"facts" etc

[jbor]

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>From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
>

> See Lascaux and other prehistoric paintings, please. Obviously human
> language development comes before writing, the watershed event that
> marks the beginning of history.

Actually, I think the first "writing" was used in the Middle East somewhere
as a type of accountancy. The people who did the cave paintings at Lascaux
were humans, historically-speaking. They had a history, were historical: in
fact, archaeologists have come quite a ways in documenting the history of
so-called "prehistoric" times. But I understand your distinction now.

> Song, dance, painting, sculpture all
> predate written history.

Of course, these non-written modes of communication were often the manner in
which "history" as such was passed from one generation to the next in many
cultures. Thus they can be considered forms of language, or writing: Derrida
lists not only "cinematography, choreography ... but also pictorial, musical
and sculptural 'writing'" as texts which are capable of transferring meaning
(_Of Grammatology_, 9). Pynchon also refers to modes of communication, or
texts, beyond the written.

> A number of credible researchers and
> thinkers also suggest that language and culture begin to evolve prior
> to the emergence of the human being.

I would have thought that language and culture were two of the things which
distinguished homo sapiens from homo erectus or australopithecus &c. But
many researchers now also believe that the evolution of humans was not
something which was unique to one place, but that there were several
distinct and separate evolutionary branches. Anyway, there are and always
have been more than one language and more than one culture in human society.
Along with social systems, these develop in concert with the local
environment.

> Given the view of the Earth as a living being that emerges from
> Pynchon's novels, where sentience and some sort of spiritual
> existence appear to permeate all and where human existence continues
> across the life/death interface, it's hard to see how Pynchon could
> be shoe-horned into a worldview as limited, spirit- and soulless,
> self-cancelling, and one-size-fits-all as social constructionism,
> that box just isn't big enough to contain Pynchon no matter how hard
> you shove and squeeze.

You're entitled to your opinions.

best