ANTH245 2007-09-17
ANTH 245: Lecture for SEPT 17 2007
Recap
Rappaport's second cybernetic loop
- Sacred propositions -> pragramatic proposition -> the System --> Ritual experience --> Sacred propositions
- Actually similar to this:
- EXPERIENCE --> RELIGION --> POLITICS --> ECONOMICS --> EXPERIENCE
Segue
Cognitive models
Actually looking at a pattern (myth)
Levi-Strauss
Background
Essay 1 (Structuralism)
>> See Levi-Strauss, 1951, "Language and the Analysis of Social Laws"
Wiener's pessimism
- Working from analysis of "time series" data under stable conditions
- e.g. anti-aircraft
- Famously found social science unfertile
The model of linguistics
- Historical linguistics
- Grimm's law
- Regular and unconscious
- Phonemes and perception ("sound blindness")
- Langue vs. Parole
Kroeber's Theory
Structuralism
- The linguistic analogy
- Elements and rules
- Same as "code"
- Same "universal grammar" applied to language and other domains
The image of the computer
- Explained by reference to the computer (or database)
- Not the only time:
The day may come when all the available documentation on Australian tribes is transferred to punched cards and with the help of a computer their entire techno-economic, social and religious structures can be shown to be like a vast group of transformations.
The Savage Mind, p. 89.
It is, in fact, difficult to see why certain linguistic problems could not be solved by modern calculating machines. With knowledge of the phonological structure of a language and the laws which govern the grouping of consonants and vowels, a student could easily use a machine to compute all the combina- tions of phonemes constituting the words of n syllables existing in the vocabu- lary, or even the number of combinations compatible with the structure of the language under consideration, such as previously defined. With a machine into which would be "fed" the equations regulating the types of structures with which phonemics usually deals, the repertory of sound which human speech organs can emit, and the minimal differential values, determined by psycho-physiological methods, which distinguish between the phonemes closest to one another, one would doubtless be able to obtain a computation of the totality of phonological structures for n oppositions (n being as high as one wished). One could thus construct a sort of periodic table of linguistic struc- tures that would be comparable to the table of elements which Mendeleieff introduced into modern chemistry. It would then only remain for us to check the place of known languages in this table, to identify the positions and the relationships of the languages whose first-hand study is still too imperfect to give us a proper theoretical knowledge of them, and to discover the place of languages that have disappeared, are unknown, yet to come,, or simply possible.
"Language and the Analysis of Social Law", p. 57-58.
Essay 2 (Mythology)
>> See Levi-Strauss, 1955, "The Structural Study of Myth"
Themes
Myth as signal and message
- Message as ontology
- Code as method of interpretation
- Myth itself is a vehicle for ontology
The function of myth
- Compare to Rappaport
- L-S focuses on content, Rappaport sacred context
- L-S helps explain myths credibility -- it overcomes contradictions
- Compare to Bateson
- Patterns
- Who is communicating?
L-S's image of the computer
- Confuses cybernetics with computation
- Actually very interested in databases
