captain's log

I first began reading Surfaces and Essences in March earlier this year.

It’s October now.

I have a habit of scribbling the date in the margins now and then. I see “3/31” scribbled on page 33, then “9/4” on page 82.

During intervening months, between March and September, I did such things as put my house on the market, moved most of my possessions into a storage unit, sold my house (twice, practically), planned (and took) a 4 week vacation in the UK and Norway, during which I closed on the sale of the house; moved the girlfriend out of her apartment, and most of her possessions into the same storage unit; moved the girlfriend and everything in the same storage unit to North Carolina; found a new job in North Carolina, and moved myself to North Carolina.

In retrospect, I can say: April I put this book down for 5 months in an act of total exhaustion. How else could I have put this down? Too good to put down. 

I could only have put this book down because I lacked the energy, or interest to expend the energy, to exercise my intellect vis a vis Surfaces and Essences.

It seems I have recovered, somewhat anyway, because six months later I ploughed through it.

~~~

The primary arguments of the authors, in their own words:

The main goal of this book, then, is simply to give analogy its due – which is to say, to show how the human ability to make analogies lies at the root of all our concepts, and how concepts are selectively evoked by analogies (pg 3). A central thesis of this book is that analogy-making defines each instant of thought and is in fact the driving force behind all thought. Each metal category we have is the outcome of a long series of analogies that build bridges between entities (objects, actions, situations) distant from each other in both time and space (pg 135). In short, nonstop categorization [Re: analogy] is every bit as indispensable to our survival in the world as is the nonstop beating of our hearts (pg 15). This universal fact of human high level perception allows us to see far beyond the concrete details of situations and to connect events that superficially are enormously different from each other (pg 335). [C]ategorization through analogy-making is the universal fabric of cognition (pg 137).

Surfaces and Essences is a slow, steady act of accretion. It crescendos by citing as an example of their hypothesis Einstein’s synthesis of many branches of physics in his theory of general relativity, but it begins with a more modest act of cognition: zeugmas.

Simply put, zeugmas are figures of speech wherein one word applies to two other words, each in a different sense. For example, “I’ll meet you in 5 minutes and the garden” (pg 6). In that sentence, the same instance of the word “in” is applied to both time (5 minutes) and space (the garden). (I.e. I’ll meet you in 5 minutes; I’ll meet you in the garden).

Some other examples from pages 6-8:

• Kurt* was and spoke German.
• She restored my painting and my faith in humanity.
• I look forward to seeing you with Patrick and much joy.
• The book was clothbound but unfortunately out of print.
• [Such and such…] mean things that they did as, and to, younger kids.
• [“Whatever…”] he said in English and all sincerity.
• I’m going to brush my teeth and my hair. (pg 6-8)

* “Zeugmatic” words bolded.

In addition to listing many zeugmas, the authors elucidate nuances which differentiate one from another-for example, translatability from one language to another. The words, or concepts which they convey, may be zeugmatic in one language, not another, for different reasons. For example, in English we can apply certain words to vastly different concepts*. You can restore a painting, and faith in humanity. You can play Frisbee golf, and keytar. Not necessarily so other languages.

If the versatility of verbs like “play” seems inconsequential, consider these scenario wherein you receive a text from a friend:

“You wanna play tonight?”

Your first thought may be Um creepy, but your next may be Yes I want to play pickup basketball, or Overwatch, or jam in the garage. Depending on the person, you may loop through fewer possibilities; if you don’t recognize the number, you’ll loop through many more.

Next, consider the versatility of certain nouns, for example “band,” which could indicate a piece of cloth, set of musicians, wedding ring, range of frequencies, or collection of stars (pg 3-4). If the wife texted

“Can you bring my wedding band?”

you will assume she forgot her ring at home-not that would like you to bring along the Motown band which performed at your wedding*. However, you may not be as sure if you were amidst planning a wedding and a friend asked “Have you picked out a wedding band?”

Question: How the heck did Motown become “wedding music”… and when will it stop? 🙂

Consider the challenge to individuals who speak more than one language. Consider Chinese, for instance, which applies different verbs to sports and music and, furthermore, applies different verbs to sports depending whether one primarily uses their hands (basketball) or feet (soccer) (pg 10). How do we know when to apply which rules?

Surfaces and Essences endeavors to answer such questions. How do we keep all of these things straight, and how do process all of this data so efficiently?

In a word, the answer is: analogy. We categorize knowledge and experience infinitely, and we index it infinitely. Categories within categories within categories.

Let’s consider the word band for example, which stores a group of musicians, which stores rock bands, which stores progressive rock bands, which stores 3-piece rock-bands, which stores specific bands like Rush, which stores such categories as Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart, guitar, guitar parts, bass guitar, bass parts, keyboard, chord progressions, drums, riffs, album names and artwork, hundreds of songs titles, lyrics etc.

When someone says “Geddy Lee is good,” do we mean he’s a good man, composer, musician, bass player, singer?

If this line of inquiry is frustrating for you, it’s no wonder; we effectively “automate” this variety of low-level thought process. Considering it seems extraordinarily pedantic because it is extraordinarily inefficient. Far too many steps.

Instead, we abstract the “essence” of concepts, or “conceptual skeletons,” and store it in relatively efficient indices based on any number of parameters.

We don’t know how the indices work, but we know how they don’t work. We don’t store our memories in chronological order. When we recall a memory, it is not because we have cycled through all memories beginning with out first memory. Nor do we start from present and work backwards. The authors say “there is just one single mechanism of nonstop categorization through analogy-making, and it operates all along the continuum we’ve described, which stretches from very mundane to very sophisticated acts of categorization” (pg 19). We extend categories, and extend of intension of categories, “nonstop.”

(Careful now, this escalates quickly.)

The acts of analogy-making and category-extension I’ve discussed have primarily concerned linguistic units, the authors apply the same principles to Einstein’s extension of Galilean relativity to general relativity, via extension of principals in mechanical  and electromagnetic physics, to gravitation, to nuclear energy*.

* See lists on pages (a) 453, (b) 483 for (a) a bullet-point list of key examples of extension in the sciences and (b) a breakdown of Einstein’s major breakthroughs based on them.

No joke. Surfaces and Essences takes us from zeugmas to E=MC^2, the equation Roland Barthes says, “by its unexpected simplicity, nearly embodies the pure idea of the key, naked, linear, made of a single metal, opening with utterly magical facility a door mankind had struggled with for centuries” (Mythologies, pg 101).

I made the jump swiftly, but the authors work painstakingly. Surfaces and Essences is a slow and steady process of accretion. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone, and I would still caution those to whom I would recommend it to be patient; the authors can tend toward pedantry, but ultimately the methodology is didactic, and effective.

9/10

ISBN 978 0465018475

From Barthelme, to Barthes. While the last names of the American and French writers sound alike, and while Barthelme’s The Dead Father (subject of a recent essay) sounds-is in a sense-mythological, these books have little in common.

Mythologies is part (1) anthology of short essays*, part (2) longer-form, encompassing essay** which contextualizes the collection of short essays. The short essays derive from a magazine syndication***. While the topics of the shorter essays fit comfortably in the realm of (1950s French) pop culture, I cannot imagine many individuals would call Barthes prose, or analytical bent, or even his intention in writing Mythologies, very popular; he intended to “transcend pious denunciation and instead account in detail for the mystification which transforms petit bourgeois culture into a universal nature” (ix).

* Average 3 pages
** “Myth Today”
*** Les Lettres Nouvelles

More simply (and diplomatically*) put Barthes says,”My effort at the time was to reflect regularly on some myths of French daily life” (xi). In my own words, Barthes wished to demystify topics of middle-class interest, or even worship. He characterizes these topics as “myths”-which range from the mundane (e.g. laundry detergent), to the sensational (e.g. the Tour de France). “Demystify” may be a word with negative connotations, but Barthes, in Mythologies (and I, in this essay) use it to convey something like “to give thought to something taken for granted.”

* I.e. de-politicized.

But before you apply a simplistic descriptor like “cute” to this enterprise, let me remind you this essay concerns a text by Roland Barthes. Roland M- F- Barthes, whose definition of a “myth” is particular. Unfortunately, you may not know what his particular definition is until you read the last essay in Mythologies, “Myth Today,” which I previously mentioned contextualizes the anthology.

It is beyond me why the publisher decided to arrange “Myth Today” last. It should be the first essay in the collection. Perhaps because it is the least “lay” (as in layman). Hide it in the back! 

“Myth Today” is not nearly as easy to read as Barthes riffs on detergent, for example. But only within “Myth Today” do we find Barthes precise description of what he means by a myth, a meaning which I believe few readers would intuit. His his meaning is rooted in semiotics-effectively, the myth of Mythologies is a semiotic structure.

Who would have guessed?

Simply put, a myth is a wrapper function which processes a sign.

I lack the expertise to write much about semiotics, but because Mythologies is rooted in it I’ll go as far as this “aside.” In semiotics, we can describe SIGN as the relationship between the (1) SIGNIFIER and (2) SIGNIFIED. We can describe a SIGNIFIER as the “raw input” of a speech act. (For example, in the context of written words the “raw input” could be one word on the page.) Next, we can describe SIGNIFIED as the meaning which the writer wishes to convey with the SIGNIFIER. For example, you may read a sentence “Who is that girl?” If we consider “girl” as a SIGNIFIER, the SIGNIFIED could be a (human) girl, woman, (human or non-human) figure who resembles a young female, etc. A description of the SIGN is an answer to the question Why did the author choose the word “girl”?

Next, What do I mean by “a myth is a wrapper function which processes a sign”? Simply put, I’m referring to the kind of processing we do, independent of the author’s suggestion. For instance, our application of contemporary political and cultural themes to ancient texts. Or application of personal experiences to the same. Analogues, connotations, “the stuff comes to mind.”

In other words, myth is the conflation of (1) a speech act (e.g. spoken or written words, or visual representations) and (2) inferences drawn from outside the context of the speech act. If a speech act were “raw input,” myth is black box wherein the raw input is processed.

In that sense, myth is fairly ubiquitous. Everything goes through the “myth function” (henceforth called “myth()”), which I believe I have described adequately for the purposes of this essay. But let’s take a look at how Barthes describes myth.

He begins simply enough.

What is myth today? I shall give at the outset a first, very simple answer, which is perfectly consistent with etymology: myth is a type of speech (pg 219).

But the analytical engine accelerates quickly.

It can be seen that to purport to discriminate among mythical objects according to their substance would be entirely illusory: since myth is a type of speech, everything can be a myth, provided it is conveyed by a discourse.

Simply put, everything runs through myth(). An example from Barthes:

A tree is a tree. Yes, of course. But a tree as expressed by Minou Drouet[*] is no longer quite a tree, it is a tree which is decorated, adapted to a certain type of consumption, laden with literary self-indulgence, revolt, images, in short with a type of social usage which is added to pure matter (pg 218).

* Minou Drouet was a (controversial) 12 y/o French poetry prodigy in the 50s, also the subject of one of Barthes shorter essays, who has “cameos” in some of the other short essays.

Before I turn my attention to some of Barthes shorter essays I’ll mention one feature of myth() Barthes emphasizes: it distorts, deforms or impoverishes the signified (pg 231,232,others). In other words, “Myth is speech stolen and restored” (pg 236). That is, our individual myth() can effectively “hijack” the signified-similar to how someone can completely misinterpret something you say.

Myth() works at scales grand and bland, as I hope you’ll see in the course of my tour de some of Barthes essays.

“In The Ring” demystifies professional wrestling. It is memorable essay, if only because it is the first in Mythologies-but no only for that reason. Consider this brilliant bob-and-weave sequence.

“Some people consider that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to watch a wrestles performance of Suffering than the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque [17th century French playwrights].”

In each clause in the sequence, Barthes negates an aspect of a previous clause. Some say wrestling is an ignoble sport-It is not a sport, it’s a spectacle-Plus, the spectacle is not ignoble. The sequence resembles Barthes description of wrestling as “a sum of spectacles, none of which is a function: each moment imposes the total knowledge of a passion which suddenly rises straight up on its own, without ever extending toward the consummation of an outcome.” Each clause is like a feint meant to elicit interest, suspense, to entertain.

~~~

“The Writer on Vacation” demystifies the popular sub-genre of memoir. Consider this historical view of vacations, generally:

Initially a feature of academic life, they [vacations] have since become paid leaves, a part of the proletarian-or at least the workingman’s-world.

Does it follows that writers are workingmen, whose work is writing? And if a writer spends “vacation” writing, is it a vacation? Barthes answers to both questions is No. “A false worker, the writer is also a false vacationer.” Barthes either takes these things for granted or, more likely, says it in fun; he makes no attempt to justify the statement A writer is a false worker.

The essay is a playful one. Barthes mocks, and mockingly reveres Writers, who he says, writes about vacations as a “way of convincing our bourgeois readers that they are in step with their time.”

~~~

“Saponids and Detergent” targets advertisements for detergents. Because I cannot possibly improve on “playful Barthes,” (whether intellect or interest), some quotations.

First, a pyrotechnic’s take on liquid soaps, bleach, and powder soaps:

“[T]he fluids of Javel [a liquid soap] have always been felt to be a sort of liquid fire whose action must be carefully measured, or else the object itself is affected, ‘burned’ “; whereas “Products based on chlorine and ammonia [bleach] are indeed delegates of a sort of total fire, a savior but a blind one; powders, on the other hand, are selective, they force dirt through the meshes of a garment’s material – a police action, not all-out warfare.”

Next, a transposition of the same laundry accouterments to a pastoral scene:

[C]hemical liquids are equivalent to the peasant laundress’s hostile gesture of actually beating soiled clothes against the stones in a streambed, whereas powders imply a housewife’s squeezing and rolling her laundry against the length of a sloping board at the riverside.

Like poetry, should be read aloud.

Next.

“Wine and Milk” demystifies, you guessed it, wine and milk, which Barthes juxtaposes in the context of a French health campaign. The campaign sought to foist milk into wine-level ubiquity.

But there is no comparing, only contrasting, milk to the “conversion substance” wine. Only wine is “capable of reversing state and situations, of extracting objects from their actual contraries: of making, for instance, a weakling strong; a chatterbox silent.” Wine is a change-agent, whereas milk is an emulsifier which stabilizes, preserves, strengthens. That’s the clever gist.

~~~

Other notable essays include “African Grammar” (France’s rhetorical relationship with its African territories), “The Tour de France as Epic” (Tour de France as a literary Epic), and “The Dupriez Trial” (think Making a Murderer of 1950s France). Still, there are many more-many more essays to describe, many more myths to demystify.

Thinking about myth() recalled this passage from Stephen J. Gould’s Bully For Brontosaurus, which regards our tendency toward “literary bias,” our tendency to embellish information so as to tell a good story:

“If these reconstructions are stories, then they are bound by the canonical rules of legendmaking” (Bully, pg 251).

This refers to a different sort of myth() output, a more literal myth, a “legend,” yet still a myth.

Specifically, Gould refers to the story of Charles Walcott’s discovery of the Burgess Shale, a wonderful source of fossils from 570 million years ago. Gould argues the story has been sensationalized.

The traditional story has the Walcott family in a snowstorm… Last day of the expedition… Mrs. Walcott’s horse takes a spill… While helping her up, Walcott discovers the location of the Burgess Shale…

But Gould points out Walcott’s diary tells a different, mundane, story.

Stories are subject to a kind of natural selection. As they propagate in the retelling and mutate by embellishment, most eventually fall by the wayside to extinction from public consciousness. The few survivors hang tough because they speak to deeper themes that stir our souls or tickle our funnybones (pg 244).

Whether we call these cognitive processes something like applying the “canonical rules of legendmaking,” or myth(), the essence is the same: we make our own meaning. We “impoverish” the signified of our source material, and enrich it with our own meaning.

We deform, distort, embellish. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

Look for more on this topic to follow in my forthcoming essay about Surfaces and Essences, by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, a fantastic book about the function of analogy in cognition.

7/10

ISBN 978 0 8090 7194 4