Part 5 (1/2)

Practical experiences involving nature led to the realization of differences: colors that change with seasons, flora and fauna in their variety, variations in sky and weather Hu), fishi+ng, finding shelter, and seeking one's own kind, either under sexual drive or for some collaborative effort Thus, multiplicity of nature is met by multiplicity of elee of actions, with eleue In nature, screeches and hoots, in finite sequences, signal danger Otherwise, nature does not understand hu prey, or for avoiding danger, sounds, colors, and shapes can be involved What qualifies thens is the infinity of variations and coainst the background of differences, human practical experiences resulted also in the realization of similarities in appearance and actions Awareness of similarities was ens once the experience stabilized in the constitution of a group coherently integrating the sign in its activity

Elementary forms of praxis maintained individuals near the object upon which they acted, or upon which needs and plans for their fulfillment were projected Extraction of as common to many tasks at hand translated into accumulation of experience With experience, a certain distance between the individual, or group, and the task was introduced The language of actions changed continuously Evaluation started as a comparison It evolved into inclinations, repetitive patterns, and selections until it translated into a rule to be followed

Interpretation of natural patterns connected to weather (e call change of season, stor hunted aniriculture (as we define it in retrospect) resulted in the constitution of a repertory of observed characteristics and, over time, in a method of observation Once observed, phenons They integrated the observer, who memorized and associated them with successful patterns of action In a way, this - ie, observation of all kinds of patterns and associations to tasks at hand-was in anticipation of notation and writing, and probably one of thefiltered the relevant, that characteristic-of an animal, plant, weather pattern-which affected the attainained in coherence, progressively involvingand collective eneris calendar, characteristic of an i device in both understanding the signs pertaining to work and the strategy of action to follohen circued In rituals, the unity bethat is natural and what is human is continuously reaffirmed

Tools are extensions of the physical reality of the huoal Signs, however, are means of self-reflection, and thus by their nature ns, too, are also an expression of the self-reflective nature of humans, but in a different way What defines theht conjure in a coration In retrospect, tools appear to us as instances of self-constitution at a scale different from the natural scale of the physical world in which individuals created them The difference is reflected in their efficiency in the first place, but also in the implicit correlations they embody Some are tools for individual use; others require cooperation with other persons

Sign activity at such pries of humankind marked the transcendence from accidental to systematic The use of tools and the relative uniform structure of the tasks performed contributed to a sense of enous character of the pragmatic frans of practical experiences were reflected in the syncretision, art, science, philosophy, and ethics were represented, in nuce, in the sign in an undifferentiated, syncretic manner Observations of repetitive patterns and awareness of possible deviations blended

Externalized in these co them understandable, unequivocal, and easy to preserve over tiories as syncretis, repetitive patterns in practical tern can be a beat It should be easily perceived even under adverse conditions (noise from thunder, the howl of animals) Humans should be able to associate it with the same consequences (Run! should not be confused with Halt!; Throw! should not be confused with Don't throw! or some other unrelated action) This univocal association must be maintained over tieneration of signs Rhythm, color, shape, body expression and rated in rituals Things were shown as they are- anie rocks split apart Their transforh the use of fire, water, and stones shaped to cut, or to help in shaping other stones

It is quite difficult for us today to understand that for the primitive mind, likeness produced and explained likeness, that there was no connotation, that everything had immediate practical implications What was shared, here and now, or between one short-lived generation and the next, was an experience so undifferentiated that sometimes even the distinction between action and object of action (such as hunting and prey, plowing and soil, collecting and the collected fruit, etc) was difficult tois one of constituting its own nature Externalizing characteristics (predoressively also spiritual) to be shared within the eent human culture is part of the process We have co as the world on one side and a subject reflecting it on another The appearance, which Descartes turned into the premise of the rational discourse adopted by Western civilization, makes us fall captive to representational explanations rather than to ontogenetic descriptions Hus identify the for similarities and distinctions These pertain to their existence, and sharing in the awareness of these similarities and distinctions is part of human interaction As such, the world is constituted almost at the same time as it is discovered This contradictory dynamics of identity and distinctionother than the ”ihts,” as Lauage is also soe the e continuouslydoes not comatic framework of our interdependencies The transition from directness and i with the notions of space and time appropriated in the process, is in e constitution The e, the constitution of language, and the e seem to point to both the self- definition and preservation of human nature, as these unfold in the practical act of the species' self-constitution

Froe to early nuclei of agriculture, as many authors do (Peter Bellwood, Paul K Benedict, Colin Renfrew, Robert Blust, ae of hue is not a passive witness to human dynauage and e The origins of language, as , lie in the real the biological condition of the individual interacting with the outside world are extremely iuage are constitutive of culture The act of writing, together with that of tool- its own nature Considerations regarding culture are accordingly no less iical identity of the hu

Let us point to soical factor We know that the number of sounds, for instance, that huh their h

However, out of this practically infinite nuhtly es, as opposed to the nues While it is iical make-up of individuals and the structure of their experience are projected onto the systee, it would be unwise not to account for this projection as it occurs at every moment of our existence When humans speak, muscles, vocal chords, and other anato to the characteristics of each People's voices differ in h voice alone is difficult When we speak, our hearing is also involved In writing, as well as in reading, this participation extends to sight Other dyna, heartbeat, and perspiration come into play as well What we are, do, say, write, or read are related

The experience behind language use and the biological characteristics of people living in a language differ to such an extent that almost never will similar events, even the sie (or in any other sign system, for that matter) by different persons

The first history, or the personal inquiry into the probable course of past events, rests upon orality, integrates myths, and ends up with the atteraphers try to reconstruct genealogies of persons involved in real events (wars, founding of clans, tribes, or dynasties, for exa, the epics attributed to Homer, or the book of Genesis in the Bible) In the transition frooi), hus acquired e call today consciousness of ti to the sa of social experience, froion, illness) to very complex rules (of ceremony, power, military conduct) is the result of hue The tension between orality and writing is, respectively, an expression of the tension between anew for ties, this is raphic writing, which unifies the many dialects used in spoken Chinese, preserves concreteness, and as such preserves tradition as an established way of relating to the world Within the broader Chinese culture, every effort was made to preserve characteristics of orality The philosophy derived froh the fundamental principle of Tao in Confucianis knowledge

Unlike spoken language, writing is fairly recent So did not appear until 4,000 to 3,000 BCE; others extend the time span to 6,000 BCE and beyond To repeat: It is notor literacy It y, especially when new findings, or better interpretations of old findings, are not at hand or are not yet sufficiently convincing The so-called boundaries between oral and post-oral cultures, as well as between non-literate, literate, and what are called post-literate, or illiterate, cultures are difficult to deterhly unlikely that we shall ever be able to discover whether ilyphs) antecede or co notation, drawings, etchings, and rituals-with their vast repertory of articulated gestures-were relatively si ascertain that without the word, there could be no ies preceded the written and probably even the spoken Many speculate on the e, before or after writing I suggest that primitive human expression is syncretic and polymatic framework of self-constitution that ascertains multiplicity

Individual and collective orize the experience trans (priories Researchers point to the eneral way-to successful action, and to words as pertaining to the oals, etc) Speculation goes as far as to suggest that these huly dependent on artifactual means of notation As a consequence, they relied less on the functions of the brain's right hemisphere In turn, this resulted in decreased acuteness of these functions So, a perspective and horizon of the world They are probably wrong because they apply an explanatory e (product of a civilization of literacy) on a very unsettled human condition In order to achieve some stability and permanence, as dictated by the instinctive survival of the species, this huns still unsettled in a language The very objects of direct experience were the signs This experience eventually settled and becah the e is not a direct expression of experience, as the sae is also less co to it Before any conversation can take place, so else-experience within the species-is shared and constitutes the background for future sharing Face to face encounter, scavenging, hunting, fishi+ng, finding natural forer were related only to survival, but e is the ultie

Tools, cave paintings, primitive forms of notation, and rituals addressed collective memory, no matter how limited this collective was Words addressed individual memory and became means of individual differentiation Individual needs and motivations need to be understood in their relation to those of groups Signs and tools are elerated in differentiation To understand the interplay between thenitive research of distributed and centralized authority Tools are of a distributed nature They are endlessly changed and tested in individual or cooperative efforts Signs, as they result fro but the individual As such, they are associated with incipient centralized authority These remarks define a conceptual viewpoint rather than describe a reality to which none of us has or can have access But in the absence of such a conceptual preless

The distinctions introduced above point to the need to consider at least three stages before we can refer to language: 1

integration in the group of one's kind in direct for objects froestures, satisfying instinctual drives; 2

awareness of differences and similarities expressed in direct ways: comparison by juxtaposition, equalization by physical adjustment; 3

stabilization of expressions of sa them part of the practical act

Froree of generality, directness and i, together with rules for generating coherent expressions, were accuainst an infinity of concrete situations, related to signs still used (objects, sounds, gestures, colors, etc), and freed fro All these means of expression were socialized in the process of production (the , etc) and self-reproduction until they becas and actions-this language re This reiven, an entity in itself, a reality to fear or enjoy, to use or compare one's actions to the actions of others The ti-hundreds of thousands of years (if we can ie of the instant) The process is probably siht posture It included biological changes connected to the self- constitution of the species and its survival within a fraed the natural as the object of action and even change