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percy-l - Re: [percy-l] Language is an airplane

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Subject: Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion on Walker Percy

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  • From: Ken Armstrong <armstron AT ohiou.edu>
  • To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>, <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] Language is an airplane
  • Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 08:36:19 -0400

Just a few observations interspersed.

At 09:52 PM 5/10/2007, Michael Larson wrote:

Robert Eckert states:

"The process of natural selection which allows a creation to continue is the mechanism the Creator uses to create creature speciation.

[...]

We cannot finally know how we were created."


These two statements seem to be in conflict. If we cannot know how we were created, then we can claim neither evolution in general nor natural selection in particular as the method by which God created us.

If evolution is established scientifically, it seems it can be subjected to the "if...then" statement that Robert makes. Observing (a triadic activity, after all) and knowing how are not necessarily the same things. I don't think he means his claim to fall under natural science.


Robert goes on to state:

"Man does become a unique being at the crossing of the triadic threshold.

The reason we become god like is, to me, because only God and man can synthesize triadic relations.That is, God speaks the universre into being, we speak our mental, cultural world into being.



It is true that we are unique among material creatures by way of language, but the function of language is strained, I think, by suggesting that it makes us co-creators.

But the suggestion was not that we are co-creators. One creates the universe and all being, the other creates its culture.


A novelist, for instance, can do no more than signify the objective creation; he cannot actually call it into being. Even Tolkien, who invented in detail the idea of Middle Earth, does not cause it to actually exist.

True, but neither was that the claim. It seems as though you are fighting a straw man. Do we create? Are we unique among the creatures? If the answers are yes and we are careful to say one kind of creating is not the equal of the other, I'm not sure what the problem is.

Cheers,
Ken Armstrong



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