Notes for LATERAL LINE: Introduction

The introduction will be based on the following initial concept.

Just like the senses of hearing, sight, etc., language (as Pinker more or less proves) is not culturally made but genetically programmed to develop along very predictable lines given a normal environment. It does not, as sight and hearing do not, develop in radically different ways depending on environment or conscious effort. To put it simply, it either develops in its intended way, or not at all.

My argument will be, moreover, that the social structure of language practice (as well as its grammar) is also genetically programmed. The social or cultural organization of language practice cannot be infinitely molded, but must follow certain basic forms if language as a human sense is to retain its physiologically meaningful function. Language, then, is a programmed sense--morever, like the lateral line, it is an interactive faculty that presupposes and depends on group behavior. Language is not only a sense, but is a sense that can only function when used in concert by a group organized around the social behavior integral to that sense.

This basic idea--the "lateral line" idea--will be what I call "the communicative hypothesis of language." In the introduction, I will assert that there is an opposing hypothesis, under which humans have lived despite the lack of solid scientific evidence for the last 10,000 years or so (what we call history). (In fact, this opposing hypothesis is not really even considered a hypothesis because no other alternative has been put forward.) This other paradigm comprises an array of humanist and social-science approaches, but will be named in the book as "the canonical hypothesis." (The instrumental hypothesis?) It contends that human language is an art, an instrumental faculty, which humans can use to re-shape their nature and culture according to their own will. (Schopenhauer, etc.) This theory has been supported by and manifested in developments including classical Greece, the Enlightenment, monotheism, capitalism--in short, all the achievements of human art, instrumental progress, and technology that have taken place in the period of history (the last ten thousand years).

Most of the book will discuss how various cultural models contain consistent errors where they are based on or assume an instrumental paradigm of expression, and how these errors could be corrected by an analysis based on a communicative paradigm.

The areas focused on will be:

1. Economics

2. Education and the Academy

3. Evolution: Linguistics, Neuroscience, and Behavior

4. Personal Relationships

5. The Mass Media and the Internet

6. Politics

7. Literature.

Each of these seven cultural areas will be looked at in order to outline both how they are affected by the instrumental paradigm and how they could be improved by the communicative paradigm.

A final chapter will be a Conclusion, in which alternative proposals for organizing a discourse-culture will be proposed. The contradictions of one person writing a book on this theory will be discussed, as will the non-profit nature of the book’s sales, and the concept of leadership as opposed to permanent expertise.

If space permits (because a short book of fifty to sixty thousand words is desirable for several reasons) certain of the most significant objections will be examined. Among these concerns would be the issues of gradualism, cultural imperialism or homogeneity, relations among differing worldview-communities; as well as the issue of scientific proof and proper scientific method. Many of the potential objections will be dealt with in the the seven main chapters.

This may lead to the following general plan: ten chapters, including an introduction, seven topic chapters, one objection chapter, and one conclusion chapter. If each chapter were five to six thousand words (twenty to twenty-five pages), the goal of manuscript length could be easily accomodated.