Hi,

I'm new, at least here.

Rather than lurk first before you speak I'll speak first. I tried that and
it's rather inefficient. Mine's a quicker way to test the waters, with a
whole foot and not one toe. I'm not very interested in taxonomics or memes
and more into how could an artificial system of communication be invented so
we no longer needed body language, mime and ritual as found for primitive
dances, hunting and the like early pastimes, as for instance the Cave
paintings show.

I've written a book "The Glue & Solvent of the Universe" NZ '98 about one
phase in the change from hominid to humanoid and about the means of
representation which has to be devised before applied to a means to
communication and thus well prior to the recorded language. I just read we
are now allowed to go back to 300,000 BCE as to the use of language, which
suits me fine. E-mail copies are in Word 97, W95, .rtf at 570 Kb. zipped

I'll open up this can of worms with some points about the linear and
non-linear by way of both language and thinking. I think non-linearly and
translate my 'thoughts' into words rather than use words to think. This
enabled me to find in my head and confirm from myths and epics that the
means to representation is non-linear and better named art. IMHO we are
born that way and word language is an acquired taste we have to learn and
the non-linear we are born with. This has more or less been the bane of my
life, and, as I discovered surfing Internet, that of quite a few other folks
as it renders us and intellectuals reasonably incommunicado, although I do
have an honours degree in English, my sort of 2nd language.

In a way this is confirmed from Indian logic and rhetoric as it has
aesthetics in common to all the arts and that includes language as both
Chinese and Japanese art shows, whereas since Aristotle aesthetics belongs
to art and rhetoric to language. Yet, for both cases, it defines as the art
of proportion. And, although we are taught a grammar we are seldom taught
how to play piano tune variations with 'syntax' and the Middle Ages taught
this as turning sentences or playing with topoi. I am beginning to lean
towards the notion that
academic linear arrived along with or soon after Universal Education.
Universities took off around the 8th to 11th Century AD and when newly named
Emperors and Ceasars vied with the Pope and clerics for "authority".

In fact it is the case that our body's mind 'thinks' or data crunches in 3D
both inside and out and thus the linear is a reduction by way of word
strings, however ordered, and renders the 'intellect' word and concept
bound, thereby disabled from recognising the mappa mundi or world map we use
to locate, taxonomically in space and time by way of forms, as well as
update in real time without words or thought.

Further, although this is an archaic device or invention it is still very
present in our modern minds, and, once so recognised the evidence is
everywhere around in how we deploy language today Example: Mrs and Mr Jones
lost their house by fire at 10 am on Sunday last. They live at Blooblah
street number zillion and much miss their pet dog. I'm sure you can fill in
the rest of the journalism all by yourself. But academe does exactly the
same thing. Does or does not the tail waggle of this tick entitle it to be
called a tick? Substitute languages and dialects with variations and we have
the same problem at hand. Having so categorised it, does this tell us
anything much to understand by?

Now we'll see whether that one flies or lead balloons.
PS: ? How does this pass for a mockup of linear writing?

Adrian