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

["James Piat" <piat1 AT bellsouth.net>]

Percy says in several places that Susanne Langer dropped the ball and he intended to pick it up -- he says it in the essays, the conversations, etc.  But only one place do I recall that he actually says WHAT she dropped -- what she missed.  I believe it was early in my reading, in "Message," but I don't remember what it was and I'm going to have to go back and look.  I thought someone else might have been familiar with it.

 

Dear Karey,

 

Perhaps the passage you are looking for is on page 220 of _The Message in the Bottle_ . A footnote in Percy's essay "Culture: The Antinomy of the Scientific Method".

 

"As Susanne Langer says, we may, if we like, interpret language as a sequence of events entailing signs, sounds in the air, vibrations of ear drums, nerve excitation, brain events, response and so on.  All  this does happen.  But something has been left out and it is the most important thing of all. It is that the symbol symbolizes something." 

 

Cheers,

Jim Piat