, stylus impressions on a clay tablet become so routine that cuneiform is used for centuries to record transactions and inventories. Eventually, the same writing is used to record the civilization’s origin myths.

0005 Okay, each of these steps is sensible, although unlikely.

How many unlikely, yet sensible, developments can be strung together before the results may be declared “miraculous”?

0006 So, what is miraculous with respect to Walton’s lost-world propositions?

God provides eighteen centuries of biblical interpretation by Christians before creating the conditions where a challenge to traditional reference and affirmation occurs.

The archaeology of the ancient Near East unearths literature that is (more or less) contemporaneous with the Old Testament.

That is the challenge.

0007 The Old and New Testaments are no longer subject to plain reading as the sole foundation of interpretation.

Why?

How can one conduct an honest reading of the Old and New Testaments and not accommodate the literature of the ancient Near East?

0008 Okay, replace the word, “honest”, with the word, “literal”.

It seems that figurative and allegorical readings are not challenged.

04/8/26

Looking at John H. Walton’s Book (2025) “New Explorations in the Lost World of Genesis” (Part 20 of 20)

0218 Chapters seven and eight cover the Fall and God’s pronouncements in Genesis 3.

These are more results of Walton’s scientific explorations.

I leave the application of hylomorphe, entanglement, confounding and resolution to the reader.

0219 Recall, a scientific paper contains five elements: introduction, methodology, results, discussion and conclusion.

So does Walton’s book.

0220 Chapter nine offers a discussion on Genesis and science.

At no point in the discussion does Dr. Walton touch base with the following hylomorphes.

0221 In regards to the Creation Story, Razie Mah’s Looking at Hugh Ross’s Book (2023) “Rescuing Inerrancy” reviews what Walton is trying to avoid. Walton imagines that the entanglement of a moderate or an artistic concordism will turn out to be… um… dangerous.

Didn’t I say that confoundings are dangerous?

Hugh Ross’s version of moderate concordism cannot rescue the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, because it offers only a miraculous coincidence between what the Genesis text for each day appears to be describing and a corresponding evolutionary epoch.

Razie Mah’s version of artistic concordism changes the character of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, because it offers a method for showing that each Genesis day offers natural signs of a corresponding epoch. There are three types of natural signs: icons, indexes and symbols.

0222 If the Bible is supposed to be plainly read, then why would an author write the Creation Story as a vision that depicts the evolution of the Earth on the basis of natural signs? The author could not possibly had known the natural history of the Earth, unless having been presented with a series of visions. The text breaks down into natural signsbundled for each day, as images, indicators and symbols.

0223 It is enough to make John H. Walton swoon.

There is no way that Genesis 1-11 can entangle the modern… now… postmodern age.

There is no way… except… for… that ever-churning Christian imagination.

See Razie Mah’s e-book, Exercises in Artistic Concordism.

0224 In regards to the Primeval History, all the written origin stories of the ANE (except for the Creation Story) depict a recent creation of humans, by newly differentiated gods, according to their designs and purposes.

The question is, “Why?”

The civilizations of the ANE cannot see past a theoretical time point corresponding to the start of the Ubaid archaeological period in southern Mesopotamia. They cannot see from our current Lebenswelt into the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0225 The first singularity is currently a hypothesis.

As further research is conducted with this hypothesis in mind, we may eventually feel confident that the Ubaid is the first culture in human evolution to practice speech-alone talk. 8800 years ago, all other cultures practice hand-speech talk, in continuity with the founding of our species 300,000 years ago.

Over a period of a few thousand years, these hand-speech talking cultures convert to speech-alone talk, after being exposed to speech-alone talking cultures. Why do they adopt the new way of talking? Hand-speech talk promotes constrained social complexity. Speech-alone talk removes the constraints. The semiotic qualities of hand-speech talk and speech-alone talk are hugely different.

0226 The above hylomorphes are resolutions in favor of the entanglement.

Against this prospect, Walton configures his own confounding.

0227 Will this be sufficient to stop the goofy, science-loving impulses of the Christian imagination?

I don’t think so, because even if Walton’s confounding resolves in favor of his entanglement, the form of the resulting hylomorphe will entangle the Christian imagination.

0228 The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics pulls up a fish from the depths of the Christian Slavic civilization.

They open the mouth of the fish.

What do they find?

The golden coin of entanglement.

0229 Welcome to the Fourth Age of Understanding, The Age of Triadic Relations.

0230 I thank John H. Walton for publishing this advance in the origins debate and I wish J. Harvey Walton the best.

01/1/26

Looking at Melinda A. Zeder’s Article (2025) “Unpacking the Neolithic” (Part 1 of 4)

0001 If I may present my conclusion at the beginning, “I suggest the following motto: First the bauplan, then the twist.”

0002 The full title of the essay under examination is “Unpacking the Neolithic: Assessing the Relevance of the Neolithic Construct in Light of Recent Research”. The article appears in the Journal of World Prehistory (2025) in volume 38:11, pages 1-58 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-025-09198-0). The author is affiliated with the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.

0003 The author’s argument follows the Greek tradition of (A) setting out prior propositions, (B) adding further information and assessments and (C) proposing one’s own solution.

Prior propositions (A) are covered in the section titled, “The Origin of the Term ‘Neolithic'”.

Further information (B) includes sections on neolithic emergences in southwest Asia and other regions, including China, Japan, eastern north America, Mesoamerica and the northwest America.

The author’s proposal (C) appears in a section titled, “Repackaging the Neolithic”.

0004 I examine each movement in the sequence A, C then B.

0005 In regards to the historical origin of the term, “neolithic” (A), the word appears in the 1850s in the context of prehistoric lithic technology. A distinction between old “paleolithic” and new “neolithic” tools reflects a fairly recent change in the human condition. The Paleolithic extends very far back into the evolution of the Homo genus. The Neolithic is fairly new and applies only to Homo sapiens. By “new”, I mean, say, starting less that 20,000 years ago.

0006 As it turns out, stone tools and fossilized bones are the most recoverable items from the distant past. So, the idea that our kind evolves will of course rely of this type of data. The implications are significant. If lithic technologies are like matter, then the archaeologist may speculate on forms of prehistorical human (or “hominid” or “hominin”) conditions.

0007 For example, the earliest paleolithic stone tools are labeled “Oldowan”. These tools can be made on the fly. If I strike one rock with another, I can fracture off a shard and expose a sharp edge. Of course, one must choose the right rocks for this trick. Plus, technique is important.

Later stone tools are labeled “Acheulean”. These stone tools are made ahead of time, by the same technique of hammering off shards to reveal an intended form that… somehow… is intrinsic to the original rock.

0008 So, what am I suggesting?

Is the actuality of matter and form intrinsic to rocks, and ancestral hominins learn to tamper with one real element (matter) in order to sculpt the other real element (form)?

0009 I am suggesting more than that.

Aristotle’s hylomorphe (hylo = matter, morphe = form) is an exemplar of Peirce’s category of secondness. Secondness consists of (at least) two contiguous real elements. For paleolithic hominins, a rock (matter) could be sculpted into a stone tool (form). From the point of view of the archaeologist, the hylomorphic structure still applies. The question is, “How?”

Paleolithic stone-tool technology “sculpts” prehistorical human conditions.

0010 Of course, the word, “sculpts”, serves as an aesthetic metaphor for the contiguity between paleolithic technology as matter and hominin conditions as form.

0011 The challenge for nineteenth-century anthropology is clear. Propose a better, more scientific, or at least, less metaphysical, label for the contiguity.

With only geological strata, stone tools and fossilized bones as evidence, proposals were necessarily speculative. But, archaeologists continued digging, and by the 1850s could make the distinction between paleolithic and neolithic. Also, they figured out a reason for why the advance from Oldowan to Acheulean stone tools “sculpted” more advanced hominin conditions. Man was making himself.

0012 What do these evidential and rational developments suggest?

For a Peircean, secondness is the dyadic realm of actuality. Secondness is only one of Peirce’s three categories. The other two are thirdness (the triadic realm of normal contexts, judgments, signs, mediations and so forth) and firstness (the monadic realm of possibility).

Each of these categories manifests its own logic. Also, each higher numbered category prescinds from the adjacent lower category. Thirdness prescinds from secondness. Secondness prescinds from firstness. Prescission allows the articulation of the category-based nested form, as described in Razie Mah’ e-book, A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.

0013 Thirdness bring secondness into relation with firstness.

A triadic normal context₃ brings a dyadic actuality₂ into relation with the possibility of ‘something’₁.

0014 Now I can slide the above dyad into the slot for actuality₂ for the category-based nested form intimated by the title of V. Gordon Childe’s 1936 book, Man Makes Himself.

0015 The slide clarifies the contiguity, paleolithic technology constellates a substance, which I label, “technique”, that manifests an essence for the conditions of evolving hominins (that is, a substantiated form).

Consequently, the appearance of a new stone tool technology indicates a change in techniques as well as a change in the essence of the prehistoric human condition.

0016 According to Childe (1892-1957), the “neolithic” label encompassed more than a change in lithic technology. The prehistoric human condition gets entangled with all sorts of other matters, including sedentary communities, economies of delayed returns, various modes of storage and so forth. A long list of material arrangements gets entangled.

0017 As it turns out, once matter substantiates form, then form can entangle other matter, which is a confounding. Here, “confounding” is a technical term, precisely labeling one form originating from one matter and entangling another matter.

Historically, a confounding is an idea that belongs to Aristotle’s tradition. It is stumbled upon long after Aristotle’s campus went out of business. It is the brainchild of the Byzantine and Slavic civilizations.

0018 Here is a picture of Childe’s confounding.

0019 The upper three lines presents the neolithic thing. Neolithic stone-tool technology [substantiates] the prehistoric human condition. The nature of the [substance] is labeled, “technique”.

The lower two lines presents the entangled matter. The [entanglement] is difficult to label, because its nature is.. well… a long list of material arrangements.

0020 A list of material arrangements appears in Table 1 of the article. Even the social components of social mechanism, magico-religious sanctions and trade can be shoved under the rug labeled, “material arrangements”.

0021 As such, the “neolithic” may serve as an adjective to a noun, “revolution”, that appeals to academics sympathetic to Marxist formulations. Yes, they are the ones who only promote academics with similar sympathies. Also, Childe was… um… a sympathizer.

The question is not about whether prehistoric folk are “communist” or “fascist”, even though these labels may apply to this or that anthropologist of the 1930s.

The question is whether the Marxist formula applies to prehistoric folk.

0022 The answer becomes obvious, when Childe’s confounding resolves into the following hylomorphic structure.

0023 The above figure depicts a Marxist version of Aristotle’s hylomorphe, {matter [substantiates] form}. Childe’s hylomorphe lasts for nine decades (that is, until the present day at the start of 2026). Man makes himself through a standard Marxist formulation. Soon, Soviet era archaeologists adopt the stance that the appearance of pottery is a hallmark of neolithic emergence. Pottery is a material arrangement. The emergence of the neolithic is a human condition.

01/1/26

Looking at Melinda A. Zeder’s Article (2025) “Unpacking the Neolithic” (Part 4 of 4)

0056 Okay, I will continue drinking my cocktail in the following exposition.

I regard the last two figures, along with the figures that appear in the article under examination.

0057 There is something in B that suggests two bauplans₃. Early Neolithic Bauplan 1 marks the terminus of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. Late Neolithic Bauplan 2 denotes the start of our current Lebenswelt.

0058 Bauplan 1 looks like this.

The early Neolithic bauplan₃ does not permit untrammeled social and labor specializations. Rather, all social circles_2m (family (5), friends (5), teams (15), bands (50), and community (150)) are optimized_2f in the pursuit of the final cause of ‘settling down’₁. It is the same way that different organs and organ systems are optimized for ‘settling down’ into an individual.

Details of optimization will be specific to each location (because efficient causes differ), yet produce something ‘general’, that manifests in excavation sites as varied as Catal Hoyuk and Tepe Gobekli. Domestication includes the local geography, plants and animals. Domestication may even include settlements more than a day’s walk away. Domestication may include the heavens.

0059 Once rendered in this manner, the slow, seemingly reversible, spiral into the neolithic thing₂ gets depicted as thin dotted horizontal lines along the axes of arrangements versus time.

0060 The late Neolithic bauplan₃ permits individual social and labor specializations. Something significant has changed. The key final cause of ‘settling down’ remains relevant. However, another key final cause cannot be ignored. The optimization of the early Neolithic somehow breaks down and the late Neolithic initiates a search for order₁ that continues to this day.

0061 Here is a picture of what Bauplan 2 might look like.

0062 It is as if an individual, having been formed by a bauplan 1 gestation, gets born.

What a rude awakening.

0063 What about the timeline?

If I replace the increasing boldness of the horizontal dotted lines with a slowly rising bauplan 1 slope, and if I depict the most bold horizontal dotted lines as a bauplan 2 phase transition, then I get the following graph.

0064 What does this imply?

Obviously, bauplan 1 ends in a twist, that is, bauplan 2.

I noted this slogan at the start of my examination.

0065 Less obviously, the Neolithic revolution is not in the actuality of {material arrangements [substantiating] the neolithic condition}₂.

“The Neolithic Revolution” involves a transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.

0066 Fortunately, for the author, the American Marxist academic candle is about to exhaust itself, just as the Soviet Marxist illumination did decades ago.

Yes, the crisis begins.

0067 The impending change of cognitive grounds will be at least as great as the following transition from Karl Marx (1818-1883) to Juri Lotman (1922-1993). This transition goes sigmoidal in 1989.

0068 The following hylomorphic transition is derived in Razie Mah’s blog for December 2025, titled Looking at Igor Pilshchikov and Mikhail Trunin’s Article (2016) “The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics”.

0069 Marx’s actuality₂ is supposed to arise from the potential of scientific models₁, even though the actuality₂ served as doctrine, rather than a mechanical or mathematical formulation. Remember, Marx’s actuality₂ conforms to the structure of Peirce’s secondness. Secondness is the realm of actuality. How easy is it to confuse this actuality with the realness of a mechanical or mathematical model? Yet, they are not the same.

0070 Lotman’s actuality₂ arises from the potential of the semiosphere₁, the universe of sign-relations. Semiotic arrangements are not the same as material arrangements. They are not even close.

0071 So, what am I saying?

The author senses that ‘something’ is coming and she figures out that it must concern a bauplan.

After all, bauplan is a term that is familiar to evolutionary biologists.

0072 Happily, the semiotician, Razie Mah, has already explored human evolution from the point of view of Peirce’s categories. The human bauplan is an adaptation to the niche (or the potential) of triadic relations. Plus, human evolution comes with a twist.

Here is a list of works by Razie Mah that pertain to Bauplan 1 and Bauplan 2.

0073 Surely, this is a lot to unpack. But, that is precisely what Melinda Zeder’s article calls for.

My thanks to the author for publishing this thought piece.

Happy New Year.

10/31/24

Looking at N. J. Enfield’s Book (2022) “Language vs. Reality” (Part 1 of 23)

0841 This is an encore performance to the sequence of blogs on the post-truth condition.

As such, this examination wraps up Part Two of Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

Take a gander at the full title of Enfield’s text, Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good For Lawyers and Bad For Scientists.

Surely, that sounds like a book that belongs to a set of books on the post-truth condition.

So, the numbers continue to build from the last examination.

0842 The book is published by MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The author is a professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney and the Director of the Sydney Centre for Language Research.

0843 The title of the book is a play on John B. Carroll’s (editor) collection of essays by Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941 AD), published in 1956 under the title, Language, Thought and Reality.

To me, this implies that “thought” has transubstantiated into “versus”. The substance of the word has changed, so to speak. The word, “versus”, derives from the same root as the word, “adversary”. So, if “thought” once used to nominally stand between “language” and “reality”, then today, “thought” is confounded with “adversary”, and that might serve as a hint concerning the nature of our adversity.

Perhaps, this is not the only notable feature of the title.

Then again, a book titled, Language, Adversary and Reality, might not fly off the shelves in feel-good book-outlets. It is not as if, next to the Self-Help section, there is a Come To Grips With Your Doom section.

So, expect me to play with the title throughout this examination.

0844 Another notable feature of this book, at least to me, is that the author is not acquainted with Razie Mah’s re-articulation of human evolution, in three masterworks, The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word “Religion” (available at smashwords and other e-book venues). The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language. Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk. Plus, the evolution of talk comes with the twist, humorously called, “the first singularity”.

So, Enfield’s work serves as a marker for the twilight of the Age of Ideas and the dawning of the Age of Triadic Relations.

0845 Okay, let me dwell on the idea that the evolution of language is not the same as the evolution of talk.

Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues, and also, for the most part, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog for January, February and March, 2024) divides the evolution of talk in the following manner.

0846 The first period starts with the divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineage (7 million of years ago) and ends with the bipedalism of the so-called “southern apes” (around 3.5 to 4 million years ago).

In the second period, australopithecines adapt to mixed forest and savannah by adopting the strategy of obligate collaborative foraging. Eventually, Homo erectus figures out the controlled use of fire, leading to the domestication of fire, starting (perhaps) around 800 thousand years ago.

The third period, lasts from the domestication of fire to the earliest appearance of anatomically modern humans. During this period, hand talk becomes fully linguistic, religion evolves as an adaptation to large social circles (of 150 individuals and more) and hominins use the voice for synchronization during seasonal mega-band and occasional tribal gatherings. Then, sexual selection does the rest and the voice comes under voluntary neural control.

0847 The fourth period starts when the voice, now under voluntary control, joins hand-talk, resulting in a dual-mode way of talking, hand-speech talk. Hand talk retains the iconicity and indexality that grounds reference in things that can be pictured or pointed to. But, speech adds a symbolic adornment, which starts as a sing-along and ends up taking a life of its own. Four centuries ago, the North American Plains Indians and the Australian aborigines still practiced hand-speech talk, with full fledged sign and verbal languages. Now, their hand-speech talk is all but dead.

0848 That death, along with the demise of all hand-speech talking languages, comes (and came) due to exposure to speech-alone talk, which has significantly different semiotic qualities than hand-talk and hand-speech talk. Hand-talk is iconic and indexal. The referent precedes the gestural word. Speech-alone talk is purely symbolic. The spoken word labels ‘something’, and sometimes that ‘something’ cannot be imaged or indicated.

Well, it must be real because speech-alone talk provides a label for an explicit abstraction!

0849 Here is a picture of the transition labeled, “the first singularity”.

0850 Consider the words, “language”, “adversary” and “reality”. Each word is a label for ‘something’ that cannot be pictured or pointed to. These words do not exist in hand-talk or hand-speech talk, because the referent cannot be imaged or indicated using a manual-brachial gesture. What does this imply? Does a referent exist because a label has been attached to it? Or, does an explicit abstraction properly label referents that exist irrespective of the spoken word? This type of question is addressed in Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define The Word “Religion”.

Fortunately, the author of the book under examination is unaware of the first singularity and the difficulties that a change in the way that humans talk poses. Human evolution comes with a twist.

0851 So why examine this work?

Well, I expect to see the evolution of talk manifesting in this book, even though the author is not aware of Razie Mah’s academic labors.

Surely, Enfield’s work details recent scientific research in linguistics and cognitive psychology, in an attempt to provide the reader with a coherent view of how language is good for lying lawyers and bad for honest scientists.

What will this examination reveal?

08/31/24

Looking at Vivek Ramaswamy’s Book (2021) “Woke, Inc.” (Part 1 of 20)

0255 The full title of the book before me is Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam (Center Street Press: Nashville and New York). The book consists of an introduction, followed by fifteen chapters.

0256 Why am I numbering the start of this examination with the number that follows the end of Professor Steve Fuller’s 2020 book, A Player’s Guide to The Post-Truth Condition?

Well, I have a question.

Is Fuller on target?

0257 One way to address this question is an examination of an author who is a player in the current theo-political dramaof the Fourth Battle of the Enlightenment Gods (1989-present).

Vivek Ramaswamy offers a book that suits the purpose. Take a look at the table of contents. The title of the introductionis “The Woke-Industrial Complex”. The title of the final chapter is “Who are We?”

0258 Are “we” the ones who have substituted the broadcasts of the empirio-normative judgment for our own thoughts, so what we say can be objectified as phenomena for the psychometric sciences?

Or are “we” the ones who read the previous sentence and ask, “What the hell are you talking about?”

The choice is clear.

0259 We are in the fourth world war. I call it The Fourth Battle of the Enlightenment Gods: Empirio-Normative Domination in the Post-Truth Condition.

Here is a list of all four wars.

0260 Of course, those who are certified in modern history will classify this list as “revisionist”.

But, reflect on the titles of the introduction and chapter fifteen of Ramaswamy’s book and ask, “Just who is acting as a revisionist?”

Woke, Inc.?

Or, the confounded subject of domination.

0261 In the introduction, Ramaswamy claims that two characteristics define America as a nation.

The first is the American Dream, where “success” is regarded in terms of “getting ahead”. To many, “getting ahead” is associated with capitalism.

The second is the Latin slogan, e pluribus unum, out of many, one. Pluralism celebrates a variety of views and the challenges of convincing others of the relevance of one’s own view. We all have this in common. Everyone has an opinion. Ramaswamy associates this to democracy.

0262 Here are the associations.

0263 But, how do these slogans associate to the interscope for the post-truth condition?

Yes, I must go there.

The following interscope is typical for the many interscopes that appear in the examination of Fuller’s guide.

0264 For the content-level, the normal context of my intellect_3a brings the dyadic actuality of what I think [cannot be objectified as] what I am willing to say_2a into relation with the possibilities inherent in ‘my will’_1a

What is the nature of this dyadic actuality_2a?

It has to do with science.

What I think is like a noumenon, a thing itself.

What I say is like its phenomena, the observable and measurable facets of a thing.

According to Kant’s slogan, a noumenon [cannot be objectified as] its phenomena.

Therefore, what I think [cannot be objectified as] what I say.

0265 Kant’s slogan figures in what is in the Positivist’s judgment.

Here is a diagram.

0266 Clearly, the content-level actuality_2a corresponds to what is of the Positivist’s judgment.

If logical positivists had their way, they would dismiss the noumenon as a stumbling block for scientific inquiry into phenomena. This is precisely why Kant insists on the realness of the noumenon, in addition to its phenomena. Scientific models are not the same as the thing itself, even though triumphalist scientists would have models replace their noumena.

Nevertheless, for most sciences, the noumenon is merely a book-keeping entry corresponding to what is responsible for observable and measurable phenomena.

So, I repeat.

What I think is a book-keeping entry.

What I say corresponds to what the psychometric sciences observe and measure.

08/8/24

Looking at Josef Pieper’s Book (1974) “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” (Part 1 of 8)

0756 The essay is originally published in German by Kosef-Verlag, Munich. In 1988, the essay is translated by Lothar Krauth, in an edition by Schuabenverlag AG, Osterfindern bei Stuttgart. The essay before me is published in 1992 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco.

Why should I examine this essay?

Is the post-truth condition a manifestation of original sin?

0757 If the answer is “yes” to the latter question, then the answer to the former is partially unveiled.

Obviously, there is no direct path from the post-truth condition to a reincarnation of the doctrine of original sin, but both can enter the cognitive space carved out by Pieper’s title. The stories of Adam and Eve portray an abuse of language similar to the type that we see today.

0758 The post-truth interscope is formulated in Looking at Steve Fuller’s Book (2020) “The Player’s Guide to the Post-Truth Condition” and applied in Looking at Vivek Ramaswamy’s Book (2021) “Woke, Inc.”.

The post-truth interscope has three levels.

Here is a picture.

0759 The content level is labeled “scrappy player”. This is a level of under contention. How so? The actuality does not look like the scrappy player’s own self-impression. Typically, people feel that what I think [accords with] what I say,rather than a dyad that has the characteristics of what is of the Positivist’s judgment. So, the content-level actuality for the post-truth condition comes across as weirdly familiar, yet unnatural. The same goes with the normal context_3a and potential_1a of reason_3a,1a. Reason_3a,1a is the intellect_3a contextualizing the will_1a. Plus, the interscope is not clear as to who engages reason_3a,1a. Is reason_3a,1a the sign-interpretant (SI_i) for the scientismist one_3c‘s sign-vehicle (SV_i)? Or is reason_3a,1a a feature of the scrappy player’s cognition? Or both?

0760 The situation level is labeled “expert”. Psychometric scientists_b situate what the scrappy player is willing to say_2aas phenomena that may be formalized as observations and measurements_1b. Also, psychometric experts_3b bring models of value_2b into relation with the potential of ‘formalized knowledge’_1b.

0761 The perspective level is labeled “relativist one”. This is a level that is difficult to grasp. The current relativist one_3cis called, “the one of scientism_3c“, because science has become the common style for expert_3b expressions of value_2b, where value_2b is the intersection of capitalist and socialist nested forms. So, the scientismist one_3c may be regarded as “the system” or “the style” (or even, “the hive”) for the current interscope of the post-truth condition.

Fuller notes that there is an absolute character to the relativist one_3c. In order to truly operate as a relativist, one must be outside of all relativized jurisdictions. That observation indicates that the relativist one_3c should occupy the perspective-level normal context of the post-truth interscope. Plus, that observation indicates that relativized jurisdictions should belong to the situation level. So, all sciences and experts_3b are relative from the point of view of the scientismist one_3c.

0762 So, let me make a prediction as to how Josef Pieper’s argument will play out.

An Archaeology of the Fall

A Horror Story by Razie Mah

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