Introduction
Much ado has been made about the translatability of one language to another. Many thoughts, essays, lectures, and books have been entirely dedicated to the subject. Perhaps one of the most important questions pertaining to this is what is language? At the root of the subject, a starting place for discourse, we can look at Webster's dictionary. The first definition is "The words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a considerable community;" another definition is, "a formal system of signs and symbols including rules for the formation and transformation of admissible expressions."1 The last definition is important because of the key word "symbol," which is instrumental in defining language. For what is a symbol but a thing which stands for a thing but is not that thing itself. Is that not what language is? The words we speak and write do not mean anything in themselves and are no more than spoken or scribbled gibberish. It is only through the concepts and images that they represent that language and words have any meaning.
What I wish to propose, is that there is an underlying biomechanical pre-language that exists as an undercurrent to our accepted abilities of cognition. All of the toils and trials and thought that goes into the work of people such as Lyotard, Fynsk, and Heidegger serve to do much to the explanatory discourse on language as such, and I do wish to discuss their work, but I think that in a sense of understanding, that that discourse in general should be secondary to the concern of this biomechanical pre-language. I believe Naoki Sakai began to reach for this concept, but turned away in a post-Descartesian way: where Descartes says that all he can say with assurance is that he exists—or that beyond that, all he that he knows is that he knows nothing, a philosophy that does not effectively work in the "real" world, so we live on the assumptions that our senses relay—thus I think Sakai edged away from going further into any discourse that would have bordered on this pre-language, instead delving back into what we consider "real" language, to better deal with the reality with which it would appear we are forced to deal.
To make my main statement of counter-point against these other noted personages, I wish to display the actual biomechanical processes that are involved in language, proven and backed by current biopsychology models. By moving the discourse to the biophysical, I want to first establish the biochemistry and biophysiology of current language, to delve at the undercurrent of what is therein happening in the actual functions of the brain. Then through this lens I want to view these other authors, to display what this hypothesis gains in the difference.
The Mechanics of Language
The language process can work in one of four different ways: it can be spoken, it can be heard, it can be written, and it can be read. Any one of these examples will suffice for this point, as the only difference is whether our senses hear or see the input before we speak, or whether the language comes out of our own brains directly. So for the purpose of this discourse we will take the example of hearing and resounding, the creation of a discussion, communication through spoken language.
So then, how do we hear? The soundwaves generated by whatever it is that we "hear" vibrate through the air or any other medium and strike our eardrum, causing it to vibrate. The eardrum is connected to three tiny bones, the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup, which work in concert to convert the soundwaves into a series of strong vibrations in the fluid-filled canals of the cochlea. These vibrations displace the hair cells along what is called the basilar membrane (which is still inside of the cochlea). The hair cells, acting like the touch receptors on your skin, are connected to neurons whose axons are a part of the auditory nerve.2 Impulses are then transmitted along this nerve through the medulla and pons of the hindbrain, to the temporal lobe, via the reticular formation, a diffuse set of neurons extending from the medulla into the forebrain. The data spins towards several parts of the forebrain, foremost the temporal lobe—which is responsible for the sense of hearing—although impulses are also sent to the parietal lobe, as part of that is responsible for orientation of the body in space (determining where the sound is coming from, comparing which ear received the soundwaves first).3
The data sent to the temporal lobe is then more specifically transferred to an area in the cerebral cortex's left hemisphere temporal lobe, which is an important area for language comprehension. This part of the brain evaluates what was heard, determines if it was language heard and if it can understand the words spoken; if not, the brain shunts the information to different cognitive sectors of the brain. If it is indeed a recognizable language, this part of the brain disseminates the meaning of the sounds it heard and sends this information to the left frontal lobe, an area which is key for human language production. This decides what is to be said.4
The prefrontal cortex, which is vital in planning movements (in this case, speech movements), sends the data through the basal ganglia of the midbrain—also instrumental in controlling movements—and back through the medulla and pons which also control motor control of the head, including speech.5 Motor neurons are sent from these locations to move the muscles in the jaw and tongue, as well as to activate the voice box; the spinal cord sends more motor neurons down through the abdomen, and to the diaphragm and the lungs, both of which are involved when a person speaks.
In listing the bioprocesses through which all humans act, I want to demonstrate a basic starting point: a shared commonalty. While genetic structures are not identical in different people of differing genders or races or so forth, the genetic structure does still have a similarity which causes humans to all perfect the same act of speaking with the same biological mechanisms, regardless of any other genetic or biological differences, or for that matter, regardless of any other social changes in upbringing or culture.
While I do not wish to rehash the nature versus nurture debate, and indeed I believe both have a lasting impact on development, it is necessary to touch on the subject. One thing is sure, pure upbringing cannot override simple biological programming. Several psychologists since the 1920s have tried raising chimpanzees and monkeys with the same exact upbringing that they gave their children. The purpose was to try and teach language to the animals, thinking that given the same environment to learn in, that they would be able to pick up the ability of human language. The experiments, beyond simple word repetition, all failed in teaching them how to link words together or develop any level of abstract comprehension.6
What I am trying to establish is that there is a common biological ability of humans to observe what they see and process the data that they sense in one way or another: something that all humans have as a common backdrop, regardless of cultural or racial differences. Thus, due to this key biomechanical similarity, there is an underlying communality in thought processes and comprehension of stimuli. Yet the final expression of this theory relies upon metaphysics, because the solution to the theory is an unproven step in human evolution—but at the same time, one that does not seem irrational. If person A inputs a field of data and wishes to relay that information to person B, the language by which people communicate would seem only to be a hindrance. If that data could be transmitted directly, there would be no room for miscommunication or misinterpretation, because the very same data that person A sensed, would be directly translated to person B without misinterpretation or bias. Yet before further detailing this kind of an experience, I would like to view the initial theories through other studies of language, contrasting their own debates with mine.
An
Analysis of Language
In his book, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, Jean-Francois Lyotard raises many questions about communication, phrases, and interlocution. He believes that, "Communication is the exchange of messages."7 He means this to be through language: verbal language, body language, or what have you. Yet again I wish to reiterate the possibility of biomechanical means, whether through the transmission of electrical or chemical impulses, or through as yet discovered means (let us not forget the tendency of science to disbelieve everything it cannot substantively prove, which it is then forced to accept years later: i.e. the world is round, the earth does revolve around the sun, quantum physics, etc.). Regardless, this would be the essential exchange of messages that Lyotard wishes to define communication as.
Lyotard also discusses the problem of "regulation" or what we may call bias in interlocution. He says:
The problem of language, thus posited in terms of communication, leads to that of the needs and beliefs of interlocutors. The linguist becomes an expert before the communication arbitration board. The essential problem he or she has to regulate is that of sense as a unit of exchange independent of the needs and beliefs of interlocutors.8
This refers again to the problem of bias in the process of language transference. It espouses the problem that perhaps words are lies to the truths they pretend to expose. Any words that are filtered through our mental capabilities of sense interpretation are also affected in our judgment by our past experiences and preconceptions. Thus, two people seeing the same event, may in good faith tell two different versions of the event to a third party, whether it be limitations of language, or such aforementioned bias. Yet regardless of how we choose to interpret the data earned, it is still that same data gathered that we would wish to be transmitted to the other person. In this instance, as in others—as shall be shown—language only serves as a flimsy bridge linking two people over a simple truth.
Lyotard speaks of another problem regarding language in what he calls, "The Differend:"
The differend is the unstable state and instant of language wherein something which must be able to be put into phrases cannot yet be. This state includes silence, which is a negative phrase, but it also calls upon phrases which are in principle possible.9
The problem in communication (the exchange of messages) comes through the fallacies of language. The state of the differend is one that comes from the awkwardness of language, the inherent gaps in communication that the language itself has as unforeseen consequences of its own inadequacy. Again, this comes from the symbolic nature of the language; if communication, as it were, had a pre-language that did not rely upon this kind of a symbolic thing, but on the thing itself, the relay of data would be that much more accurate, accessible, and powerful.
It is interesting, however, that Lyotard brings up the concept of the idiom. In it, he prefers that this is a vital key to moving around the silences or gaps in communication as such.
This is when the human beings who thought they could use language as an instrument of communication learn through the feeling of pain which accompanies silence (and of pleasure which accompanies the invention of a new idiom), that they are summoned by language, not to augment to their profit the quantity of information communicable through existing idioms, but to recognize that what remains to be phrases exceeds what they can presently phrase, and that they must be allowed to institute idioms which do not yet exist.10
Again, we speak of what "cannot be said." Yet it is not that we cannot think this or know this, but cannot say this. It is almost like people who have sustained damage to the left frontal lobe, the part of the mind that controls language production. It is not so much that the impulses in the rest of their brain don't work and they don't know what to think, but that they literally don't know what to say to express those feelings or thoughts.
While the idiom does bring about interesting capabilities in its influence of art, that can be dealt with later. As for its purpose in communication, it is only a hindrance. It is used as a symbol of a symbol, representing the thing which represents a thing of which neither are. It is a terribly ineffective method of communication, no doubt why the concept of the idiom does not always carry over in translation. Often people speak in idioms when not locked in a differend, only to "change up" the conversation, to not repeat the same phrases over and over, bored with the apparent monotony of language. However, their idiom fails to convey their point to the other person, and they are forced to explain in regular terms anyway. At any glance, it seems obvious that the idiom, as a tool of communication is not effective.
Another issue is that of speed. When people type, perhaps they "hear" the words in their heads, or "speak" to themselves in their minds. Yet often, if a person is reading a source, and copying the words verbatim, their fingers will type the words as fast as they are read, not allowing any time to actually process what individual letters were being typed. The human internal processes, far advanced beyond that of "language" works at a speed, with which the language-oriented brain cannot keep up. No one could have recite the individual letters in one's head as fast as they were typed. And while it is true that one may not recognize the letters as individuals, but as parts of a whole (as constructed by language structure), it is still necessary for one's fingers to hit each individual key for each individual letter. I believe this points to an underlying current of brain speed, of which is only hindered by the necessity to process thoughts through language. The speed at which a communication without language could function is tantalizingly staggering.
The mind does not really work through visual or aural data, but through impulses. If one was to relocate one's self from their office to a living room sofa and observe one's surroundings one might see, for example, a brown coffee table with a stack of books on it. Across the room one might see a television on a brown wooden stand and to the left a bookcase filled with books and movies. The images are all clear in one's mind, as the visual data is received and interpreted. And if one closed one's eyes and pictured the same scene, one could almost see it, but there would be key differences. If one stared at the stack of books before one, perhaps that person would know that if he or she read the top book's binded side, it would read "ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE Martin Heidegger." Yet in one's mind's eye, one would not see that. The person would know the words existed and even think them, but even focusing hard, one would not be able to actually see them. One could see a vague stack of books, but one would not actually be able to read the words, without forming each letter as if writing them, and even then, one would lose the other letters as he or she focused on the new ones. In the same way, when one stares at a bookshelf, one cannot so much as see the separation between the books, as one knows it exists. One would only see a mass of shapes in one's brain, not the individual, distinct books. Try as one might, one could not separate that mass of shapes, even though the person might know that they were indeed separate.
Psychological testing has proved these principles. When Roger Shepard and Jacqueline Metzler conducted tests verifying or denying that mental images were the same as "real" vision, their tests proved that viewing mental images is at least partly like real vision. Later, when Hinton conducted similar tests, it was further found that people could not always get answers correct when performing tasks that relied on mental imagery.11
The point at which I'm trying to arrive at is our internal mind processes do not work strictly in the way that our outward senses do. I am not trying to suggest that our mind is not as reliable as our senses, but rather the inverse, that by filtering data after we've reviewed it in our brains with the necessity of having to understand it in those sensory terms, and not just as the raw data that it is, we are slowed. We are slowed even further by the necessity of having to move that interpretation through the extrapolation of language.
It is this relation between the person and language that is often the question, as it is for Christopher Fynsk, in his book Language and Relation . . . that there is language. And while it is not this relation that I want to associate with, but rather disassociate, I still feel an inclination to at least explain further the need for doing so. Fynsk's first few chapters are dedicated to the criticism and explanation of Heidegger. To interpret language through this Heideggerian lens, Fynsk writes:
We are to think language from out of itself—proceeding from language and not approaching language from our position as theoretical subjects.
To approach language in itself, he [Heidegger] suggests, we must ask how language is as language or comes about as language. Heidegger's response to this question comes immediately. Language is language, he says, and explicates this apparently tautological phrase by asserting that language speaks.12
For what I have proposed, and for what I continue to propose, this seems to be ridiculous. Heidegger and Fynsk wish to move away from language as a means of representation and the object of representation, yet language should not be considered anything else but representation. Fynsk further says that, "Thought must allow language to speak, and this means that the language of thought must answer to language."13 This almost diametrically opposes all that I have written here. I do not think that thought must allow language to speak, but rather as it exists now, that language is the only way that thought can speak. Thus, to say that thought must answer to language is preposterous. If language is a barrier of communication for the biomechanical processes that operate in our brains and is for us simply a way of conveying those mental impulses that all persons have in common, it only appears that language is necessary because no other viable means of communication has been exhibited or otherwise quantitatively proven; this is not to say that one could not exist.
As I have mentioned before, science is notoriously unreliable in setting paradigms of reality, with the one exception that it is always theirs. There is no acceptable reality except through the bounds of such said science's boundaries. Yet these boundaries are constantly being moved, pushed, shoved, and stretched, as new discoveries arise and yesterday's myth becomes today's fact (or the converse). Thus, to limit a philosophical discussion to the physical or scientific and exclude the metaphysic closes off an entire section of human evolution known as possibility. While there are realities subject to the existence of the post-Descartesian thought that we must deal with what we sense, and what we are told is real, where then is the room for imagination and invention? If all humans were to never think beyond what is, to what could be, how would humanity evolve? If the populace as a whole was afraid to go beyond the accepted norms of reality and so-called science, how would anyone discover anything new? We would not. Thus, I postulate a solid reasoning for this entire argument to reach into the metaphysical, to stretch the limits of all our conceptions.
Keeping all of this in mind, and returning to Fynsk, there is one more point of his that I wish to address. Regarding speech and language, he writes, "The purely spoken is the poem."14 This brings us back to the idiom problem of Lyotard. However, I think this is more easily dealt with than some of the other concepts. As with the idiom, the poem does not exist as an efficient method of communication. I do think that this is an arguable point; more often than not, the talent of the point of a poem needs be analyzed before the actual point or points can be discerned. Yet, it does have value as a piece of art. It is generally acknowledged that photographs of the ocean are intensely more accurate than the best painting of the ocean, yet that does not make it more artful. I would not propose that this biomechanical pre-language presents a work of art, but rather an efficacy of communication.
However, this does unwittingly bring about a here before unasked question. If there is no language as such, corresponding to this biomechanical pre-language, then how would people convey what is now written? It is a very important question, but not an unanswerable one. Arguably, that the very same stimuli that would be given and received in such a communication that is here proposed would be duplicable in stable technology. That is, whatever triggers the patterns and functions in human biophysiology that is what persons wish to convey, could be triggered by a storable function of technology. In a sense, it would be akin to a computer downloading data. Thus, the wisdom and insights of our past scholars would not be lost, nor would perhaps even the conventional popularized sense of the storyteller. It would create an entirely different world, but not one that is unfeasible.
The question of different worlds reminisces to problems envisioned by Martin Heidegger in his work, On The Way To Language. Indeed, he often thought of those representing different languages as having alien thoughts to each other, thoughts that were untranslatable. This is made clear in his chapter, "A Dialogue On Language: between a Japanese and an Inquirer:"
I: The name, "aesthetics" and what it names grow out of European thinking, out of philosophy. Consequently, aesthetic consideration must ultimately remain alien to East-asian thinking.
J: You are right, no doubt.15
It is this string which he wishes to further develop throughout this dialogue between himself and Professor Tezuka. It continues when he states that "a true encounter with European existence is still not taking place, in spite of all assimilations and intermixtures." The following answer from the Japanese is that it "Perhaps cannot take place."16 And thus they are suggesting an inherent incompatibility between human languages. Yet they are also alluding to an incompatibility in thought patterns in human cultures.
Tezuka says that during discussion, "The languages of the dialogue shifted everything into European."17 By "European" he means to say European thought: that by switching languages, one would have to change modes of thought. Heidegger adds soon thereafter, that "Europeans presumably dwell in an entirely different house than Eastasian man . . . so, a dialogue from house to house remains nearly impossible."18 Again we are confronted with the impossibility of translation.
Lastly, Heidegger listens to Tezuka's opinion of translatability, as it therein relates to forming these different 'houses' or supposed thought patterns.
J: And while I was translating, I often felt as though I were wandering back and forth between two different language realities such that at moments a radiance shone on me which let me sense that the wellspring of reality from which those two fundamentally different language arise was the same.
I: You did not, then seek for a general concept under which both the European and the Eastasian languages could be subsumed.
J: Absolutely not.19
This concretes the point that Heidegger is trying to make that different languages are representative of different thought patterns or that the different cultures breed different ideas, inaccessible by persons of foreign nations or cultures. Yet it can be counter-posited that it is not the thought patterns of differing cultures that limit the communication between the two. Rather, it is the nature of the languages themselves which are unable to communicate the ideas the persons wish to convey. It is the symbolized confabulations known as "language" that preclude communication with any amount of efficacy. It is already obvious that humankind all shares the same biomechanical responses to what we could call language or pre-language; the physical, biological forms of communication are always the same for all persons. The only thing that could possibly affect this arrangement is social upbringing. Yet I do not think any amount of cultural influence would preclude the fact that certain parts of the brain register increased electronic activity in response to speaking or comprehending speech. If the same processes occur in the brain, that would still allow for the same capability of this biomechanical pre-language in all persons. Thus, this would defeat the possibility of existing in these "different houses of being" as Heidegger proposes, at least as far as regarding thought and not language. And, perhaps the best way to shy away from Heidegger's theories, which stand in conflict those proposed here, is to examine Naoki Sakai's work, Translation and Subjectivity.
In the introduction to his composite work, Sakai wishes to address many of the characteristics of language and translatability, as that is key to his work. Part of the unique nature of language is startlingly revealed when Sakai says that "Untranslatability does not exist before translation: translation is the a priori of the untranslatable."20 This is such an important statement exactly because it elucidates the fact that all of the problems with language that we have here for discussed are the postcedent of a translatable "language." This supports exactly the kind of conclusion that can be drawn regarding human communication. If untranslatability does in fact follow translation, that dictates that there is an extant level of communication which is translatable by nature, which could be posited as a pure means of communication: arguably an electrical or chemical biomechanical communication.
Another crucial point brought up by Sakai is that of what he calls the "homolingual address." This he defines as:
A regime of someone relating herself or himself to others in enunciation whereby the addresser adopts the position representative of a putatively homogeneous language society and relates to the general addressees, who are also representative of an equally homogeneous language community.21
This
definition takes on a different meaning in Sakai's context than it does here.
Yet that is again because Sakai is forced again to deal with language as
it is known to exist due to this post-Descartesian factor that has already
been discussed. Yet not giving into this factor and delving into the metaphysics,
this homolingual address as such can be seen as the ideal, the goal towards
which all forms of communication aim towards. Sakai himself does seem to
grasp this, although he retreats before delving into the actual once again—a
worthy study in itself, simply not the focus of this work. He says,
"Communication is not associated with writing, inscription, or even 'exscription'
but with communion in the homolingual address."22 And it is exactly
this communion that I have been trying to get to all along.
Sakai
hits on another key point when he says that:
We may as well draw attention to the mundane insight that communication fails all the time, not necessarily because of the gap between linguistic communities, but also because of the fact that communication takes place only as "exscription."23
This postulates the idea that language itself is responsible for failure in communication, not just the inadequacy of language translations. Now this is an important distinction from any other specific that has been offered thus far. For while yes, translating from French to English may prove impossible in totality, so might English to English. One might start with the concept that there are different dialects of a language that are different, and almost unintelligible to each other, such as Parisian French to Quebecois French to Caribbean French; however that may just be an injustice to the term "same language," as perhaps even different dialects of the same 'language' truly posit their own "languages" as such.
Let us then take the example of two persons brought up in the same town in the same state and the same country. No, rather let us say two siblings brought up by the same parents. No, let us go even further and say two identical twins, brought up by the same parents, in the same household, at the same time, living under the same rules. Surely they would be completely understandable to each other if culture was different for creating different languages and different thoughts behind the language. Yet this is not true. Even for them there will still be times when they cannot express themselves properly to each other, when they would not know what to say, or would not know how to say it.
Now Sakai, as he works through his opening, states that the aforementioned homolingual address must be evaded. What he searches for instead is a heterolingual address, of which he says:
The heterolingual address does not abide by the normalcy of reciprocal and transparent communication, but instead assumes that every utterance can fail to communicate because heterogeneity is inherent in any medium, linguistic or otherwise.24
Here is the point where Sakai begins to retreat due to what I have dubbed the post-Descartesian factor. Again, though, I understand Sakai was moving his work in another direction. Yet I believe nonetheless that several of his insights are useful in a variety of ways. Whether he sensed the same thing that I am trying to reveal I cannot say, but regardless, his work has led to the path explored here. Thus, I would like to cite his words one more time. "Translation is an instance of continuity in discontinuity and a poietic social practice that institutes a relation at the site of incommensurability."25 To break down this phrase is to once again to point to the insight of Sakai. By reading between the lines of his work we are unlocking the sorts of pre-language that I would posit and that Sakai may have alluded to. "Translation is the instance of continuity in discontinuity." In other words, the act of making communication possible is the instance of "continuity" or the restoring of the ability to communicate which should be natural to all humans, but is inhibited by language, or "discontinuity." It is "a poietic social practice," of course translation as clumsy as it is, serves a very noble purpose to communication, akin to a temporary bandage on a wound, one that must ultimately be disregarded upon healing of the wound. Poietic it certainly is "at the site of incommensurability," where "language" fails us, forming a "relation." A relation that enables us to understand each other nonetheless in this temporary fashion, begging for a full recovery, that of a kind of physiological, biomechanical pre-language, one that does not rely upon the inadequacies and multiplicities of 'language' or necessitate translation as such.
Expanding Scientific Knowledge
One final reservation that may still exist concerning this pre-language is the transmission of impulses. There are several examples already in nature that would arise to give credence to not only the possibility, but the plausibility of such an occurrence.
The first option is that of the kind of chemical bio-impulses that make up the same or similar consistencies with pheromones or odors. Pheromones have been long associated with animals, but have only recently been admitted to have an effect in human physiology. An expert and author on the subject, James Kohl, has noted that
Mammalian pheromones are social environmental stimuli that appear to activate gene expression in gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) neurosecretory cells of hypothalamic and of extrahypothalamic tissue in the brain -- an organ that is essential to any organ system involved in behavior.26
Kohl also explains that there is a neuroendocrine sequence that may allow human pheromones to influence human behavior. From his review comes evidence of the following:
The early prenatal migration of GnRH neurosecretory neurons establishes neural substrates. These substrates appear to enable human olfactory pathways to exhibit sexually dimorphic specificity to social environmental chemical stimuli and to exhibit the ability to transduce these chemical signals or pheromones.27
To further delineate the nature of human pheromones, Kohl also explains the motor systems as such in that:
Human pheromones appear to activate genes in GnRH neurons and to influence GnRH pulsatility and gonadotropin secretion in a manner that is consistent with other mammalian models . . . GnRH pulsatility directs the concurrent maturation of the neuroendocrine, central nervous, and reproductive systems via the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axes. Pheromonally induced alterations in GnRH pulsatility allow for a life-long causal linkage among human pheromones, olfaction, neurotransmission, autonomic responses, luteinizing hormone/follicle stimulating hormone ratios, steroidogenesis, synaptogenesis, synaptolysis, apoptosis, and hormonally induced behavioral changes.28
Studies on pheromones, such as the one detailed above, also evidence the aforementioned subject of scientific vacillation. Before the 1980s, pheromones were not thought to influence or be utilized by humans, rather it was categorized as an animal trait. It is doubtful that this biological function has simply appeared at this point of human evolution. Rather, it is more likely that the possibility of pheromone production was discounted on philosophical grounds and early scientific fallacies: its "existence" denied by a reality given to belief. Nonetheless, this biological function was most likely there all along. This points to the fact that there may well be other traits that lie dormant or undiscovered in the human condition.
As to human pheromones, it was the discovery of the vomeronasal organ (VNO) in humans that begun the research of human pheromones. Neeraja Sankaran had this to add:
This organ is found in most vertebrate animals, acting as a receptor and detector for certain chemicals (that may have no discernible odor) called pheromones that mediate sexual/mating behaviors. In mammals like the rat, the VNO is a pair of small sacs located by the vomer bone behind the nostrils. Standard anatomy textbooks have stated that this organ disappears in humans during embryonic development, but investigations by two separate groups of researchers during the 1980s refuted this claim.
Like the rat VNO, the human organ consists of a pair of sacs that open into two shallow pits on either side of the nasal septum. The sensory cells that line these sacs are different from olfactory cells present in the nose.29
This passage is important because it demonstrates that there is a differentiating nature between odor and pheromones, although nonetheless, the chemical structure of each is transmitted in a similar manner. Both chemicals are transmitted as airborne molecules, far too small to see. Also it shows perhaps the murky area of biological differentiation. What was once considered one sense, modern science slices into two. Thus perhaps the mechanisms in place for a bio-mechanical pre-language are already in place, discovered but misunderstood.
The other concept in transmission for this hypothetical pre-language is one of pure electrical impulses. Just as the human body is accepted today to be able to generate soundwaves which transmit through the air and move outwards, perhaps one day the human body will discover the ability to transmit direct images and concepts through a generation of the kinds of electronic impulses that stimulate brain centers, bypassing the vulgar clumsiness of words. Science does not seem to preclude the existence of a biomechanical pre-language that has been of spoken here, it simply has not proved it yet.
Conclusion
This project is about evolution, dynamism, and entropy; pushing the boundaries of "accepted" thought, and breaking down conventional barriers to language and philosophy. Despite the antagonistic stance this work has necessarily taken against many of the learned scholars cited here, men of great intelligence and vigor, the intent is not to discredit them. Rather, it is to try and see if something can be found beyond the accepted thought, to see if their discourses in themselves are perhaps limiting human potential. The goal then for this work is to try and work a different discourse, to shift the thoughts and ideologies to a realm governed by the new.
By moving the discourse from the physical science and reaching into the metaphysics, the project risks viability, yet science in itself should not be rejected and in fact I turn back to it in the final moments, as it may be necessary to legitimize this work. What I would ask, rather, is that science does not bind this work to conventional borders, and instead of ruling this approach as outside the bounds of science, to rather invite science to reach out its own boundaries, in an attempt to embrace the unknown.
Potential, evolution, and openness: cornerstones of a humankind reaching a new millennium; where we form marriages of science and technology, we forget ourselves; we work to refine our minds and carve our wisdom in books and readings, and in doing so we forget to build the capacity of our bodies beyond simple body building, strength, and toning.
Are then the goals of this work too lofty? Perhaps. Yet if individuals were not willing to push forth with new thoughts, if only to invite new thoughts, if only to push others to their own insights, then humanity would go nowhere. If all this project does is give one person one new thought, then it has succeeded. If it has caused the reader to consider the possibility of this work's authority, then it has succeeded. If it has caused the reader to think and alter his or her overall perception of reality, of the ability of things to be true when they are said not to be, then more so than anything, this work has succeeded.
Bibliography
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2. Kalat, James W, Introduction to Psychology: Third Edition, pg. 134-135. Brooks/Cole Publishing Company: Pacific Grove, 1993.
7. Lyotard, Jean-Francois, The Differend, Phrases in Dispute, translated by Georges Van Den Abbeele, pg. 12. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1988.
11. Kalat, James W, Introduction to Psychology: Third Edition, pg. 262-263. Brooks/Cole Publishing Company: Pacific Grove, 1993.
12. Fynsk, Christopher, Language & Relation . . . that there is language, pg. 18. Stanford University Press: Stanford.
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26. Kohl, James, The Scent of Eros: Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality: An online resource courtesy of James Kohl, "Mammalian Olfactory-genetic-neuronal-hormonal-behavioral reciprocity & human sexuality [www.pheromones.com/pheromones2.html] October 1998
29. Sankaran, Neeraja, The Scientist: The Newspaper for the Life Sciences Professional, "The Science of Sex: What Is It and Who's Doing It?" [euclid.ucsd.edu/~weinrich/theScientist2.html] March 1994.
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