The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 01.

0) Introduction 1

01.0) Introduction
In October 1991, I availed myself of an opportunity to join
The Origin of Writing a friend on a hiking and climbing excursion into a remote
area of coastal British Columbia called Bute Inlet.
by John Morton
This area is so remote that there is no road access. Bute
Copyright 2010; all rights reserved, with the exception Inlet can only be reached by sea and by air. Luckily, we
that members of the First Nations are invited to use my had been invited to accompany two people who lived in
research as they see fit. Vancouver, but who also had a homestead in Bute Inlet.
They were going to be flying in by bush plane, to close
up their homestead for the winter, and then returning to
Vancouver the same way a few days later.

The only settlement currently established in Bute Inlet

centers around a logging camp located there. The main
For Willow;
logging road leading to the head of the Inlet, by way of
And, for a better world. which trees are removed from that territory and taken to
market, also serves as a makeshift gravel runway; and that
is where we somehow landed after an aerial tour of the
surrounding mountains.

This area is dominated by the Homathko Icefield, a huge

glacial expanse that drops from high peaks almost into
the ocean. Mount Waddington, the highest peak in British
Columbia, is just to the north of this rugged country; and
three major rivers empty into the Inlet from the interior.

It was while hiking along a gravel logging road, heading

toward the glaciers edge, that I happened upon the small
artifact which precipitated the research which follows.
Having studied botany while in university, and having
John Morton worked seasonally as a tree planter for decades (my lifetime
97 Reynolds Drive total for trees personally planted is over one million), I was
Brockville, Ontario in the habit of cultivating bonsai trees. As I walked along
Canada K6V 1X2 that logging road, I scanned the loose gravel for interesting
1-613-342-6489 little stones to place with my bonsai trees. Suddenly, one
John@OriginOfWriting.com particular little stone caught my eye; and, I bent down to
LonCayeway@Yahoo.com pick it up.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 01.0) Introduction 2

The top of this little stone, no larger in circumference than

a dime, had a curious circular pattern of marks arrayed
around a central point. It seemed entirely anomalous to any
other stone I had ever seen; and so I slipped it into the change
pocket of my jeans, and continued on my way.

Weeks passed before my mind again turned to this curious

little stone. When I finally did sit down to have a good long
look at it, I began to notice something intriguing. All of the
black marks of surface grain in white quartz matrix of that
stone seemed to have been shaped into tiny but recognizable
images. Further, these small images were themselves grouped
into larger composite image patterns!

I had never heard of such an artifact before. I was

somewhat familiar with petroglyphs (which are images
marked onto large stone surfaces); but, this appeared to be
something very different.

I began to pour through the archaeological and

anthropological texts in the Vancouver Public Librarys
collection, looking for references to such objects. There
was nothing. I visited the Museum of Anthropology at
the University of British Columbia, looking through their
collection and talking to a staff archaeologist. There was
nothing there to indicate that this kind of artifact had ever
been documented; and the person I spoke with dismissed
my inquiries with a cursory look at the artifact, and the
comment: Its just a nice stone.

About a year later, after finding very many more examples

of this kind of artifact, I visited the anthropological museum
at Simon Fraser University. The person I spoke with there
was much more helpful, and showed me around the artifacts
stored in the museums back rooms; but he didnt seem to
have any familiarity with the image writing artifacts that I
showed to him, either. Years later, in 1996, I tried speaking
with people at the National Museum of Man in Hull; but
three trips there, speaking with different people in the
administrative complex, proved futile: apparently, they grew
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 01.0) Introduction
tired of seeing me as quickly as I did with walking all the way
over there from Ottawa.
Yet even after my initial visit to the Museum of
Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, I could
see with my own eyes that there was more to this artifact
than was being admitted by those whom I spoke with; so, I
began to ask Elders of the First Nations about this stone.
My contact with the First Nations of North America began
while I was in high school. The family of one of my friends
had a cottage on an island in the St. Lawrence River which
was part of Akwesasne. While visiting, I had the chance
to hang out with some of the people living there, and very
much enjoyed their company. This is a typical experience
of First Nations hospitality and friendship: so much so that
the younger brother of my friend went on to study law, and
to help the First Nations in the capacity of a lawyer. Stephen
Reynolds is well known for his work on behalf of First Nations
members.
My path lay in a different direction than law school. When
I attended university, it was with the intention of developing
my skills as a writer. In my first year, I took courses in English,
Latin, and philosophy; as well as botany, and astronomy.
At that time, the field of philosophy was dominated by
linguistic analysis; the general agreement being that the best
way to study thought was through a study of the way it is
expressed, in language. That emphasis was shifting toward a
study of neurological processes at about the time when I left
university; but when I started in my study of philosophy, the
language paradigm was still the dominant one. The English
courses I had available to me then had nothing comparable
to that kind of depth in their analytic approaches; so I began
to shift my course selections from the Department of English
into the Department of Philosophy.
During my summers away from school, I raised the tuition
I needed by working in Canadas Yukon and Northwest
Territories. It was while working in Yellowknife (capital of the
Northwest Territories) during the early 1980s that I finally
3
began to realize the situation which members of the First
Nations were facing daily.
I had learned how to develop and print black and white
film in my first year of high school. By the time I reached
university, I had enough experience that I was able to find
summer employment at small publications. I worked for the
Mtis Association of the Western Northwest Territories as the
assistant to Bren Kolson, who edited their newsletter; and
later I worked for the Native Press, when it was being edited
by Dan Mandin. Lee Selleck was in charge of photography
there; and when not involved with a production run of the
newspaper, or working on a news story, I worked away at
helping reduce the backlog of requests for photographic
reprints which came in from various government agencies.
I also helped to catalog the Native Presss photographic
archive. This paper took an active interest in training young
First Nations members living in communities across the
Northwest Territories; and part of that policy included an
outreach program for encouraging young photographers. We
regularly received film shot by young people in their home
communities; and part of my job was to process and contact
print the film being sent in to us.
This opened a window to me on part of Canada that was
being completely excluded from coverage by mainstream
media. For the first time in my life, I was looking directly
at the actual conditions in First Nations communities
throughout the entire Northwest Territories. I was looking
through the eyes of people who were born there, and who
grew up there. I was seeing what they saw every day, in a
way that someone from outside those communities would
otherwise be unable to see.
Returning to university, I began to become more politically
active. I joined the student newspaper as their staff
photographer. I wrote articles, including one which presented
the concept of self determination for the First Nations to
the student body. Therein, I mentioned the effects of the
residential school system upon First Nations members; but
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 01.0) Introduction 4

that was back in 1984, when knowledge of that genocidal

attempt to forcibly assimilate the First Nations was still being
suppressed.

I joined the fledgling Green Party of Canada, serving as an

Official Agent for a candidate in the first Federal election in
which the Greens gained official party status in Canada.

I continued to study philosophy, focusing my attention on

a personal interest in language theory as it applied within
a visual context. Unfortunately, the university I attended
was a small one: not only was it impossible to find courses
in the areas I was personally interested in, it also became
increasingly difficult to find courses I had any interest in at
all. After four intermittent years, the university decided they
had seen enough of me and unceremoniously kicked me out.

Before too long, I ended up working for Greenpeace as

a door-to-door canvasser. I did that in a number of major
Canadian cities, while continuing to study diligently in the
field of philosophy. It was my intention to return at some
point to a larger university than the one I had left behind.

Thus, when I began to inquire about the artifact I had

found in Bute Inlet, I went without hesitation to members
of the First Nations. Some I was able to meet through my
connections with environmental groups; others I came in
contact with through Vancouvers alternative newspaper
NOISE, where I was the photo editor and environmental
columnist.

Through speaking with Elders of the First Nations, and

showing them the little stone I had found, the nature of the
situation I had happened upon became clear to me. This
small stone was readily recognized as something once used
to tell stories with, before Europeans arrived. At that point
in history, however, early missionaries misidentified these
artifacts as gambling dice and banned their possession as
tools of the devil.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 01.0) Introduction
With the introduction of the residential school system, all
aspects of First Nations culture were in effect defined as
virtual crimes: First Nations children who had been taken
from their parents and forced to attend residential schools far
from home were brutally punished for trying to retain their
peoples traditions.
This knowledge was all I needed to strengthen my resolve
to find out everything I could concerning this form of image
writing.
It wasnt long before I realized that examples of the kind of
image writing found on that first small stone I had happened
upon are about as numerous as the stars in the night sky
above. Clearly, documenting individual examples would
never fully define this form of image writing; and this meant
that only a thorough analysis of how these images function
as a form of writing would enable its reconstruction.
Unfortunately, the concepts needed for an understanding
of how graphically-based writing systems work have never
been the focus of sustained study within the philosophy of
language. European writing systems are phonetically-based;
and the primary emphasis within Western approaches to the
philosophy of language has always been to preference speech,
to the virtual exclusion of writing in its own right.
There have been a few notable exceptions to that general
situation; and fortunately, they also happened to be the
philosophers that I had been concentrating on reading.
In retrospect, that is hardly a coincidence, though. My
own studies in philosophy have always been directed by my
interest in writing and photography: the concept of writing
with images is one which I have long considered, even if that
meant being tossed out of university for trying to do what I
wanted to do, instead of what was expected of me.
As a result, I must say that it has been both a joy and an
honor to have had the opportunity to work with the image
5
writing system of the First Nations. I have never ceased to
find this form of writing utterly intriguing; and I have tried to
do it justice in my research.
To that end, I have done my best to approach this form of
writing on its own terms. This has required that I abandon
language concepts commonly used in linguistic research, and
instead try to create concepts derived directly from the way in
which this form of writing functions.
If this has required that I begin the following inquiry as free
from preconceptions as I can manage to be, then that is how I
have needed to proceed.
Proceeding in this manner, I have tried to build the
concepts needed here as I go, using only what was directly
available and clearly evident to me.
The results of that process are nothing like what is currently
found within the general study of linguistic philosophy; but,
that is part of the joy of this process: finding things that are
new. In truth, I really enjoy working to find whatever must be
the case in a given situation under analysis; and then, seeing
what I end up with when I put together new concepts from
these necessarily established components. One never knows
what a new concept will turn out to do until one has put it
together, and had a good look at the other concepts which
come into being along with it. That is what philosophy is all
about; and the fun part is, even if such conclusions do not
correspond to currently accepted wisdom about the nature
of writing, they will still work well: in fact, I think that the
concepts you will find me using herein actually function
better than those found in the commonly accepted wisdom
concerning the nature of writing. This is simply because of
the care I have personally put into taking apart the concepts
I use (to see what they are made of); and the care I have then
taken in putting new concepts together, for the purpose of
this inquiry into the origin and nature of the image writing
traditionally used by the First Nations of North America.
Many philosophers spend their entire lives without ever
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 01.0) Introduction
coming up with even one truly new and unique concept; and,
I have managed to put together several in the course of my
research: so I consider myself quite fortunate in this.
I would at this point like to thank: the members of the First
Nations of North America, who are here formally invited to
make use of my research as they may wish; the Semiotext[e]
and Autonomedia collectives, who published an article on
my preliminary research in the 1994 edition of Semiotext[e]
Canadas; the good people at Scientific American magazine,
whose articles have been very useful to me over the years;
Trillium Health Care Products Manufacturing, where I was
employed from 2004 to 2008 and whereby I was able to
obtain the equipment I needed to put this research together;
and above all, I wish to thank my daughter Willlow.
>>>
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (whom I quote frequently
in this text) speak of philosophy as being constructed upon
a plane of immanence, through which concepts take form.
They describe this plane as being composed of curves, slopes,
and all manner of topological variations; such that, it is often
difficult to say where one part of this plane has ended and
another begun.
This became very evident to me as I tried to subdivide the
various sections of this text into smaller units. It has not
always been completely clear to me where one idea decisively
ended in its development, and another began. Indeed, many
concepts established early in this text are integral parts of
later developments; and with this in mind, it is my intention
to individually number each subsection so that I can directly
reference earlier developments when they again arise later in
the text.
This will occur during a thorough edit of this draft text;
whereupon many individual subsections will without doubt
undergo further revision.
Within each subsection, there are innumerable paragraphs
6
which I will attempt to edit for increased clarity; at present,
an extensive use of colons and semicolons has created
many very long sentences: usually, a single concept is being
articulated, though, so again these questions about the
nature of the philosophical plane of immanence come into
play.
I will be considering this much more closely as I take the
time needed to thoroughly edit this text. This process will
no doubt greatly impact the closing sections of this text. The
question of the grouping patterns found within the image
writing system of the First Nations is in essence exactly that
of the philosophic plane of immanence; so, the conclusions
with which I end this text will be further developed through
this process of editing.
At that point, I will also begin to introduce the body of
my research, which follows from the preliminary studies
contained in this text.
At present, there are a large number of quotes from other
sources used throughout this text. Although it is the accepted
practice to simply paraphrase such sources (which are then
named in passing), I much prefer including actual and full
quotes from works I reference. There are several reasons for
this.
Plato once noted, It is not the quickest eye which
necessarily sees a thing first; and with this in mind, I
must admit to myself that far quicker eyes than mine will
be reading the material I have gathered together in the
course of this philosophic inquiry. I have no doubt that
readers will gain insights I have completely missed, if given
the opportunity to read the material I have referenced
throughout this text. Out of respect to both my readers and to
those whose work I have drawn upon, I have elected to keep
from coming between both as well as I can.
As a result, before this text can be widely distributed,
certain copyright permissions will need to be obtained first. I
have already begun this process, and my initial impression is
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 01.0) Introduction
twofold: first, it is certainly acceptable practice to quote texts
by way of reference in scholarly works; and second, larger
publishing companies seem somewhat unresponsive unless
finished works are being discussed.
My own suspicion is that many of the philosophers whose
works I quote would be openly supportive of this project, were
they still alive. I am sure that a few would have been furious
to find the kind of situation I have been working in the face of
through the course of this philosophic investigation.
As Jacques Derrida noted, the texture of any text is defined
as much by what is included as by what is left out: the
spaces between the threads are as important as the threads
themselves, to use a textile metaphor. I would thus be untrue
to the spirit of philosophy were I to deny my readers an
opportunity to compose their own reading of the material I
am offering here.
To extend Derridas textile metaphor a little further: Henri
Bergson once likened the role of a philosopher to that of a
tailor; and the creation of concepts, to the fitting of a suit.
In philosophy, one should proceed by carefully fitting the
concepts being created with the situations in which they will
be used. Concepts cannot simply be pulled off the rack and
thrown over any situation; because, one size does not fit all.
If preformed concepts are to be used, they must be carefully
taken apart first; then reconfigured to their new use: and
finally, employed in the new context for which they are
needed.
Although I tend to not use metaphors if I can avoid them, I
would like to extend Bergsons a little further. I do, however,
prefer to use the methodology of descriptive phenomenology
whenever I can, for a number of reasons.
First, it is much easier for other people to find whatever
it is one is talking about if that thing is simply described in
accordance with the way that it appears in consciousness.
Several difficult texts (which I have read, cover to cover
and line by line, six or seven times each) that I reference
7
extensively in the course of my research were written in this
way; and because of this, the findings of the philosophers
who wrote those texts are still very, very useful long after
those works were published.
Second, I do compose my own concepts as I go; and when
a descriptive phenomenology is used to this end, it is usually
possible to take a concept composed from such descriptive
elements and then actually find a situation which can be
described in a very similar way. This brings new insights into
what are sometimes otherwise impenetrable situations, and
often clearly indicates new relationships which are integral
to, but otherwise unapparent in, those situations.
Third, descriptive phenomenology is very useful in any
ontological analysis, an approach often guided by the
dictum Toward the thing itself (ontos is Greek for thing);
bearing in mind, of course, that much of what we will be
encountering in the course of this inquiry into the origin of
writing are not things at all, but rather, processes which must
be described in terms of their temporal nature.
Yet Bergsons metaphor is a good one, and carefully thought
out. So, one further comparison: we can consider the creation
of the plane of immanence to be like the making of a
suit: the arms are not the pockets or the lapels, yet, each is
connected to the other in some way; and all are constructed
with the other parts in mind.
All of which is to say: I still have a bit of stitching to do
here; but, my purpose remains consistent: to exactly tailor
concepts which are definitional of writing, to that form of
image writing traditionally used by the First Nations of North
America.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
02.0) Consciousness
02.1) Introduction: Non-Conscious Processes;
Conscious States; Consciousness-Of-Self.
Few aspects of human existence have been as widely
discussed, from as many different perspectives, as that of
what is broadly termed consciousness.
Everybody knows what consciousness is, because
everyone has direct and immediate access to their own
consciousness.
However, this apparent and de facto consensus is
exceedingly misleading; and the very lack of any pressing
need to define this term has led to extreme difficulties in
correlating the multitude of perspectives that are concerned
with just exactly what is being referred to by the use of
the term consciousness. The reality of the situation
seems to be that, since everyone has access to their own
consciousness, we all assume that what is being called
consciousness by others directly corresponds to our own
immediate experience. This direct meaning becomes
progressively more misleading, however, when the term
consciousness starts being used in more a technical sense.
In an attempt to bring a certain degree of clarity to this
discussion, I will be distinguishing between three different
determinations which are each descriptive of consciousness
in their own distinct way: consciousness-of-self;
conscious states; and non-conscious processes.
In reality, the distinctions between such determinations
are somewhat problematic, as each tends to blend into
the others. This is to be expected, though: in any final
analysis, it is the nature of exactly such transitions which is
ultimately of greatest interest to us.
In point of fact, anything that can be generally said of
language and, specifically noted about writing, will find its
origins in just such transitions.
8
For if the precise nature of the relationships holding
between consciousness and language (as writing) remains
a matter for debate, that such relationships are logically
given as a necessary condition for writing is a certainty.
02.20) Consciousness and Language
To begin, then, we can already say two things with
absolute certainty: that humans are animals which have
evolved to be conscious; and that, as conscious animals,
humans have developed writing. This is already saying
quite a bit, for in stating these facts we can be certain that
both consciousness and writing must have a historical
nature. So, while we might not have at our fingertips
any immediate way in which to discern the relationships
necessarily holding between consciousness and writing,
we have at the very least established the possibility of
correlating these two phenomena within a context of
historical development. This is an important first step,
because historical analysis always establishes for us that
things are so, that there is some factual grounding from
which to interpolate relationships. Without any factual
evidence grounding developmental relationships in a
historical context, in can be very difficult to discern which
of several interpretive approaches might yield the most
productive results.
That consciousness and language (in their relationships
to writing, which have yet to be determined here) are to
some degree connected seems to be a generally accepted
assumption which I see no reason to dispute.
Certainly, the intrinsic variations which consciousness
normally undergoes must be taken as also being
characteristic in some fundamental way of the functional
relationship holding between consciousness and language:
Page 85
If the possibility of language is already given
to the primally instituting geometer, it suffices
that the latter has produced in himself the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
identity and ideal permanence of an object in
order to be able to communicate it. Before
the same is recognized and communicated
among several individuals, it is recognized
and communicated within the individual
consciousness: after quick and transitory
evidence, after a finite and passive retention
vanishes, its sense can be re-produced as the
same in the act of recollection; its sense has
not returned to nothingness.
Page 86
In this coincidence of identity, ideality is
announced as such and in general in an
egological subject. Consequently, what makes
this ideality a geometrical ideality will only
interest us later on.
Thus, before being the ideality of an identical
object for other subjects, sense is this ideality
for other moments of the same subject. In a
certain way, therefore, intersubjectivity is first
the nonempirical relation of ego to ego, of my
present present to other presents as such; i.e.,
as others and as presents (as past presents).
Intersubjectivity is the relation of an absolute
origin to other absolute origins, which are always
my own, despite their radical alterity. Thanks
to this circulation of primordial absolutes, the
same thing can be thought through absolutely
other moments and acts. We always come back
to the final instance of this: the unique and
essential form of temporalization. By its very
dialecticalness, the absolute primordiality of the
Living Present permits the reduction, without
negation, of all alterity. The Living Present
constitutes the other as other in itself and the
same as the same in the other.
[Note 90: Preobjective and preexact
temporality, which had to become the principal
theme of the transcendental aesthetics projected
9
by Husserl, is then the root of transcendental
intersubjectivity. All the egos, beyond all possible
differences, can be encountered, recognized, and
understood also in the identity of the concrete
and universal form of the Living Present. In EJ,
time as the form of sensibility is described as
the ground of the necessary connection...
between the intentional objects of all perceptions
and positional presentifications of an Ego and a
community of Egos.]
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
Translated by John P. Leavey, Jr.
Copyright 1962 by Presses Universities de France
Translation copyright 1978 by John P. Leavey, Jr.
It does seem safe to say that it is the stability of any object
for us, from one moment to the next, ultimately enables us
to speak with others about our experiences, in ways we can
expect to be understood. Whatever it is about consciousness
which sustains an ongoing sense of consistency within our
experiences of the world around us, that is also what allows
us to communicate things we perceive of our world in a
meaningful way to others.
So: given that variations within consciousness must attain
some degree of consistency that they may achieve the kind
of stability which temporal continuity demands, it seems
reasonable to suspect such stability is also in evidence for
any kind of intersubjective construct (such as language, and
writing, or geometry, to use Husserls example).
And although the nature of such stability, in its determinate
relationships with aspects of any individual consciousness (as
well as any collective occurrence of intersubjective relation)
remains to be established here, still: that consciousness
forms stable patterns of organization which are evidently
intersubjective, and as such serve to support the functionality
of linguistic constructs, seems certain.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
It is also a certainty that, although we each have immediate
access to our own consciousness, we only have access to that
of others through language; and as a result, any study of
consciousness tends first to be a study of language:
Page 141
Anthropologists, in trying to explain the
evolution of the human form, must ultimately
also address the evolution of human mind - and,
specifically, human consciousness, a subject
biologists are more prepared to contemplate.
We also have to ask how such a phenomenon
arose in the human brain: that is, did it spring
fully formed into the brain of Homo sapiens,
having had no precursor of any kind in the rest
of the world of nature, as the behavioralists
view would imply? We can ask, When in human
prehistory did consciousness reach the stage we
now experience: did it arise early, and grow ever
brighter throughout prehistory?.. Notice that
these questions are parallel to those concerning
the evolution of language. This is not mere
coincidence, for language and reflective self-
awareness are undoubtedly closely linked
phenomena.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
Copyright 1994 by BasicBooks, a division of
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Knowing as we do that the only sure way which we have
for studying the thoughts of others invariably at some
point demands we make use of language, it has become an
established practice to view the evolution of consciousness in
terms of the development of language:
Page 27
For language is not simply the medium by
which we express our ideas and experiences
to one another. Rather it is fundamental to the
thought process itself. It involves categorizing
10
and naming objects and sensations in the outer
and inner worlds and making associations
between resulting mental symbols. It is, in effect,
impossible for us to conceive of thought (as we
are familiar with it) in the absence of language,
and it is the ability to form mental symbols that
is the fount of our creativity. Only when we are
able to create such symbols can we recombine
them and ask such questions as What if...?
Ian Tattersall, Once We Were Not Alone;
Scientific American Special Edition,
Volume 13, Number 2, 2003.
Here we see how questions concerning both consciousness
and language inevitably assume a certain historical context
which serves to bind these two areas of inquiry together.
Clearly, it is generally presumed that such an association is
a valid assumption; yet, there is a need to proceed cautiously
here. If we are interested in discerning the origins of writing
(and we are), and by implication of language (and we
should be), then it seems we might need to address questions
pertaining to the nature of consciousness (and we will). But
to do any of this, it also seems apparent that we are going
to need to take a big step back from each of these topics;
and that we will have to move back far enough to be able to
see how that connectivity which we know as consciousness
becomes the connections of language, and of writing. This
is the historical perspective which we need to examine:
one which suggests how consciousness and language, in
coming into being, became necessarily linked together. The
alternative, simply stating that language and consciousness
are much the same thing, doesnt really tell us much of
anything about either; and such an approach invariably
leaves many pressing questions unanswered.
As neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio has noted:
Page 4
At the start of the new millennium, it is
apparent that one question towers above
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
all others in life sciences: How does the set of
processes we call mind emerge from the activity
of the organ we call brain? It has been formulated
in one way or another for centuries. Once it
became possible to pose the question and not be
burned at the stake, it has been asked openly
and insistently. Recently the question has
preoccupied both the experts - neuroscientists,
cognitive scientists and philosophers - and
others who wonder about the origin of the mind,
specifically the conscious mind.
Antonio R. Damasio, How the Brain Creates
the Mind; in The Hidden Mind, Scientific
American Special Edition Volume 12 Number 1,
2002.
These are the kinds of questions which we will find
ourselves working alongside in the course of our inquiry.
02.21) Self Consciousness
That distinct and determinate relationships hold between
consciousness and language (and so, with writing as well) is
generally accepted as fact. Such a position has been widely
employed as a starting point for inquiries into the nature of
consciousness, as determined through the study of language.
However, since we are inquiring into the origin of writing,
we will first need to determine what can be said concerning
the nature of consciousness; and only then will we be able to
proceed further, to an analysis of writings origin.
Generally, when people refer to consciousness, they
are referring to their experience of what must be called
consciousness-of-self. This has been perhaps most
succinctly defined by Ren Descartess observation: I think,
therefore I am (cogito ergo sum).
Descartes pronouncement was pivotal in shaping the
course of modern philosophy, and much of what has
been accomplished in this field has been based upon the
philosophic certainty of self which he established. For
11
instance, Edmund Husserl established the entire field of
phenomenology by clearly formulating and consistently
developing what was always implicit in the philosophic
inquiries of Ren Descartes.
Husserl sought to define and describe the reflective nature
of self consciousness, as demonstrated by Descartes, through
an examination of how consciousness posits itself for itself.
As Jacques Derrida notes:
Page 144
[Note 173: Likewise, the transcendental Ego in
the phenomenological sense has no other content
but the empirical ego and, further, no real content
of its own, although it is not the abstract form of a
content either, as indeed might some falsely posed
problems about this suggest. In its most radical
moment, every transcendental reduction gives
access to a thoroughly historical subjectivity...
Husserl writes: For, with the transcendental
reduction, I attained, I am convinced, concrete
and real subjectivity in the ultimate sense in
all the fullness of its being and life, and in this
subjectivity, universal constituting life (and not
simply theoretical constituting life): absolute
subjectivity in its historicity.
Page 145
Yet very early, in his criticism of psychologism
and in the return to the things themselves as the
advent of true positivism, Husserl urged getting
rid of the spectrum of the souls faculties and all
the vestiges of classical substantialisms.
[Note 174: Reason is not an accidental de facto
ability, not a title for possible accidental matters
of fact, but rather a title for an all-embracing
essentially necessary structural form belonging to all
transcendental subjectivity.
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
Thus, what can broadly be termed the historical comes
into being as such through those processes which allow
consciousness to posit its own existence. Only through this act
can the actuality of historical fact be realized; otherwise, the
existence of that which is historical remains unknowable.
In essence, then, Husserl is suggesting that the ability of
consciousness to posit its own existence seems necessarily and
intimately linked with its ability to realize that anything at
all exists; and in this, the very seat of reason is to be found
as the fundamental ground of all knowledge. This might be
taken as a roundabout way of saying, as we noted above,
that things must first appear consistently for consciousness,
from one moment tot he next, before they can appear within
language in ways that can be communicated to others. By
inquiring into how consciousness appears to itself, Husserl
hoped phenomenology would be able to establish how things
appear with sufficient consistently for everyone and in such
a way, that, knowledge of world, as communicated through
language, becomes possible.
Indeed, this is precisely the kind of application in which
Husserls phenomenological methodology has been employed
within philosophy. For instance, Jean-Paul Sartres own
phenomenological investigations pushed that methodology
to the very limits of its applicability. In demonstrating what
phenomenology is (and is not) capable of doing, Sartre also
gave very clear descriptions of consciousness as conscious of
its own activities:
Page 4
Despite some prejudices, to which we will
return, it is certain that when I produce in
myself the image of Pierre, it is Pierre who is
the object of my current consciousness. So long
as that consciousness remains unaltered, I can
give a description of the object as it appears to
me as imaged, but not of the image as such.
To determine the characteristics of the image
12
as image, it is necessary to turn to a new act of
consciousness: it is necessary to reflect. So the
image as image is describable only by a second-
order act in which the look is turned away from
the object and directed at the way in which the
object is given. It is this reflective act that permits
the judgment I have an image.
It is necessary to repeat here what has been
known since Descartes: a reflective consciousness
delivers us absolute certain data; someone
who, in an act of reflection, becomes conscious
of having an image cannot be mistaken
If these consciousnesses are immediately
distinguishable from all others, it is because they
present themselves to reflection with certain
marks, certain characteristics that immediately
determined the judgment I have an image. The
act of reflection therefore has an immediately
certain content that I will call the essence of the
image.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary: A
phenomenological psychology of the imagination.
Translated by Jonathan Webber; Translation
copyright 2004 by Routledge; reprinted in 2006.
Published by Routledge New York NY
In that consciousness can be certain of the fact of its own
activity, it would certainly seem capable of determining the
constraints under which such certainty occurs.
Thus, the philosophic rigor of phenomenology derives
from its descriptive ability: simply, to describe the functional
occurrences of consciousness well enough that they can
be identified as such by others. In a very real sense, then,
descriptive phenomenology embraces the essential and
functional nature of language in its most immediate
relationships with consciousness. That consciousness can be
aware of itself, and can strive to describe the nature of this
awareness, will always be very close to the nature of how
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
language can be described.
02.22) Conscious States
In that consciousness can be aware of itself, it can also
posit itself as the object of its inquiries. Yet, for this to be true,
consciousness must first exist in its own right, even if it is not
aware of itself. Thus, in addition to the specific relationships
whereby consciousness defines its own existence, we need
to recognize that states of consciousness exist regardless of
whether they are actively reflective of their own activities.
So, we must also recognize that what we call consciousness
exists even when it is not being posited for itself in any direct
reflection.
From a less philosophic (and more scientific) perspective,
the term consciousness enjoys a much wider field of
application than its philosophically technical occurrence as
consciousness-of-self. In its most demonstrably encompassing
form, consciousness can be taken as the ability to initiate
activity. Distinctions are then drawn as to what constitutes
volition; what constitutes instinctive response; and what
constitutes mechanical reactivity: but for my purposes, I
will consider consciousness to be a neurologically based
state which is characterized by a co-incidence (a happening
together) of sensory perception and motor reflex activity.
This is a very functional definition of consciousness; and
as such, it does lend itself well to scientific determinations
regarding conscious functions.
Sartre defines such states of consciousness as nonthetic, in
distinction to any synthetic consciousness which contains
within itself a realization of its own compositional nature
(that is, a synthesis of this realization with that which is
realized):
Page 11
All consciousness is consciousness of
something. Unreflective consciousness aims at
objects different in kind from consciousness: for
example, the imaging consciousness of a tree
13
aims at a tree, which is to say a body that is by
nature external to consciousness; consciousness
goes out of itself, transcends itself.
Page 12
If we want to describe this consciousness,
it is necessary, we have seen, that we produce
a new consciousness called reflective. For
the first is entirely consciousness of the tree.
However, care should be taken: all consciousness
is consciousness through and through. If the
imaging consciousness of a tree, for example,
were conscious only as an object of reflection,
then it would be, in the unreflected state,
unconscious of itself, which is a contradiction.
It must, therefore, since it has no other object
than the tree as imaged and is itself an object
only for reflection, contain within it a certain
consciousness of itself. Let us say that it possesses
an immanent and nonthetic consciousness
of itself. It is not our business to describe this
nonthetic consciousness.
The transcendent consciousness of a tree as
imaged posits the tree. But it posits it as imaged,
which is to say in a certain manner, which is not
that of perceptual consciousness.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
In this way, Sartre preserves what he considers to be a
necessary transparency of consciousness to itself; that is, the
immanence of consciousness: that consciousness is primarily
awareness and, as such, is always so. This is simply to say
that, in order for consciousness to become at some point
aware of itself, it must have been essentially of the nature of
awareness all along. We might say here that consciousness
functions as awareness.
However, we begin to see complications arising here; and
specifically, we must ask: does anything of the way in which
language functions come into being here, with consciousness,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
before consciousness is aware of itself? We must suspect
the answer to this is a tentative yes since, otherwise, we
must somehow establish each individuals awareness of
themselves as coincident with that of every other person, so
that language becomes possible. Either something about the
way in which we each become conscious makes language
possible; or, each of us becoming conscious of ourselves
makes everyone understandable to everyone else.
We know that everyone is not always instantly
understandable to everyone else; so, we must choose the
former of these two options. Since very many people use
languages that are different from a large number of other
people yet, can be understood by those who share their
language: so language is something that is common to us
all, even though the specific languages we are aware of
varies between different groups of people. Language is a
possibility we all share in being conscious; it is not a certainty
established through our consciousness-of-self.
This means that we must look toward the origin of language
(and of writing) in what Sartre refers to as nonthetic
consciousness, which forms before consciousness-of-self takes
shape.
Although Sartre does not directly address the question
of nonthetic consciousness, he does nonetheless examine
circumstances in which such a form of consciousness does
have demonstrable effects; and he notes that such effects are
quite different than those that are found when consciousness
is directly aware of itself:
Page 157
But in the case that concerns us there is only
the sudden formation of a partial and absurd
psychic system. This system is necessarily
partial because it cannot be the object of any
concentration of consciousness. There is no
longer a center of consciousness, nor thematic
unity, and it is precisely for this reason that the
system appears. It is given in its very structure as
14
anti-thematic, which is to say as something that
cannot furnish the theme for a concentration of
consciousness. Let me explain: every perception
is given as able to be observed; every thought is
given as able to be pondered, which is to say held
at a distance and considered. These systems,
on the other hand, can in no way be observed
since they are the correlates of a leveling
down of consciousness; they appear only in an
unstructured consciousness, precisely because
they are the negation of all structure. And so
they are always given with a furtive character
that is constitutive of their being: their essence
is to be ungraspable, which is to say to never be
posited confronting a personal consciousness.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
This is basically tells us: there are processes through which
language is shaped that we are not directly aware of, yet
which are part of the nature of consciousness.
Jean-Paul Sartres brilliance in describing formations
of consciousness which occur without establishing
any sense of self is quite simply amazing. It is a sure
testament to his undiminished philosophic stature that his
phenomenological investigations are of such descriptive
accuracy that they continue to yield insights in our present
age. This is particularly impressive given the incredible
advances which have been made in technologies designed for
investigating neural functions. Well before the invention of
such technologies, Sartre was able to accurately describe the
nature of the very processes these technologies were designed
to investigate.
If an examination of the conditions under which
consciousness distinguishes itself as consciousness of itself can
provide insights into how consciousness produces anything
for itself, then similarly, an examination of the conditions
which are formational of consciousness itself can provide
insights into those processes which underlie the essential
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
and functional nature of consciousness. Here, we will have
to speak of conscious states in which consciousness has a
definite consistency that is not consciousness-of-self.
We know that these are not states which are aware of
themselves; but they are nonetheless states of awareness. If
we can find ways in which to describe how these conscious
states come into being, then perhaps we can also begin to
look at how language comes into being: as something which
all people are capable of, but, without everyone necessarily
having to use the same language.
It is here that we can hope to encounter those non-conscious
processes of which consciousness is formed, and so perhaps
gain a greater understanding of what it is to be conscious.
This should provide us with insights into how language, and
writing, came to be as they are.
02.23) Non-Conscious Processes
Sartres inability to physically investigate the nature and
function of what he called nonthetic consciousness was
due to the technological limitations of the era in which he
wrote the text I have quoted. This in no way diminishes his
accomplishment in recognizing the very definite influence
such processes have upon consciousness. Today, given
the technological advances which have occurred over the
decades that have passed after Sartres publication of The
Imaginary, it has become an accepted norm to distinguish
the role of non-conscious processes in the formation of
conscious states. This additional differentiation is now
demanded by the ever-increasing amount of information
which has been compiled from steadily advancing techniques
for investigating neural activity. Such scientific inquiries do
not necessarily distinguish if consciousness-of-self is present;
and in fact, it is very difficult to correlate the neurological
processes which are studied in this way with the direct
experience of consciousness which we all have. It is now
possible to directly show what parts of our neurology are
functioning during specific experiences; but it is not possible
to show where the experience of consciousness arises within
out neural networks.
15
With regard to the process of vision, for example, it has
become clear that there are neurological processes constantly
functioning in the course of our normal daily activity of
which we are never consciously aware. Yet, when these non-
conscious processes cease to function as they should, we are
rendered incapable of experiencing our daily lives as the
normalcy to which we are accustomed. So, we can only say
that such processes are an integral part of our conscious
experience of the world; but we are at present unable to say
how such processes may have made us become conscious of
our own existence.
Page 40
Vision evolved only because it somehow
improved an animals fitness - in other words,
improved its ability to survive and reproduce.
Natural selection, the differential survival
of individuals in the population, ultimately
depends on what animals do with the vision
they have, not on what they experience. It must
have been the case therefore that vision began,
in the mists of evolutionary time, as a way of
guiding an organisms behaviour. It was the
practical effectiveness of our ancestors behavior
that shaped the ways our eyes and brains
evolved. There was never any selection pressure
for internal picture shows - only for what vision
could do in the service of external action. This is
not to say that visual thinking, visual knowledge,
and even visual experience did not arise through
natural selection. But the only way this could
have happened is through the benefits these
mental processes have for behaviour.
Page 46
Alongside the evolution of perceptual systems
in the brains of higher mammals such as
humans, the visuomotor systems in turn have
become progressively more complex. The main
reason for this is that the movements we make
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
have themselves become more complex. In our
primate ancestors, one of the great landmarks
in evolution was the emergence of the prehensile
hand - a device that is capable of grasping objects
and manipulating them with great dexterity.
But just as the development of any sophisticated
piece of machinery, such as an industrial robot,
needs an equally sophisticated computer to
control it, the evolution of the primate hand
would have been useless without the coevolution
of an equally intricate control system. The
control of eye movements too has become more
sophisticated and has become closely linked with
the control of our hand movements. All of these
changes, in other words, were accompanied by
the evolution of new brain circuitry.
Page 47
It seems, however, that while these expanded
visuomotor systems in higher mammals govern
much more complex behaviors, they remain
essentially automatic and are no more accessible
to consciousness than those in the frog (or the
Euglena for that matter). They might carry out
more sophisticated and subtle computations
on the visual information they receive, but
they can do this perfectly well without a visual
representation of the world. In fact, these
visuomotor networks no more need conscious
representations of the world than does an
industrial robot.
Melvyn Goodale and David Milner, Sight Unseen.
Copyright 2004, 2005 by Goodale and Milner;
Published by the Oxford University Press.
Clearly, then, no inquiry into the nature of consciousness
can be thorough or complete without also concerning itself
with those functions which occur as non-conscious processes.
Consciousness must be understood not only in terms of how it
is aware of itself; but also, by way of a thorough consideration
16
of what is happening beyond such characteristic self-
awareness.
In essence, then, how consciousness comes to be for itself
can only be understood in the context of what consciousness
is without such self-awareness; that is, how consciousness
comes into being before it comes to be aware of itself. And
if language - specifically, writing - comes into being with
consciousness, then we must suspect that there are important
non-conscious processes which define how linguistic abilities
necessarily function.
02.3) Integrating Research
How information relating to consciousness is
comparatively compiled tends to be strongly influenced by the
perspective from which one begins such studies. As a result,
those who are situated within the very technical perspectives
associated with documenting non-conscious processes often
have difficulty integrating more philosophic approaches
to the investigation of self-consciousness into their work.
Similarly, those who specialize in philosophic determinations
regarding self-consciousness experience often face almost
insurmountable obstacles in attempting to integrate their
observations with current studies that scientifically document
the functional nature of non-conscious neural processes.
The situation with reference to any perspectival starting
point centered upon the concept of consciousness itself is
perhaps the one most fraught with difficulties: the wide
range of applications to which this term is actually put makes
defining consciousness, as a clear and distinct concept,
problematic at best.
I am, however, convinced that this perspective is the most
productive - provided that what is meant by consciousness
is adequately defined. As a potential intermediary between
self-consciousness and non-conscious neural processes, the
term consciousness offers the greatest hope for integrating
insights from all such areas of inquiry. If any degree of
consistency can be reached regarding what consciousness
can be described as being, it must be reached from the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
perspective of the concept of consciousness itself.
In the final analysis, anything that we say here is not
going to be in any way meaningful unless it somehow relates
to our experience of the world in which we live. If nothing
about what we are describing can be seen in how we form
our experiences of the world, then such descriptions will
remain empty in that there will be no way to relate them to
what we ourselves know of the way we are in this world. This
is a particularly important consideration when we begin to
speak about language: since language is all about sharing
experiences of the world, describing things that none of us
can ever directly experience doesnt seem to be a particularly
useful approach for understanding language. Somehow, then,
it will always be necessary to find a common ground between
what we can establish through a study of the neurology
underlying consciousness, and our actual experience of
consciousness: because language itself seems to form of this
in between, and this is where we are going to have to look
for the origin of writing.
02.4) Definitional Perspective
For claritys sake, I will begin by defining what I am
thinking about when I use the term consciousness. In doing
so, I am not trying to state categorically what consciousness
is: and I am not at all sure that it would even be possible to
do so. Rather, I am instead simply attempting to frame my
perspective at the beginning of an inquiry which necessarily
involves the concept of consciousness. In the course of such an
inquiry, it is to be hoped that insights into the nature of self-
consciousness might be integrated with research concerning
non-conscious neural processes; and it is my contention that
any such integration must necessarily proceed through a
perspective defined by the concept of consciousness itself.
To begin, I will take consciousness at its broadest
definition: as that of neurological states characterized by the
coincidence of sensory perception and motor reflex activity.
This perspective should allow an integration of research
concerning non-conscious neural processes, with philosophic
determinations of how consciousness is experienced.
17
Further, since we all have immediate access to our conscious
states - and this is necessarily true, by any definition of
what consciousness is for us as human - it can be assumed
that there must be conditions in which we are self-conscious
of how our sensory perceptions and motor reflex activities
can coincide. Thus, it will be expected here that something
pertaining to consciousness-of-self can also be integrated
into the development of a concept of consciousness: that
the fundamental awareness which consciousness is must
somehow be accessible to itself as such.
02.5) Co-Extension
In this definition of consciousness, the principal of
consistency will determine how such integrations proceed.
The first step toward such an end would therefore be an
attempt to determine some principle of consistency which
would be specific to the concept of consciousness. Since I
have already decided to view consciousness as those states
in which sensory perception and motor reflex activity
coincide, this principle must first of all be consistent with that
description.
Sensory perception and motor reflex activity are generally
taken to be distinct and separable. Consciousness is taken
as their coincident occurrence. I will define this concurrence
as being a condition of co-extension; and I will define
consciousness as being characteristically the articulation of
such co-extension. Such articulation will be the fundamental
concept used in this analysis, for it is equally applicable
to both consciousness, and to language in general (and
writing in particular). With regard to consciousness,
such articulation is the simple fact that events within our
senses can have direct responses that occur in our muscles:
articulation is thus a transference between the neurology
of our sensory perception and that of our motor reflex
activity. This is something which we always see as evidence
of consciousness in another. In a broader context, and based
upon this example, we will consider articulation as any
interactive transference that occurs between the various co-
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
extended states and processes through which consciousness
is composed. It is here that we will be looking for the origin of
writing.
02.6) Definitional Summary
In summary: when I refer to consciousness, I am thinking
of articulations in the co-extension of sensory perception
and motor reflex activity. The principle of consistency which
defines the concept of consciousness in this inquiry will thus
be that of articulated co-extension.
Throughout this inquiry, I will be considering how
consciousness-of-self, conscious states, and non-
conscious neural processes are co-extensive with each other:
in the course of this inquiry, I will be looking for articulations
within these co-extensions; and, I will be considering what
implications can be derived concerning consciousness from
such articulations as might appear to sustain herein some
degree of this definitional consistency. If such definitional
consistencies can be established, then their implications for
the functional nature of writing will be considered.
As a matter of methodological principle, I have chosen to
consistently apply the concept of co-extension in describing
consciousness for a very specific reason. Philosophy does
have a history, and this history is in itself structured in
accordance with the basic beliefs of those who have in the
past undertaken such inquiries. As a result of this, there have
been innumerable determinations made within the body of
philosophic inquiry which were made in accordance with
value judgements; and such interpretive decisions invariably
influenced the outcome of said inquiries.
While such decisions generally take the form of an either/
or choice being made, the determinations which decide
the outcome of such choices are most often based upon a
system of hierarchical values; of a good choice being made
over a bad choice. And although such a sense of value is
not explicitly determined in most standard descriptions
of consciousness, in fact the very idea that consciousness
consists of levels (of which some are above, and some
18
below others) instills implicit value judgements into
discussions concerning the nature of consciousness; and
these are decisions which can structurally pre-determine the
outcome of such inquiries.
This is a particularly important consideration to keep in
mind when dealing with consciousness, which as we have
already seen has many aspects. For instance, it has not been
uncommon in the past for what we are calling non-conscious
processes to be relegated to the unconscious; and there,
to acquire a certain negative value which then led to these
very important processes being simply ignored with regard
to what they contribute in the formation of consciousness.
Sometimes, such exclusionary decisions were made through
the unexamined assumption that, since conscious is good it
necessarily follows that non-conscious processes are bad.
For us, these are considerations of fundamental importance
for our inquiry into the origin of writing. We are from the
outset of this philosophic investigation dealing with a form
of writing which has already been completely excluded from
discussions concerning language and writing: it is therefore
absolutely necessary to eliminate the value judgements which
have led to this exclusion at the very start of our analysis of
writings origin.
Within philosophys long history, such value judgements
have tended to form from what are known as onto-
theological determinations. Such decisions are literally
religious determinations about the nature of being. And
while it is possible to move away from religiously theological
determinations within philosophic inquiry (a possibility
which the sciences are also determined to accomplish), it
is impossible to avoid ontological considerations; since, as
Martin Heidegger noted, all such inquiry ultimately starts
from the ontological question of: Why is there something,
rather than nothing?
Such ontological considerations even supersede the
phenomenological methodology which Husserl devised to be
the ultimate tool of philosophic inquiry:
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
Page 150
All this rigorously develops the discovery of
intentionality. The latter is also nothing but the
Absolute of a living Movement without which
neither its end nor its origin would have any
chance of appearing. Intentionality is
traditionality. At its greatest depth - i.e., in the pure
movement of phenomenological temporalization
as the going out from self to self of the Absolute
of the Living Present - intentionality is the root
of historicity. If that is so, we do not have to ask
ourselves what is the sense of historicity. In all the
significations of this term, historicity is sense.
Provided we respect its phenomenological
value, such an assertion does not transgress sense
itself, i.e., historys appearing and the possibility
of its appearing. Such an assertion does not
mix transcendental idealism and speculative
metaphysics. Instead, it marks the moment
phenomenology can be articulated, without
confusion, with a philosophy posing the
question of Being or History. This ontological
question (ontological in the non-Husserlian
sense of the term, which alone can be, and today
often is, opposed to Husserls phenomenological
ontology) cannot stem from a phenomenology
as such.
We must exhaust de jure the question of
historicitys sense and of historicity as sense,
i.e., of the possibility of historical fact appearing,
so that we can make full sense of the following
questions: Is there, and why is there, any historical
factuality?
Page 151
Thus, knowing what the sense of an event
is on the basis of a factual example, and what
the sense of sense in general is on the basis of
exemplariness in general, we can then ask
19
ourselves a question which no longer proceeds
from phenomenology as such... What is the
primordial unity of sense and fact, a unity for which,
by themselves alone, neither can account? In other
words, knowing what sense is as historicity, I can
clearly ask myself why there would be any history
rather than nothing. On the condition that the
taking seriously of pure factuality follows after
the possibility of phenomenology and assumes
its juridical priority, to take factuality seriously
as such is no longer to return to empiricism or
nonphilosophy. On the contrary, it completes
philosophy. But because of that, it must stand
in the precarious openness of a question: the
question of the origin of Being as History. Every
response to such a question can resurface only in
a phenomenological process. Ontology only has
a right to the question.
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
In essence, the question Why has that form of writing
used by the First Nations been excluded from historical
considerations becomes an ontological one: Why have the
academic fields responsible for documenting the existence of
such artifacts proven incapable of doing so?
This question concerning the nature of historicity brings
us back to an earlier consideration. In noting that both
consciousness and writing are historical constructs, it was
suggested that the two phenomena might be correlated on
this basis. But the question now appears to us in a more basic
formulation: what we are in fact inquiring into here is the
nature of sense, which is indeed the defining relationship
holding between consciousness and language (and so with
writing as well). And in fact, the very nature of such sense
is that which establishes how we determine what constitutes
the historical.
But more than this: if ontological questions alone can
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 02.0) Consciousness
move beyond that which is proper to phenomenological
inquiry, then it is only through an ontological inquiry that
we can step back from consciousness-of-self far enough
to see how we might begin to distinguish language (and
ultimately writing) from such self-consciousness. If we
wish to investigate the relationships that necessarily hold
between consciousness and language, we will only be able
to do so if we can get to a point where neither consciousness
nor language have begun to form of each other. Only then
will we be able to ask how language and consciousness are
necessarily related to each other; only then will it start to
become apparent how language can appear as that which it
is for consciousness, and as something which consciousness is
for itself.
In the final analysis, only ontological considerations
will establish what can be said to constitute the sensical.
Since we need to move beyond the interpretive constraints
imposed by an adherence to any suppositions concerning
consciousness-of-self (the nature of which we need to first
determine, before we can turn our attention to the origin
of writing), we will therefore necessarily need to begin
by moving away from the determinations imposed by
the phenomenological method. The essential nature of
our inquiry will be ontological; and so we will be asking
questions such as: What are humans? When are humans
distinguishable from what came before then? How is this
distinction determined? When did humans attain self-
consciousness? When did writing appear in all of this? And,
how did all of this come to pass?
Once such ontological determinations have been made,
a phenomenological inquiry into aspects of consciousness
again becomes possible. However, such ontological
determinations must be made carefully. In viewing all
aspects of consciousness as co-extensive (in that they
necessarily occur along with each other), I hope to avoid
most structural pre-determinations associated with value
judgements long enough to allow a few new insights to take
form.
20
Diligence in required in this, for such onto-theological
predeterminations are part of the very texture of language
itself. For instance, we have noted with Sartre that
consciousness-of-self is considered to be phenomenologically
defined by transcendence. Yet, in even thinking that
consciousness somehow rises out of itself, we are expressing
a theological determination which in turn precludes the very
real observation that consciousness has to occur somewhere
within our neural tissue, and, no matter what modifications
it undergoes, it does not leave that neural substrate.
Even in thinking of consciousness as somehow rising
out of itself in becoming conscious of itself, we must
nonetheless consider that this is something which must
necessarily happen somewhere. Finding precisely where
this somewhere is has been the main difficultly which
the science of neurology has faced, often leading to
approaches which tend to sidestep this issue. And so, it
has become an accepted practice within the sciences to
speak of consciousness as an emergent property; but
again, this approach can instill unexamined, structural
predeterminations within any inquiry into consciousness.
Although the usual explanation of such emergence is that
of something being as wetness its to water, there is still
a tendency to view emergent consciousness as a chicken
leaving an egg or a soul leaving a body; and so onto-
theological determinations again come into play through
that descriptive approach.
Hopefully, by viewing consciousness as articulations
primarily formed in the co-extension of motor reflex activity
and sensory perception, we will be able to make a little more
headway toward resolving the essential nature of being
human as being conscious; and from there, proceed in such
a way as to establishes the historical nature of language in
general and writing in particular.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 03.0) Meditation
03.0) Meditation
In approaching this inquiry from a philosophic
perspective, it is my intention to clearly describe my own
immediate experience of consciousness in terms defining
the articulations that form between sensory perception
and motor reflex activity. Starting from there, it should
be possible to see how such conscious states might be
utilized in any integration of information derived from
philosophic analyses of consciousness-of-self, and, from
scientific research examining non-conscious processes. As I
do not have access to the kind of technologically advanced
imaging equipment which would allow me to investigate
the nature of consciousness from a perspective of non-
conscious processes, I will proceed within the constraints
of philosophic tradition: that of inquiry through self
observation.
Such philosophic inquiries, undertaken as the experience
of consciousness-of-self, are generally grouped together
under the somewhat generic term meditation. Thus,
Descartes course of inquiry which led him to proclaim
Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am) were conceived
of as Meditations On First Philosophy.
However, since such an approach tends to be primarily
reflective in nature, there is no assurance that it can extend
its cognitive reach beyond our consciousness-of-self and
into an experiential investigation concerning the nature
of conscious states. Thus, a different kind of meditative
approach is called for here.
>>>
Today, Meditation has a wide range of meanings; and
what would constitute a meditation in the Cartesian
tradition is quite different from what is generally meant by
meditation in Oriental traditions. The common theme of
inner observation, however, remains consistent across those
uses to which the term meditation is applied - no matter
how widely the actual procedural methodologies employed
21
in the course of what is said to constitute meditation might
vary.
Michael Foucault, in his seminal text History of
Madness, provides an exceptionally clear definition of
meditation, by outlining that concept in the course of a
dispute with Jacques Derrida over their respective readings
of a brief section from Descartes Meditation on First
Philosophy:
Page 563
A meditation implies, in short, a subject
who is mobile and capable of being modified
by the very effect of the discursive events
that take place. We can see from this what
a demonstrative meditation would be: a set
of discursive events that form at the same
time groups of the enunciations linked to
each other by formal rules of deduction, and
series of modifications in the enunciating
subject, modifications that continually follow
on from each other; and more precisely, in
a demonstrative meditation, enunciations
which are formally linked modify the subject
as they develop, and liberate him from his
convictions or induce systematic doubts,
provoke illuminations or resolutions, free
him from his attachments or his immediate
certainties, induce new states, but inversely the
decisions, fluctuations, displacements, primary
or acquired qualifications of the subject make
possible sets of new enunciations, which are
regularly deduced from the others.
Michel Foucault, My Body, This Paper, This Fire.
Appendix II in History of Madness.
English translation copyright 2006, 2009 by
Routledge. Published by Routledge
Original edition copyright 1972
by Editions GALLIMARD, Paris.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 03.0) Meditation
I think it both interesting and insightful that Foucaults
description rests as it does upon the concepts of mobility and
modification. Throughout this description, one encounters
a sense of the changes and constant adjustments made
in thought as a response to thinking itself: a motility of
thought, in response to the perceived demands of thinking.
Characteristically, though, the kind of meditative inquiry into
consciousness-of-self exemplified by the Cartesian tradition
has had very little to do with considerations relevant to motor
reflex activity:
Page 14
This is all very well, to be sure. But am I not
a human being, and therefore in the habit of
sleeping at night, when in my dreams I have all
the same experiences as these madmen do when
they are awake - or sometimes even stranger
ones? How often my sleep at night has convinced
me of all of these familiar things - that I was here,
wrapped in my gown, sitting by the fire - when
in fact I was lying naked under the bedclothes.
- All the same, I am now perceiving this paper
with eyes that are certainly awake; the head I
am nodding is not drowsy; I stretch out my hand
and feel it knowingly and deliberately; a sleeper
would not have these experiences so distinctly. -
But have I then forgotten those other occasions on
which I have been deceived by similar thoughts
in my dreams? When I think this over more
carefully I see so clearly that waking can never
be distinguished from sleep by any conclusive
indications that I am stupefied; and this very
stupor comes close to persuading me that I am
asleep after all.
Ren Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy.
Translated by Michael Moriarty;
copyright 2008 by Michael Moriarty.
Published by Oxford University Press.
I would suggest that the first step in moving away from a
22
philosophy which is entirely circumscribed by consciousness-
of-self would be to consider how motor reflex activity
might directly articulate with our immediate experience of
consciousness. Whatever can be accomplished at the onset of
this present inquiry will not, I think, be achieved by sleeping
or by sitting in a chair.
>>>
03.1) Introduction to Taijiquan
Since I am here concerned with the nature of consciousness
as it forms of articulations in the co-extension of motor reflex
activity and sensory perception, I will not be proceeding
within that tradition of meditation as logical inquiry
which is so characteristic of Western European philosophy.
Instead, I will proceed by way of what is often referred to
as a meditation in movement, the Chinese martial art of
Taijiquan (Tai Chi Chuan).
By providing a description of my own experience in
practicing this moving meditation, I will attempt to define
what I am thinking of when I conceive of consciousness as
articulation; and I will attempt to provide specific examples
of its occurrence in situations of co-extension forming
between sensory perception and motor reflex activity. From
this starting point, I will attempt to integrate philosophic
insights drawn from logical inquiries into the nature
of consciousness-of-self, with, scientific determinations
regarding non-conscious processes. This in turn will provided
a starting point for further inquiries into the general nature
of language, and for a specific inquiry into the origin of
writing.
>>>
I started practicing taijiquan in the fall of 1983, after
spending a winter backpacking around archaeological sites
in Mexicos Yucatn, and a summer again working for a First
Nations newspaper in the capital of Canadas Northwest
Territories, Yellowknife. During the previous year, I had
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 03.0) Meditation 23

been introduced to the philosophy of language through a

course in Metaphysics and Epistemology, the first semester
of which was taught by Prof. William Newton-Smith (who,
when I last exchanged e-mails with him, held the Chair in
Philosophy of Science at Oxford University). I was also at
that time fortunate enough to be taking a course on Current
Continental Philosophy taught by Prof. Constantine V.
Boundas. Returning to university the following autumn, I
decided that if I intended to persist in such travels - which I
did - it would be prudent to learn some form of martial art,
for self-defense. As a philosophy major, I chose Taijiquan as
my least violent option.

>>>
Subsequent to my leaving university, I availed myself of
instruction in various internal martial arts, such as Taijiquan,
as provided by some of the top practitioners in North
America. In unpacking my Taijiquan forms over these
intervening years, to find what had been put into these art
forms over the millennia of their development, I decided to
see how fast it was humanly possible for me to perform one
continuous 108 movement set of this martial art. Although
Taijiquan is practiced in a very slow and methodical manner,
it was apparent to me that this could not be the case in its
martial applications.

After years of practice and preparation, my best time ever

for performing the complete Yang Family Long Form was
1 minute and 58 seconds. This is just inside that expected in
professional competition, where such sets are expected to be
completed in both their right-hand and mirrored left-hand
versions within a four minute time frame. Most people who
practice this set in its derivative form of Taoist Tai Chi do so
at a leisurely pace, taking about 20 minutes to do the entire
long form. That particular variation is, of course, configured
primarily for the health benefits which it confers upon
practitioners; however the Long Form which I learned, from
the Grandmaster with whom the founder of Taoist Tai Chi
stayed upon arriving in North America, retains its original
dynamics as a martial art.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 03.0) Meditation
Many of the health benefits attributed to Taijiquan are
common to both its health and the martial arts related
practice. Through a long-term practice of Taijiquan, over an
extended course of training, the elasticity of the tendons is
gradually and steadily increased. At the same time, muscle
mass increases in a balanced fashion, and the muscles are
trained to function in a state of relaxed tension.
In this way, the elasticity of the tendons and the relaxed
tension of the muscles - the muscle tone - gradually begin to
approach each other. Muscles that are in either/or states of
rigidity and relaxation acquire an intermediary tone which
is characteristic specifically to each; rigid tendons acquire
an elastic stretch and bounce. As this occurs, muscles begin
to function as partial (dedicated) extensions of tendons,
and tendons begin to function as do muscles of relaxed
tension. Both structures begin to share the natural dynamics
of each other: and the result of this is the stabilization of
integrated muscle/tendon groups which function as single yet
differentiated structures.
Such muscle/tendon structures, having achieved a greater
internal integration, also integrate to a greater degree of
functionality with the bodys other muscle/tendon groups.
This enables the body to move in ways which are quite
unexpected: not just through extreme speeds but also, as an
integrated unit which shifts the bodys mass entirely into the
movements which it undertakes.
>>>
When practiced in such an extreme form, at the utmost
expression of what a human body can sustain, the
movements which are characteristic of a Taijiquan set
produce what can only be described as waveforms within the
body of the practitioner.
Such oscillations of tissue induced by the passage of energy
(as force) through the bodys structure are constrained in a
tempering fashion by minute adjustments in muscle tonality
24
(with a tightening or relaxing of the muscle tissue serving
to modify the waveform oscillations occurring within and
passing through said muscle tissue): and at the same time,
a constant variance of light muscular tension positionally
maintains relationships between opposing muscle groups
which in effect serve as the transferential medium for the
energies of transitional forces passed through the body
structures aligning said muscle/tendon groups.
Thus, when Taijiquan is practiced at great speed, the
elasticity of the muscle/tendon groups serves to store the
accumulating energy of movement, capturing this inertial
force through the stretch of tendons in play at the bodys
structural limits of motion and, redirecting that force through
channels of relaxed dynamic muscular tension.
The energy of such transitional force is momentarily stored
in the muscle/tendon groups as standing waves; and in such a
way, inertial momentum is maintained within the body even
when the body is not itself in motion.
In that the energy of the bodys momentum is being
circulated through the muscle/tendon groups by positional
and configuration of changes in the orientation of said
muscle/tendon groups, the waveforms which are the
transference of such force are actually formed, by their
support in and propagation through the muscle/tendon
groups, as solitons.
Solitons are very a specific type of waveform, wherein the
amplitude of the energy pattern being transferred physically
matches the dimensions of the medium through which
that force is passing. As a result, no energy is lost in the
waveforms passage: the force simply propagates without
diminishing.
Such a relationship of dimensional specificity has three
direct and interesting consequences:
First, the efficiency of a Taijiquan set is, at its most extreme
degree of practice, such that the initial force through
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 03.0) Meditation
which the body is set into motion can be maintained with
a minimal amount of effort throughout the set. This, the
force with which one might choose to throw oneself into a
Taijiquan set, can be sustained for the duration of the set with
very little additional energy being inputted.
Second, any additional force being physically added
to the body in the course of such activity can easily be
absorbed into and transferred through the movements being
undertaken. This is what makes Taijiquan a martial art
which is characteristically self-defensive rather than overtly
aggressive: the force of attacks against a practitioner can be
redirected back into the attacker, but with the addition of
a considerable degree of extra force from the person being
attacked.
Third, the muscle/tendon groups are actually being
physically animated by the transference of waveform patterns
of energy passing through them.
This in turn has two important consequences:
First, coordinated muscle/tendon activity can be physically
induced by transferences of waveforms within the body
INSTEAD of by conscious intention;
And second - perhaps most importantly - coordinated
muscle/tendon activity can be produced by the conscious
intention of such waveform signatures. This also suggests that
the memory of such waveforms is retained in a way distinctly
different from that which sustains the mental image of such
body positions.
In other words, an experiential familiarity with the
sensation of such waveform signatures as occurring within
muscle/tendon groups - as solitons that are characteristic to
specific muscle/tendon groups during specific, coordinated
movement patterns - establishes in a very real and very
functional way a conscious vocabulary of muscle/tendon
activation directly derived from such characteristic
waveforms. This is in a very real sense a language of body
25
movement which is composed of waveform activations.
We all have the immediate experience of moving our limbs
through muscle contractions which are simply thought,
with no conscious intention. Here, the formation of a specific
conscious intention in the form of the remembered sensation
of a waveform transference occurring during the practice of
a characteristic Taijiquan position is used to reanimate the
dynamic form of that positional configuration. Instead of
thinking to move the body, one thinks that characteristic
waveform as the physical sensation of its experience; rather
than remembering the bodys configuration in that
position and then mimicking that from memory, one directly
motivates the movement dynamic of that position through
thinking the sensation of its occurrence.
As with all waveforms, such energy signatures can be
expanded or compressed: so even if one were to regularly
experience any such waveform as extended over, say, one
minute during the very slow practice of a Taijiquan set;
the very same waveform, as an energy signature, could be
consciously produced as condensed into a fraction of a second
- literally and functionally, in the blink of an eye - and
used to induce coordinated movement in the corresponding
muscle/tension groups which would then be of a different
order of magnitude than that experienced through the
original slow, methodical practice.
In this way, Taijiquan can be said to establish articulations
(as consciousness) which are characteristically of a co-
extensive between motor reflex activity and sensory
perception, in the form of waveform signatures which directly
activate specific patterns of motor reflex activity.
The sensory elements of such articulations are
proprioceptively characteristic of muscle/tendon groups; and
occur as distinct tonalities of feeling associated with each and
all such groups.
Here, consciousness functionally occurs as the articulation
of a waveform language which motivates specific motor
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 03.0) Meditation
reflex activations through proprioceptive instances of sensory
perception.
>>>
Moving through such an extended sequence or program
of pre-determined movements at that kind of ballistic
speed (Taijiquan does not train to pull punches) demands
a specific way of being conscious. Essentially synonymous
with the being conscious of any other wild animal, a simple
co-extensive unity of sensory perception and motor reflex
activity is achieved. Thought is, as always, spontaneous
movement; but here, thought is completely given over to the
waveform intensities which define the bodys motion and
which are embodied in a sense of physically shifting between
sequenced movements.
The unparalleled neural processing abilities of the
human brain are completely taken over by the intricacies of
orchestrating such complex energy patterns within the body.
Consciousness is no longer of a reflective self but is instead
the reflexivity of spontaneously orchestrating variances in
the waveform patterns that animate the body: ones self
becomes simply the ability to direct the forces which are
accumulating as the movement of and in ones body.
The actual experience is of almost effortless force. The
body is moving, at the extreme edges of its abilities, but
the efficiency of energy transfer effected is such that very
little effort is required to sustain this. A relaxed dynamic of
muscular tension must be maintained; minute modifications
of structure alignment are required: but it is the sustained
momentum of the initial movements of the Taijiquan set
which actually provide the energy that moves the body and
limbs through the set.
This, then, is a state of consciousness which is subjectless.
There is no reflective sense of a conceptual self; just the
experience of the waveform patterns which are animating
the body. It is also characteristically pre-linguistic;
simply because those areas of the brain which process
26
speech patterns cannot do so when so intensely engaged in
processing the dynamics of whole body motion. One can
speak of such experience, but not in the moment of being this
fully engaged in such activity.
>>>
Still, one must admit to certain functional characteristics
which are of a proto-linguistic nature being in place here:
in that external stimuli will trigger modifications in the
structural movement patterns being undertaken as Taijiquan;
and in that such modifications will consist of sequenced
response patterns. Under such circumstances, the internal
modifications of the Taijiquan set do in fact seamlessly
articulate with changing, external circumstances; and in
doing so define a dynamic of interaction that is conditional
upon the actuality of proximal events. The internal energy
signatures which animate Taijiquan are readily evident
to outside observers as an interactive engagement with
surrounding circumstances.
>>>
Such is how I would describe what I have referred to as a
conscious state that is not characterized by consciousness-
of-self, or by any other form of self reflection beyond the
immediacy of an immanent articulation between motor
reflex activity and sensory perception. A conscious state
in this form functions in a pre-linguistic manner, in that
the functional nature of consciousness is not here being
determined by patterns of speech. Thought certainly occurs,
but, not within the context of a phonetic language.
Such a conceptual formalization of consciousness should
provide an appropriate context in which to investigate the
formation of those articulations which come to characterize
language. Indeed, it might be more appropriate here to say:
such articulations, as formational of consciousness, are in
fact proto-linguistic in nature.
Further, as immediately adjunct to the functional
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 03.0) Meditation
immanences of those non-conscious processes which
determine the articulations of which consciousness is formed,
such conscious states should at the very least provide some
indication of how said non-conscious processes are actually
and actively experienced within - yet as, of course, other to
- conscious states.
In this, it is apparent that some degree of proto-linguistic
functionality is already established even as consciousness
itself is beginning to form. Ultimately, this functionality must
have an origin in non-conscious processes.
The articulations of which consciousness forms, in the co-
extension of motor reflex activity and sensory perception,
are somehow capable of producing forms of linguistic
functionality which are not determined by the phonetic
patternings of spoken languages; and indeed, which would
appear to be well established before syntactically phonetic
patterns of speech become evident.
So, while an investigation of consciousness may provide
the opportunity to integrate research into non-conscious
processes with investigations into consciousness-of-self, it
seems that any further inquiry into the origin of writing
conducted from that point will need to pay particular
attention to the contributions of non-conscious processes.
This conclusion is in itself revealing; because it is quite
the standard approach within the field of the philosophy of
language to proceed through a perspective circumscribed
by consciousness-of-self, and an emphasis upon phonetic
patterns of linguistic formalization.
The approach we will need to take here will vary
significantly from this tradition.
>>>
We can say, then, that the articulations which form
consciousness in the co-extension of motor reflex activity
with sensory perception are functionally capable of
27
supporting proto-linguistic formations. The differential
nature of such articulations, in transferring perception into
action, is adequate for the formation of non-verbal linguistic
functions; and may even be a necessary precondition for the
development of phonetically defined, spoken languages.
This in turn suggests that an investigation of the
articulations which form of non-conscious processes and
conscious states might provide some insights into the essential
nature of language: that is, how language comes to be. Such
an inquiry into any such state of being is by definition
ontological in nature: it would thus again seem prudent to
proceed in this investigation concerning the origin of writing
through an ontological examination of the nature of being
human, as being conscious.
Taijiquan, although an excellent course to take toward the
observational confirmation of these insights, is not a practical
methodology here due to the time and effort required to
achieve a level of training adequate to such a task. I myself
achieved such a sustained level of accomplishment for only a
specific period of time within my life.
Indeed, without exposure to such specialized exercises
as those designed for pulling up the internal organs (by
exercising the muscle tissue in which the organ cavities are
embedded), an uninstructed novice might easily tear their
own insides apart.
Yet, such a demonstration needs (of course) to be repeatable
by others that it might move beyond mere anecdotal
evidence. This could prove problematic, in that most people
have no more access to the experience of such an extreme
level of Taijiquan than I have access to advanced neural
imaging technologies.
Fortunately, many other less strenuous approaches to the
same end have been devised and explored. Perhaps a further
consideration of such techniques might yield more insights for
our inquiry into the nature of consciousness, and its relation
to the origin of writing.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
04.0) Toward An Ontology
of Being Human
There are very many approaches dedicated to cultivating
a sense of consciousness that have been developed within
Eastern traditions. Oddly, I can think of no parallel body
of knowledge in the Western traditions of philosophy and
religion. Why this might be, I cannot say; but I suspect some
very interesting insights might arise from a philosophic
investigation into this matter.
This strange discrepancy might be expected if there had
been but a few such techniques for developing consciousness
devised in Eastern traditions; but in fact, there were
hundreds, if not thousands, of such approaches. As two
older Taoists explained to their young friend Kwan Saihung
(long before he moved to the USA):
Page 311
The original tablets still exist, but they
were hidden away at Maoshan during the
Opium Wars with Britain. Now all we have are
copies with many commentaries attached by
generations of masters. Additionally, there are
different versions according to lineages and
sects.
In essence, the Seven Bamboo Tablets detail
three hundred and sixty methods of attaining
enlightenment. The number three hundred and
sixty corresponds to the number of degrees in a
circle. Thus, the entire range of methodologies
is accounted for in this work. The methods
range from the purely ascetic and meditative
to controversial sexual techniques of dual
cultivation. Philosophy, breathing, alchemy,
drugs, ritual, ceremony, devotion - every
possible means of achieving higher states is
discussed, analyzed, and recorded for the sake
of future generations. Even martial arts are a
part of this sacred work, not as a fighting art,
28
but as a complete way of study, discipline, and
practice.
The Seven Bamboo Tablets represents all
that you must master, its true. But dont
mistake mastering the book for mastering the
knowledge. What is important is that you fully
complete your spiritual task.
Look beyond the mere book, said Slender
Gourd. As it has three hundred and sixty
ways, so must you become a complete and
well rounded man. Do not cleave to narrow
doctrines. Take it as a framework, a scaffolding.
But once we circle constantly back to tradition,
we shall soar forth again.
It matters not, Crystal Spring concluded,
whether you read the Seven Bamboo Tablets or
not. You could read it and it might be as dull
as a dictionary. In fact, that would be its exact
appearance. But take its components, benefit
from its tradition, use them as alloys to be
blended in the crucible of life, and forge them
into your own unique personality. Dont follow
any book dogmatically, not even the most
sacred scripture. Its stupidity to think any
book is the word of the gods.
Deng Ming-Dao, Chronicles Of Tao.
Copyright 1993 by Deng Ming-Dao; published by
HarperCollins Publications, New York NY.
And while such methods for cultivating a sense of
consciousness were reputed to number in the hundreds,
the gymno-therapeutic exercise systems known under the
general name of qigong (chi kung) have been documented
as numbering into the thousands.
Such systems were designed for much more than simple
exercise: for thousands of years, they were often the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
principle method employed in preventing and alleviating
physical ailments.
One excellent example of such a system can be found in the
collection of Tibetan Buddhist exercises known as Kum Nye
Relaxation. Presented to the West by Tarthang Tulku, this
collection of one hundred and fifteen massage and stretching
exercises is thoroughly indexed, with reference to those parts
of the body each exercise most directly affects. In addition,
Tarthang Tulkus helpful commentaries make it abundantly
clear that such exercises are indeed designed to cultivate
a sense of consciousness which is characteristically the
articulation of motor reflex activity and sensory perception:
Page 213
Whatever sequence or combination of exercises
you choose, do not be in a rush. Coverage and
speed are not important. Remember that these
exercises are different from ordinary physical
exercises; they are not designed simply to
improve the physical functioning of the body.
They will do this, but when practiced properly,
they will also awaken the senses, stimulating
certain feeling-tones which, when cultivated and
extended, improve the functioning of the total
organism - body, mind, and senses.
Page 214
Each repetition of the exercise becomes an
opportunity to explore more fully the feelings
activated by the movement, a chance to bring
body, mind, and senses together. Mental as well
as physical energies contact one another and
become integrated. Later, there may be no sense
of self at all, only ever-expanding awareness.
Tarthang Tulku, Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga.
Copyright 1978, 2007 by Dharma Publishing.
Printed, and beautifully bound,
by Dharma Press, California USA.
29
Not only do we find here that the articulation of motor
reflex activity and sensory perception is indeed formational
of conscious states; we must also note that such states are
distinct from consciousness-of-self in that the aspect of self,
of subjectivity, is absent. Clearly, then, we are indeed in the
process here of defining an intermediary position between
non-conscious processes and consciousness-of-self.
Also of great interest here is the fact that the individual
feeling-tones associated with each muscle/tendon group
persist as actual conscious states; and that, as with the
awareness of waveform patterns which can be used to
motivate movement in Taijiquan, such feeling-tones are also
utilized as a way in which consciousness can directly affect
the physical state of the body:
Page 11
While at first we stimulate the massage
physically - by breathing, pressing and rubbing
our bodies, moving very slowly in certain ways,
or producing and releasing tension - later we can
initiate massage through feeling-tones alone. As
relaxation deepens, we begin to feel directly the
interconnections among breath, senses, body,
and mind.
Tarthang Tulku, Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga.
Thus, in both Taoist and Buddhist traditions, we can find
evidence of much older systematizations of knowledge
(often of shamanic origins) which cultivate the functional
articulation of conscious states and non-conscious process.
Such articulations seem to be characteristically capable of
functioning in a proto-linguistic fashion within the body, long
before phonetic languages formed from consciousness-of-self
are in effect.
>>>
While such talk of waveform patterns and feeling-tones
may sound esoteric to the point of being unscientific, it would
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
be a rare person who hasnt had the experience of jumping
at a sudden loud noise, and who hasnt retained a memory
of the resultant emotional change in their consciousness
- that is, their mental state. We are all intimately aware
of how specific sensory stimuli can directly influence motor
reflex activity quite outside of what we would consider an
intentional response.
Indeed, Tarthang Tulku seems to suggest that this manner
of awareness is a fundamental attribute of conscious states;
and this seems obviously so, even simply through the
definition of consciousness. Jean-Paul Sartre considered such
an observation to be fundamental to an understanding of
philosophy:
Page 157 - 158
For me, in fact, all existence in consciousness
must be expressed in terms of consciousness and
I cannot admit a spontaneity, even when the
superstructures are reached, that springs from a
shadowy zone without being conscious of itself.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
Sartre continues on to detail more of what can be said of a
subjectless consciousness; that is, of conscious states which
are not characterized by consciousness-of-self. In doing so, he
begins to explore the relationships which form between non-
conscious processes and conscious states.
As we noted through our consideration of Taijiquan, it
would seem that our inquiry into the origin of writing will
necessarily proceed through an investigation of the role
played by non-conscious processes in the formation of
linguistic functions; and here, Sartre provides us with some
indication of how non-conscious processes articulate with
consciousness:
Page 158
This way of conceiving spontaneity is only
an implicit manner of admitting the existence
30
of the unconscious. It seems to me therefore
that these absurd systems are nothing other
than the way in which consciousness thinks
its present state, which is to say this twilight
leveling down. But it is not a case of a normal
thought, positing the object before the subject,
it is not a case of a thought about this twilight
state. But somewhere in this consciousness that
is incapable of concentrating, on the margins,
isolated and furtive, appears a partial system
that is the thought of this twilight state or, if you
wish, that is this twilight state itself. It is a case
of an imaging symbolic system that has for its
correlate an irreal object - absurd phrase, pun,
inopportune appearance [Note 27 - I will better
explain the symbolism in the section on the
Dream]. It appears and is given as spontaneity
but, above all, as impersonal spontaneity. To tell
the truth, we are very far from the distinction
between subjective and objective. These two
worlds have collapsed: we are dealing here with
a third type of existence that we lack the words
to characterize. The simplest can perhaps be
named lateral irreal apparitions, correlates of
an impersonal consciousness.
Such is what we may call the pure event of
hallucination. But this event does not coincide
with the pure experience of hallucination: in
fact an experience implies the existence of a
thematic consciousness with a personal unity;
on the other hand this type of consciousness
is denied by the hallucinatory event, which is
always produced in the absence of the subject.
In a word, the hallucination is presented as a
phenomenon the experience of which can be made
only by memory. It is a case of immediate memory,
which means there would be no hallucination
if these partial systems continued to develop
in a neutralized consciousness: in that case we
would be closer to the dream. The hallucination
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
implies a sudden reaction of consciousness to the
partial system with sudden reappearance of the
thematic unity.
Page 159
But in all likelihood the object is not given in
memory as irreal: in fact there was no positing
of irreality during the event; the production
of the irreal object was simply accompanied
by nonthetic consciousness of irreality. This
nonthetic consciousness does not pass into the
memory since, as I have explained, the memory
of the perceived object delivers us an irreality
in the same way as a reality and, in order that
one may be distinguished from the other in
recollection, it is necessary that at the moment
of their appearance they must have been the
objects of explicit positings of reality or irreality.
It appears to me rather that the hallucinatory
object will retain a neutral character in memory.
It is the general behavior of the patient, not the
immediate memory, that confers a reality on
these appearances.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
>>>
Of particular interest here is the role played by memory in
such articulations. We noted in our analysis of Taijiquan that
the energy signatures which we encountered persisted by
way of a kind of body memory which is quite different than
that of visual or mental imagery.
In considering sensory stimuli which are wholly derived
from non-conscious processes, Sartre notes the transitional
role played by memory in articulating such perceptual
transferences with motor reflex activations.
It would seem that, within consciousness-of-self, memory
serves to articulate conscious states with themselves.
31
However, the situation regarding the articulation of conscious
states with non-conscious processes demands further
consideration. For here, we can begin to see the suggestion
of a fundamental organizational form which characterizes
consciousness in its articulation with non-conscious
processes:
I). Given that muscle/tendon groups have distinct and
distinguishable tonalities, which are characteristic of
their activation patterns as waveform signatures;
II). Given that the feeling of such tonalities persists beyond
the active use of these physical structures; and,
III). Given that the experience of such conscious states is
readily identifiable as being of the same nature as what
we call emotional states;
IV). An interesting conclusion seems to follow: what we
call emotion in fact functions as a very basic,
perhaps even prototypical, form of memory.
It further follows, given the conclusions reached through
Sartres observations on the phenomenological nature
of hallucinations: that within a conscious state wherein
emotion functionally serves as memory, perceptions and
non-consciousness processes would be indistinguishable from
each other.
This is to say: before consciousness-of-self had become an
evolutionary fact, it seems probable that perceptions and
non-conscious processes would be indistinguishable within
conscious states characterized by emotion. This implies that it
would be possible to trigger the same motor reflex responses
by stimuli produced of either source. Language thus becomes
a very minor step to be taken: between a loud sound causing
a motor reflex reaction; and an uttered sound eliciting a
response. This is in fact such a small step that it can easily be
documented as having occurred long before humans emerged
within evolutionary history:
Page 144-145
The first clue to how vervets communicate this
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
information came from observations that the
biologist Thomas Struhsaker made on vervets
in Kenyas Amboseli National Park. He noted
that three types of predators triggered different
defensive measures by vervets, and also triggered
alarm calls sufficiently distinct for Struhsaker
to hear the differences even without making
any sophisticated electronic analysis. When
vervets encounter a leopard or other species of
large wild cat, male monkeys give a loud series
of barks, females give a high-pitched chirp, and
all monkeys within earshot may run up a tree.
The sight of a martial or crowned eagle soaring
overhead causes vervets to give a short cough of
two syllables, whereupon listening monkeys look
up into the air or run into a bush. A monkey who
spots a python or other dangerous snake gives
a chuttering call, and that stimulates other
vervets in the vicinity to stand erect on their hind
legs and look down (to see where the snake is).
Page 146-147
The vervets of Amboseli thus have at least
ten putative words: their words for leopard,
eagle, snake, baboon, other predatory
mammal, unfamiliar human, dominant
monkey, subordinate monkey, watch other
monkey, and see rival troop. However,
virtually every claim of any animal behavior
suggestive of elements of human language is
greeted with skepticism by many scientists,
convinced of the linguistic gulf separating us
from animals. Such skeptics consider it simpler
to assume that humans are unique, and that the
burden of proof should be borne by anyone who
thinks otherwise. Any claim of languagelike
elements for animals is considered a more
complicated hypothesis, to be dismissed as
unnecessary in the absence of positive proof. Yet
the alternative hypotheses by which the skeptics
instead attempt to explain animal behaviors
32
sometimes strike me as more complicated than
the simple and often plausible explanation that
humans are not unique.
Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee.
Copyright 1992 by Jared Diamond.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers,
New York, NY.
>>>
Of particular note here is the fact all that the considerations
we have been entertaining indicate that such proto-linguistic
functions can and do occur before consciousness-of-self has
formed. Sartre pushes this observation a little farther yet,
further qualifying the situation by stipulating that such
functions need not reference relationships between objects
and subjects, either.
Instead, what seems to be occurring is the stabilization of
differential transferences between sensory perception and
motor reflex activity: the dynamics of a perceptual situation
are being articulated with a direct response; and emotional
states can be seen as characterizing the stability of such
transferential articulations.
Humans may indeed be unique in having developed a sense
of consciousness-of-self, along with all of the conceptual
attributes which seem to form of that particular cognitive
ability. However, it does appear that language is not
contingent upon the evolution of self-conscious subjectivity.
Instead, it would seem that the simple formation of conscious
states as rudimentary as those which persist as sensations
produced of motor reflex activity or, in a slightly more
complex form, as emotional states, are entirely sufficient to
ground the functional articulation of proto-languages.
Indeed, the element of motor reflex activity might of itself
provide most of the required components for the formation of
such rudimentary languages. As Henri Bergson noted:
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
Page 77-78
We have said that the body, placed between
the objects which act upon it and those which it
influences, is only a conductor, the office of which
is to receive movements and to transmit them
(when it does not arrest them) to certain motor
mechanisms, determined if the action is reflex,
chosen if the action is voluntary... Therefore, in
the form of motor contrivances, and of motor
contrivances only, it can store up the action of
the past. Whence it results that past images,
properly so called, must be otherwise preserved;
and we may formulate this first hypothesis:
I. The past survives under two distinct forms:
first, in motor mechanisms; secondly, in independent
recollections.
But then the practical, and, consequently,
the usual function of memory, the utilizing of
past experience for present action - recognition
in short - must take place in two different ways.
Sometimes it lies in the action itself and in the
automatic setting in motion of a mechanism
adapted to the circumstances; at other times it
implies an effort of the mind which seeks in the
past, in order to apply them to the present, those
representations which are best able to enter
into the present situation. Whence our second
proposition:
II. The recognition of a present object is effected
by movements when it proceeds from the object, by
representations when it issues from the subject.
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory. Translated
by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer
Published 1988 by Urzone Inc.; all rights reserved.
Zone Books, New York NY.
>>>
33
It would seem, then, that we can establish non-conscious
processes as adequate for the formation of proto-linguistic
functions. In this, we can see that conscious states become
established as already capable of supporting language usage.
It would thus appear that our investigation into the origin
of writing is once again pointing toward the way in which
non-conscious processes articulate with conscious states. We
have strong indications that a simple formation of conscious
states, as the articulation of motor reflex activity and sensory
perception, is adequate for the rudiments of language to
become functional; and that consciousness-of-self is not a
necessary prerequisite for the formation of linguistic abilities.
If language can be taken as characteristic of many species
other than humans, then an inquiry into the origin of writing
becomes even more compelling, in that such an investigation
might yield insights into whatever it is which makes us
uniquely human. And if we are to inquire into that which
makes us uniquely human, then we must undertake some
form of ontological analysis in doing so.
Our observations so far suggest that the origins of language,
and thus of writing, must be conceived of in terms which do
not differentiate between subject and object; for if language
begins to function before consciousness-of-self has become
established, then the reflective nature of self-consciousness
can not be taken as the definitional process through which
the nature of language is determined.
Something else is needed here; some descriptive formulation
of conscious states which is definitional of situations not
formed in reference to consciousness-of-self. In the opening
of the chapter entitled Geophilosophy, in their text What
Is Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari suggest how
such a formulation can be conceived:
Page 85-86
Subject and object give a poor approximation
of thought. Thinking is neither a line drawn
between subject and object nor a revolving of
one around the other. Rather, thinking takes
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
place in the relationship of territory and the
earth... Husserl demands a ground for thought
as original intuition, which is like the earth
inasmuch as it neither moves nor is at rest...
Territory and earth are two components with two
zones of indiscernability - deterritorialization
(from territory to earth) and reterritorialization
(from earth to territory). We cannot say which
comes first.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
What Is Philosophy. Translated by
Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell
Originally published as Quest que la philosophie?
by Les Editions de Minuit, Paris; Translation
copyright 1994 by Columbia University Press.
Published by Columbia University Press,
New York NY.
One would then say here that stimuli which originate of
the earth (taken in its broadest sense) produce behavioral
modifications in organisms which can be described
as territorial in nature. That such relationships can be
consistently attributed to an organism constitutes the
ontological status of that organism: simply, its way of being in
the world.
Deleuze further investigates the conceptual dimensions
of such states in the brief (but densely packed) essay
Immanence: A Life:
Page 25
What is a transcendental field? It can be
distinguished from experience in that it doesnt
refer to an object or belong to a subject (empirical
representation). It appears therefore as a pure
stream of a-subjective consciousness, a pre-
reflexive impersonal consciousness, a qualitative
duration of consciousness without a self. It
may seem curious that the transcendental be
defined by such immediate givens: we will speak
34
of a transcendental empiricism in contrast to
everything that makes up the world of the subject
and the object. There is something wild and
powerful in this transcendental empiricism that
is of course not the element of sensation (simple
empiricism), for sensation is only a break within
the flow of absolute consciousness. It is, rather,
however close two sensations may be, a passage
from one to the other as becoming, as increase
or decrease in power (virtual quantity).
Page 30-31
Although it is always possible to invoke a
transcendent that falls outside the plane of
immanence, or that attributes immanence to
itself, all transcendence is constituted solely in
the flow of immanent consciousness that belongs
to this plane. {Note 5: Even Edmund Husserl
admits this: The being of the world is necessarily
transcendent to consciousness, even within the
originary evidence, and remains necessarily
transcendent to it. But this doesnt change the
fact that all transcendence is constituted solely
in the life of consciousness, as inseparably linked
to that life... (Meditations cartesiennes [Paris:
Vrin,1947], p.52).} Transcendence is always a
product of immanence.
A life contains only virtuals. It is made up
of virtualities, events, singularities. What we
call virtual is not something that lacks reality
but something that is engaged in a process of
actualization following the plane that gives it
its particular reality. The immanent event is
actualized in a state of things and of the lived
that make it happen. The plane of immanence
is itself actualized in an object and a subject to
which it attributes itself.
Gilles Deleuze - Immanence: A Life; in:
Pure Immanence: Essays on a life. Translated by
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
Anne Boyman; Copyright 2001 by Urzone, Inc.
Published 2005 by Zone Books, New York NY
Thus, rather than considering consciousness-of-self as
definitional of objectivity, Deleuze instead posits that it is
sensory variabilities which are so formative, in that they
are experienced as events; and that essentially temporal
considerations are the primary formational aspect of
any possible ontology, regardless of whether human
consciousness-of-self is involved, or not. We can say, then,
that thinking occurs as an event compelled by the earth, of
people, in territorial relationships.
If the event can be considered as transcendental, it still
has to go somewhere; it still has to exist somewhere as
such a distinct and distinguishable occurrence: it has to take
form (as a discursive object of theory; as something which
enters language) through whatever empirical formation it
is posited within. We can say that this becomes so because
of the territorial nature of the event; and we can specify
consciousness as defining the ontological nature of such
occurrence. Insofar as events are referred to, or achieve any
form of existence beyond the immediacy of their occurrence,
they will have an ontological status which is determined by
the nature of the consciousness which posits them as distinct
and distinguishable things which can be referred to; and in
positing their existence, localizes their position as a matter of
reference.
This is to say, simply, that the way of being for any
conscious creature will in turn determine how the objects
encountered by said creatures will be defined; and that the
nature of such determinations will in fact become established
through encounters, as events: in other words, that how any
living thing can make sense of its surroundings depends
first and foremost upon the sensory range of perceptions
employed in the event of such encounters.
The sense that is made will first and foremost be expressed
in motor reflex responses to such encounters; which are
also part of the event of the encounter, in its experience.
35
In effect, it is the functional nature of our non-conscious
processes which establishes a shared sense of this earth
sufficiently stable to first establish proto-linguistic formations.
Nothing produced as or of consciousness ever occurs
in isolation: there are always points of origin, in the
experiences of immediate encounters; and the results of such
encounters are always produced within, at the very least, the
circumstances attending their production. This is the nature
of the historical: that things which come into existence do so
under the specific circumstances which define their origin;
and that in doing so, no thing ever comes out of or appears
surrounded by nothing.
It could thus be said the territorial relationships that form
of the thinking which the earth compels of people become
stabilized, as events which place or localize consciousness
territorially; and that these events define the being in the
world of those who had thought such events, in forms which
define their territorial relationships.
We have already encountered such a transcendental field:
in the logical progression from, the actuality of reactions
to loud noises; to, the possibility of intersubjective linguistic
functions. In both cases, it is the event which remains
consistent across these instances of occurrence: in both
cases, it is the event which is empirically verifiable: as a
loud noise, or an articulated sound producing a pattern of
movement. Here, we can begin to see an ontology of being
conscious taking form: we can begin to say that being
conscious defines a way of being in the world for humans (or
for vervet monkeys, in an entirely different ontology).
>>>
As Derrida and Husserl note, anything so posited in
the ontological status of its being in the world is then
necessarily subject to phenomenological considerations. In
this way, being human as being conscious retains some
sense of determination which is characteristic to the initial
encounter by consciousness of any such event, through its
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
own occurrence. After the nature of the event has been
established for consciousness, it is possible to investigate
the historical nature of such occurrences, because they
have at that point become established as an object which
consciousness can posit for itself.
Deleuzes point, however, is that very much can still be
determined and defined before the existence of a reflective
consciousness-of-self is necessarily invoked. This approach,
as presented here through Deleuzes last published work, is
entirely consistent with the earliest pieces he published, such
as his 1954 review of Jean Hyppolites Logique et Existence:
Philosophy must be ontology, it cannot be
anything else; but there is no ontology of essence,
there is only an ontology of sense. That, it seems,
is the theme of this essential book, whose very
style is extremely powerful. That philosophy
must be ontology means first of all that it is
not anthropology. Anthropology wants to be
a discourse on man. It assumes, as such, the
empirical discourse on man, in which the one
who speaks and that of which one speaks are
separated. Reflection is on one side and being on
the other. Knowledge understood in this way is a
movement which is not a movement of the thing.
It remains outside the object. Knowledge is then
a power of abstraction, and reflection is an
external and formal reflection. Thus empiricism
refers to a formalism, just as formalism refers
to an empiricism. Empirical consciousness is
a consciousness which directs itself towards
pre-existing being and relegates reflection to
its subjectivity (p. 76 above). Subjectivity will
therefore be treated as a fact, and anthropology
will be constituted as the science of this fact.
Gilles Deleuzes review of Logique et existence was originally
published in Revue philosophise de la Trance et Ietranger (1954):
144, 457-60. 1954 by Presses Universitaires de France, Paris.
36
Charles J. Stivale -- Web Resources
http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/D-G/Texts.html
{http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpdeleuze6.htm}
A very important point is being made here, and it concerns
our inquiry into the origin of writing in a very fundamental
way. Since anthropology has been formed as a science
through which specific objects are studied, it necessarily has
to have an underlying concept of what being human is;
otherwise, it would not be able to posit the objects it studies
through the reflective acts of a self-conscious subjectivity.
Indeed, one might be tempted to make the case that
anthropology, in being the study of man by man, is entirely
defined by consciousness-of-self. Yet this directly implies that
at no point would such an inquiry every proceed beyond the
point of self-familiarity: nothing of the question What is
man could ever be answered except in terms of what man
is already assumed to be; man the thinker, or man the
hunter, or man the creator.
More fundamental questions, such as What is thinking?
do not arise here; and as a result, even those answers which
are obtained, What is man? Man the thinker, Homo
sapiens are essentially meaningless and do not really tell us
anything we had been asking.
This is the fundamental flaw in methodology which our
present inquiry would be trapped within had we resolved to
proceed strictly within the analytic constraints imposed by
terms derived exclusively from consciousness-of-self. Instead
of investigating how the things we are talking about came
to be formed - consciousness, language, writing - we would
be forced to instead assume that these things are already
determined in a specific way: as objects pre-given to a
consciousness which is aware of them as it is aware of itself.
The only way to move beyond this self-reinforcing
reflectivity is by way of an ontology which seeks to question
more deeply what being human means; that is, wherein lies
the sense of what we say, in how we come to be able to say
it. What does it mean to say that humans think; what is the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
nature of this thinking that they do? This is an approach to
philosophy which Gilles Deleuze excelled in, and the breadth
of his thought is a constant breath of fresh air felt throughout
philosophy and on into any field that demands thinking.
I think it worth noting that Deleuzes first two books
concerned the philosopher David Hume; the second of which,
Empiricism and Subjectivity, was originally published in
1953 and which bore the dedication: To Jean Hyppolite,
a sincere and respectful homage. (English translation
by Constantine V. Boundas copyright 1991 by Columbia
University Press).
Throughout Gilles Deleuzes life as a philosopher, he
unceasingly questioned the conceptual underpinnings
of philosophic thought, and remained unwavering in his
dedication to uncovering the preconceptions which constrain
thought in ways that alienate thinking from the primacy of
an immediate encounter with that which causes thought to
come into being: this world we live within.
>>>
As Deleuze mentions, Husserl also decided that his
phenomenological methodology was ultimately contingent
upon the world in which we live; and in this, we can already
see a certain sense of territoriality taking form in Husserls
conception of the world. In distinguishing the world of our
experience from the earth where such experience occurs,
Husserl is already putting in place a transcendental field
where his phenomenology can unfold; and in doing so, he
is also establishing an ontological status of being human,
as being conscious-of-self. In deciding how people are in
the world, Husserl is also determining what there is in the
world.
Page 83
Geometry, in effect, is the science of what
is absolutely objective - i.e., spatiality - in the
objects that the Earth, our common place, can
indefinitely furnish as our common ground with
37
other men.
[Note 87: For the Earth cannot become a
mobile body: It is on the Earth, toward the
Earth, starting from it, but still on it that motion
occurs. The Earth itself, in conformity to the
original idea of it, does not move, nor is it at rest;
it is in relation to the Earth that motion and rest
first have sense. But then the Earth does not
move nor is at rest - and it is entirely the same
for the heavenly bodies and for the earth as one
of them...
But toward the end of the text, the Earth
takes on a more formal sense. No longer is it a
question of this Earth here (the primordial here
whose factuality would finally be irreducible),
but of a here and a ground in general for the
determination of body-objects in general. For if I
reached another planet by flying, and if, Husserl
then said, I could perceive the earth as a body,
I would have two Earths as ground-bodies,
But what does two Earths signify? Two pieces of
a single Earth with one humanity. From then
on the unity of all humanity determines the
unity of the ground as such. This unity of all
humanity is correlative to the unity of the world
as the infinite horizon of experience, and not to
the unity of this earth here. The World, which is
not the factuality of this historical world here, as
Husserl often recalls, is the ground of grounds,
the horizon of horizons, and it is to the World that
the transcendental immutability attributed to
the Earth returns, since the Earth then is only its
factual index. Likewise - correlatively - humanity
would then only be the facto-anthropological
index of subjectivity and of intersubjectivity in
general, starting from which every primordial
here can appear on the foundation of the Living
Present, the rest and absolute maintenance of
the origin in which, by which, and for which all
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
temporality and all motion appear.]
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
Here, Derrida is detailing a very interesting manoeuvre on
the part of Husserl. Ultimately, Husserl says, we must take the
Earth as the universal ground to which all experience relates.
Yet we must ask: what if the Earth we are upon is unlike that
experienced by others? Certainly, there are wide expanses
of very different environments found between our planets
poles; and even in the space between a few thousand vertical
feet, environmental conditions can change dramatically.
As we look at different aspects of the Earth, we can also say
that conditions today are much different from those of any
other time; and we know as well that there have been many
other times unlike those immediately before or after.
We might ask here, how can we expect to approach any
kind of ontological analysis into our way of being in this
world if the earth we encounter is this inherently variable?
Where are we to find any kind of commonality which would
both describe who we are as human, and how the forms of
language which we use function for all of us?
In short, if consciousness and language come into being
together, how do they come to be established such that they
are things we all share in common?
The solution chosen by Deleuze and Guattari to this
dilemma of comparability, and of the shared commonality of
experience which grounds writing, is very different than that
chosen by Husserl.
Even if we were on another planet, says Husserl, we would
still act toward and experience that place as we do the Earth;
so there is a commonality of our humanity which connects
us all, and it is this which in the end makes the experience
of one person something everyone can share: so much so
that, even if there were not a single person left to share that
38
experience, it would still in principle be something which
could be shared by its very nature as experience.
This is because, Husserl says, the very fact that experiences
occur by, through, and as consciousness establishes a
relationship between experiences and consciousness which,
once having happened, can never be undone... in principle.
But in fact, this degree of historical certainty can be
established with reference to one specific type of situation:
that which is characterized by production. We know with
absolute certainty that when something is produced, its
occurrence becomes a historical fact. This holds true for the
production of objects; and it is equally true of the production
of consciousness.
With Husserl, we see that consciousness is always first
produced as a certainty for itself; and it is only in the light
of this certainty that, for Husserl, any experience can ever
ultimately be shared with someone other than oneself.
This is how the transcendental nature of experiences, the
intersubjective formation of events, comes to be established
for Husserl.
This issue is in itself of major concern to us here. We
noted earlier that Husserl had stipulated that the way in
which events occur for each individual within their own
consciousness forms the basis of our ability to share a
common world with others: in that objects appear to us as
stable over time, we can refer to things that are the same
for others. But, we then went on to find that proto-linguistic
formations were functioning for primates such as vervet
monkeys; so we would have to conclude that consciousness-
of-self is not providing the referential stability which grounds
language usage.
Here, it becomes apparent that a much more ontological
approach than that which informs Husserls phenomenology
is needed; and that some fundamental inquiry into the
nature of being human will be required before questions
concerning the nature of language will yield any truly
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
insightful answers. We need to look at how consciousness
is produced in order to understand how writing came into
existence at some point upon the threshold of what we call
historical time.
>>>
Deleuze and Guattari take a very different approach than
Husserl in defining the shared commonality which grounds
language, and writing.
For them, the very fact that the earth is so variable
ultimately determines changes in the way that people
act. These changes are, in reality, essentially what we call
thinking. It is the variable nature of the earth that provides
us with the experiences which compel us to think; and
thinking is nothing whatsoever without those experiences
that demand of us that we do think. Thought is something
the variable nature of the earth compels us to produce.
It is because our experience of the earth is so variable that
we have cause for thought: thinking is always, first and
foremost, the experience of difference.
So for Deleuze, the very possibility of anything being
determined as transcendental, as being distinct and
separable, comes from the experience of difference: as he
says, it is only in the transition between experiences (however
infinitesimally close they might be) that we think and are
conscious of things being distinguishable from each other.
In short, what we all have in common is the ability to
experience difference; that is, it is in being conscious of events
as difference that we are compelled to think: which is to say,
the event of thought as difference is contingent upon the
differences we experience in relation to this earth. Where
Husserl sought to ground the commonality shared by all
people in the stability of objective reference, Deleuze and
Guattari found it in the very differential variability which
engenders thought in the first place.
39
Yet if we are to hope that we might ever use the idea
of consciousness as a way of integrating observations
made of non-conscious processes with investigations into
consciousness-of-self, then surely we must be able to find
some common ground between Deleuze and Guattari, and
Husserl!
And so we must ask: is there anything between people (as
in Husserl) which is comparable to what is between people
and the world (as in Deleuze)?
And the answer, as simple as it is, wasnt closely examined
in a philosophical context until David Hume (the great
English empiricist) did so; for Hume was the first to deeply
inquired into what everyone before had simply taken for
granted: that we think in terms of relationships.
We am doing that here, in this ongoing inquiry into the
origin of writing: We are looking at the relationships of which
consciousness forms as, specifically, articulations.
Husserl was looking at the relationship of self certainty
which Descartes established between consciousness and itself.
Deleuze and Guattari are looking here at relationships
formed in our encounter with this earth we are upon and of.
What we are asking at this point, then, is: how do we
describe the relationships Husserl examines, and those
Deleuze examines, in the same breath; that is, using the
same terms?
The answer to this is very clearly formed (and predictably
so, I might add) within that commonality of interests and
application shared by Husserl, Deleuze, and pretty much
everyone else Ive mentioned here (myself included):
philosophy. Because, as Deleuze and Guattari note,
philosophy is all about a very specific way of working with
relationships: called, the concept:
Page 19
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
Readers may start from whatever examples
they like. We believe that they will reach
the same conclusion about the nature of the
concept or the concept of concept. First, every
concept relates back to other concepts, not only
in its history but in its becoming or its present
connections. Every concept has components
that may, in turn, be grasped as concepts (so
that the Other Person has the face among its
components, but the Face will itself be considered
as a concept with its own components). Concepts,
therefore, extend to infinity and, being created,
are never created from nothing. Second,
what is distinctive about the concept is that it
renders components inseparable within itself.
Components, or what defines the consistency of
the concept, its endoconsistency, are distinct,
heterogenous, and yet not separable. The point
is that each partially overlaps, has a zone of
neighborhood [zone de voisinage], or a threshold
indiscernibility, with another one. For example,
in the concept of the other person, the possible
world does not exist outside the face that
expresses it, although it is distinguished from
it as expressed and expression; and the face in
turn is the vicinity of the words for which it is
already the megaphone.
Page 20
These zones, thresholds, or becomings, this
inseparability, defined the internal consistency
of the concept. But the concept also has an
exoconsistency with other concepts, when their
respective creation implies the construction of a
bridge on the same plane. Zones and bridges are
the joints of the concept.
Third, each concept will therefore be
considered as the point of coincidence,
condensation, or accumulation of its own
components. The conceptual point constantly
40
traverses its components, rising and falling
within them. In this sense, each component is an
intensive feature, an intensive ordinate [ordonnee
intensive] which must be understood not as
general or particular but as a pure and simple
singularity - a possible world, a face, some
words - that is particularized or generalized
depending on whether it is given variable values
or a constant function... In the concept there are
only ordinate relationships, not relationships of
comprehension or extension, and the concepts
components are neither constants nor variables
but pure and simple variations ordered according
to their neighborhood. They are processual,
modular. The concept of a bird is found not
in its genus or species but in the composition
of its postures, colors, and songs: something
indiscernible that is not so much synesthetic as
syneidetic. A concept is a heterogenesis - that is
to say, an ordering of its components by zones
of neighborhood. It is ordinal, an intension
present in all the features that make it up. The
concept is in a state of survey [survol] in relation
to its components, endlessly traversing them
according to an order without distance.
Page 21
The concept speaks the event, not the essence
or the thing - pure Event, a heccity, an entity:
the event of the Other or of the face (when, in
turn, the face is taken as a concept). It is like
the bird as event. The concept is defined by the
inseparability of a finite number of heterogenous
components traversed by a point of absolute survey
at infinite speed.
Gilles Deleuze / Felix Guattari,
What Is Philosophy?
>>>
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human
Concepts are productive events of consciousness.
If we are considering how we might think the relationships
which define the nature of something - that is, its ontological
status - we can look first at the endoconsistencies of the
concepts we might form.
That is what we would have to consider if we were asking
ourselves how Husserls idea of self-certainty, developed from
Ren Descartes investigations into consciousness-of-self,
can become a transcendental horizon of intersubjectivity
capable of substituting for the Earth as ultimate ground of all
experience.
If we were wondering how to view Deleuzes approach to
the earth as fundamental source of all those differences
which compel us toward thought in the first place, we would
want to look more closely at the exoconsistencies of those
concepts we were forming; specifically, by considering
the transitions which form bridges between our concepts,
through where groups of our concepts were formed.
When we were looking at the waveform signatures which
served a proto-linguistic function in Taijiquan, we were in fact
looking at intensive ordinates. Such waveform signatures had
an endoconsistency in their relationship with specific muscle
/tendon groups; and an exoconsistency in the ways that they
enabled interactions with the world.
It would seem, then, that what we have identified as proto-
linguistic functions are in fact conceptual formations. So,
we can indeed investigate the origin of writing through an
analysis of consciousness; and we can do this by examining
how concepts come to be formed.
We can say here: consciousness is formed of articulations
in the co-extension of sensory perception and motor reflex
activity. Such articulations form as compelled by our
encounters with this earth; and this compulsion toward
forming such articulations is called thinking. Events which
compel thinking become for us the events of thought; and the
41
events which consciousness produces are called concepts.
Concepts are therefore articulated; and the articulations of
language are therefore conceptual ones.
Therefore, this inquiry will proceed through focussing
on the way in which endoconsistency and exoconsistency
articulate in the formation of concepts: because sometimes
we will be able to examine here how what we are calling
consciousness is put together; and sometimes we will have
no certain idea of that in advance, but, we will have access to
artifacts produced for use long ago (and so, we will assume,
something of this earth compelled the thought which resulted
in such artifacts being produced); and sometimes we will
know something of the environment in which such artifacts
were produced, or, simply in which very, very early people
who were not so very much like us but, who eventually
became who we are, lived.
If we are undertaking an ontology of sense, we can only
do so in the context of our experience upon this earth;
because it is the nature of our ongoing encounter with this
earth upon which we have evolved that has demanded
our senses develop as such, and that has selected for the
functional nature of our senses: this is the ground for us of
what being sensical means. In that this has determined
the form in which experience can occur, as compositional of
consciousness in articulation with motor reflex activity, we
can see more clearly the ontological possibilities that Deleuze
opens up with his non-subjective / non-objective approach.
If we can establish more clearly the essential characteristics
of the event that is our encounter with the earth - the
nature of what we call a life, in Deleuzes terms - then
we might gain a greater degree of insight into that original
sense of position (as our being on this earth) from which
all our eventual positings of subjectivity and objectivity are
necessarily derived.
This is an approach which has become progressively more
established, from a number of different disciplines outside of
philosophy. For instance, Richard Leakey notes:
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 04.0) Toward An Ontology of Being Human 42

Page 144
(The neurologist Harry) Jerison argues that
we should think of brains as creating a species
version of reality. The world we perceived as
individuals is essentially of our own making,
governed by our own experience. Similarly, the
world we perceive as a species is governed by the
nature of the sensory channels we possess.

As brains enlarged through evolutionary

time, more channels of sensory information
could be handled more completely, and their
input integrated more thoroughly... We may be
proud of our introspective consciousness, but we
can be aware only of what the brain is equipped
to monitor in the world. Although language is
seen by many as a tool of communication, it is
also, argues Jerison, a further means by which
our mental reality is honed. Just as the sensory
channels of vision, smell, and hearing are of
especial importance to certain animal groups
in the construction of their particular mental
worlds, language is the key component for
humans.

Richard Leakey The Origin of Humankind.

And indeed, such an approach is entirely consistent with

that which this inquiry has intended from its inception: to
find a way to best integrate those findings established by
advanced neuro-imaging technologies with the insights
gained through philosophic investigations.

Deleuzes approach allows us to move beyond

determinations which are already formed within an
anthropological context, and to directly question the
ontological status of being human. This in turn suggests that
more fundamental approaches to reconstituting the origin of
writing (or of language) might be possible, if based upon an
ontological investigation of the nature of consciousness.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
05.0) Considering Conscious States
If we were at this point to ask ourselves questions such as:
Where does consciousness become an object for itself?; or
perhaps, When did consciousness start to compel itself to
begin thinking?; it is at least becoming somewhat apparent
where the answers to such questions may start to form. For
we would now have to say something such as:
Within a persistence of emotion, which facilitates
conscious states as would memory; whereby perception and
nonthetic consciousness are indistinguishable. For here,
emotion first becomes territoriality; with the body of the
earth set awash in waves of affectivity through which all
are immersed. These waves of event shift from one affective
instance to the next, and do so as these non-conscious
processes jump from each singular occurrence to the next
and on, sequentially, to the next and to the next and to the
next: with each instance a singularity abandoned through
the next occurrence, endlessly, on and on; until this process
of forgetting itself somehow breaks down into a persistence
that itself carries forward. For if the lack of awareness which
we call forgetting is an essential, characteristic function
of non-conscious processes, then the origin of memory
and the establishment of consciousness must be found
in a breakdown of, a dysfunction within, non-conscious
processes; and this must be what had occurred somewhere
in evolutionary history in order for consciousness to become
an object for itself, and for consciousness-of-self to become
established.
Wherever and whenever consciousness became an object
for itself, such that consciousness-of-self was established,
we know that this occurrence must necessarily be
characterized as an event. Specifically, this occurrence
was a productive event; and as such, it can be seen as
decidedly historical. Further, as a productive event, we
must assume that there were components involved, and
that this production proceeded from those constituent
elements; elements which are none other than those of
which consciousness is composed, and which we have been
considering in the course of this inquiry.
43
And while such components might be somewhat different
than those we normally expect to find being utilized in
productive acts, the fact that we are dealing with conscious,
as it becomes such as it is, should be the most familiar thing
for us in this world.
In theory, the point where consciousness comes into being
in this world should be easy for us to spot; but in fact, we
may all need a little practice in this.
>>>
As to WHERE we should start looking; the most logical
position would seem to be that point at which conscious
states are formed of non-conscious processes. And since
it appears that some residual shamanic traditions which
have existed within the guise of modern Eastern religions
may offer insights into the formation of conscious states
from non-conscious processes, a further investigation into
such practices might prove fruitful for the purposes of this
inquiry.
That such a body of knowledge concerns the co-extensive
articulation of conscious states, and their production
from (as well as with) non-conscious processes, makes
these meditative practices entirely consistent with the
fundamental philosophic determinations which have been
guiding this inquiry.
Such practices were apparently designed to produce or
cultivate specific conscious states. That conscious states
can indeed be so produced, suggests that there might be
some possibility here of further investigating the essential
nature of consciousness within the context of production.
And while this approach does not in itself facilitate the
integration of modern technology-based investigations of
the non-conscious processes which underlie consciousness
(and this, not in the least because of the immense
differences in the terminologies used to convey the very
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
different methodologies of survey used in these completely
separate and distinct traditions), it does at least provide
practical examples of how such integration is not only
recognized but is in fact functionally assumed as constituent
of consciousness. In that we can demonstrate how non-
conscious processes functionally constitute the composition
of conscious states, we at least have a model for some of the
principles at work in such integration.
For although such meditative practices are today used
within the context of consciousness-of-self; and so are
now employed to stabilize an already established sense
of subjectivity: we really have no clear idea of their
antiquity, with regard to their shamanic origins. Thus
it is entirely possible that such techniques for producing
conscious states in fact date back to that distant point where
human consciousness was first emerging. Such procedural
methodologies may in fact have originated as functional
technologies dedicated to actually precipitating the initial
formation of consciousness-of-self through the production
of a transitional phase in the evolution of human cognition,
which we can characterize as a simple consciousness-of-
conscious.
>>>
Such investigations not only establish the possibility of
integrating research into non-conscious processes with
observations concerning conscious states, as this occurs
before consciousness-of-self comes to be established; but
also, insights gleaned here are actually formative of the kind
of ontological determinations which are required for any
inquiry into the origin of writing, as undertaken from the
perspective of being human as being conscious.
The reason WHY we are looking in this way is simple
enough: knowing as we do now that concepts always require
a collecting together of components, we must somehow
specify the mechanism through which the components
we seek to fuse into the concepts we need in our inquiry
are brought together. If we are going to try and determine
44
the origin of writing, we need some way in which to bring
together the various aspects which define this event; only
then can we produce any new concepts distinguishing writing
at this origin. From the onset, it seems almost a certainty
that those processes which determine the production of
consciousness will invariably be implicated in the origin of
writing.
In that we have from the beginning decided to try and
define writings origin in terms of consciousness, we have
already established where we will be bringing these
components together: precisely within the way in which we
determine what consciousness can be said to be. Whatever
concepts we produce of writing at its origin, these will have
been composed within our understanding of consciousness.
To better define our understanding of what must function
as the collection point for those components which will form
our concept of writing at its origin, let us once again examine
what it is that we consider consciousness to be.
The Golden Flower Meditation
Of the traditional Oriental meditative practices which are
openly available to the rest of the world, perhaps the simplest
and at the same time most effective is the Golden Flower
Meditation. Originally translated into German by Richard
Wilhelm, in a form so flawed as to render it dangerously
useless for some (a garbled translation of a truncated version
of a corrupted recension of the original work - T. Cleary), this
foundational meditative practice is now available through a
meticulously accurate translation by Thomas Cleary.
Of this work, Cleary notes:
Pages 1-2
The Secret of the Golden Flower is a lay manual
of Buddhist and Taoist methods for clarifying the
mind. A distillation of the inner psycho-active
elements in ancient spiritual classics, it describes
a natural way to mental freedom practiced in
China for many centuries.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
Page 1
The golden flower symbolizes the quintessence
of the paths of Buddhism and Taoism. Gold
stands for light, the light of the mind itself; the
flower represents the blossoming, or opening up,
of the light of the mind. Thus the expression is
emblematic of the basic awakening of the real
self and its hidden potential.
Page 2
This manual contains a number of helpful
meditation techniques, but its central method is
deeper than a form of meditation. Using neither
idea nor image, it is a process of getting right to
the root source of awareness itself. The aim of
this exercise is to free the mind from arbitrary
and unnecessary limitations imposed upon it by
habitual fixation on its own contents. With this
liberation, Taoists say, the conscious individual
becomes a partner of creation rather than a
prisoner of creation.
Thomas Cleary; from the Introduction to
The Secret of the Golden Flower;
The Classic Chinese Book of Life.
Translated by Thomas Cleary;
copyright 1991 by Thomas Cleary.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers,
New York NY.
Once again, I find it a rather curious matter that no record
of such ancient techniques has persisted within Western
philosophic and religious traditions. If I were pressed to
explain this cultural discrepancy, I would only be able to
suggest that writing was in use throughout the Orient long
before it came into being in the West; and that as a result,
traditions which record the transition from simple conscious
states to consciousness-of-self have been retained in the East.
In the West, we do not seem to have retained a written record
of anything much older than a kind of social determination
45
for consciousness-of-self as constituted within an agrarian
context, such as we see in the various religious texts which
sprang into existence and popularity in the Middle East from
the advent of phonetic writing onward. There is of course an
Eastern corollary of that, in the form of Confucianism (which
defines social relations and obligations for the individual);
but the kind of meditative practice outlined in the Golden
Flower meditation is very different from that:
Page 138
The Secret of the Golden Flower represents a
way of approaching completeness of energy
through completeness of mind. This teaching
calls itself a special transmission outside of
doctrine, free from attachment to dogma and
form, based on direct perception of the essence
of mind and recovery of its inherent potential.
This is the hallmark of Chan (Buddhism), which
is sometimes called the school of the enlightened
mind.
For practical purposes, a distinction is made in
the golden flower teaching between the original
spirit and the conscious spirit. The original
spirit is the formless essence of awareness; it
is unconditioned and transcends culture and
history. The conscious spirit is the mind-set of
feelings, thoughts, and attitudes, conditioned by
personal and cultural history, bound by habit to
specific forms. These terms are employed in both
Chan and Taoist traditions.
Page 139
The operation of switching from the limited
mind of conditioned consciousness to the
liberated mind of primal spirit is known as the
method of reversal or turning around the
light. In The Secret of the Golden Flower these
terms refer to restoration of direct contact with
the essence and source of awareness.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
Page 140
In both Taoism and Buddhist, the term
turning the light around means turning the
primary attention from involvement in mental
objects to focus on the essence or source of mind.
This exercise is practiced as a means of clearing
consciousness and freeing awareness.
Thomas Cleary; from the Translators Afterword to
The Secret of the Golden Flower.
That this meditation would be adopted unchanged by a
wide range of religions clearly suggests that religion is indeed
a construct of the human mind: it is, in fact, practically an
admission that one needs a human mind in order to have
religion; and that a necessary and unavoidable first step in
this is establishing such a mind as humans have. This, we
all take for granted; but it cannot always have been so: at
some point, what we now recognize as human consciousness
came into existence. This couldnt have happened all at once,
everywhere; and even when it did happen, things might
not have necessarily stayed that way without lapsing back
on occasion into whatever had been before. Perhaps, then,
such techniques were developed to facilitate the ongoing
cultivation of such an incredibly valuable yet insanely
tenuous possession: a stable conscious state from which
consciousness-of-self could be developed.
Here we have a truly rare opportunity: to each experience
for ourselves the formation of a conscious state; to gain first-
hand knowledge of how we all produce consciousness. This is
not a small thing; and it is something we can each do without
any technological support whatsoever. At the same time, it
is something which has proven impossible to achieve or even
demonstrate using any degree of technology available today.
In truth, this is one of the few basic forms of inquiry where a
human mind remains indispensable and irreplaceable: the
immanent experience of consciousness, just exactly as it is
produced in what it is.
46
>>>
Thus, The Secret of the Golden Flower can be considered to
be one of those great treasures of cultural knowledge (along
with, I might add, Tarthang Tulkus Kum Nye Relaxation)
that have been preserved into our modern age. And Clearys
assessment of this text is in no way exaggerated: because
what this text does, as a means of instruction in a very
fundamental and effective technique for experiencing the
nature of ones own mind, is to very simply and directly
introduce one to the experience of conscious states as the
articulation of co-extended sensory perception and motor
reflex activity.
In this, the last stage of an introduction to what I consider
to be experiences essential to the understanding of the
nature of consciousness (in the form that I am employing
consciousness in the course of this inquiry into the origin
of writing), I would like to outline my own program of
instruction into that technique known as The Secret of the
Golden Flower.
Since we will be considering through large parts of this
inquiry: the nature of consciousness before consciousness-
of-self forms; consciousness as it functions in a pre-linguistic
context; and consciousness as produced of non-conscious
processes, I am providing a very basic outline of this standard
and time-honored procedure for producing within oneself just
such a basic conscious state. This way, we can all if needed be
on the same page in this inquiry, regardless of the material
we are considering.
>>>
When I actually teach this technique to others, I present
it as the best and most basic meditation technique I have
found: the one which is called Turning The Light Around,
or, The Golden Flower Meditation. That technique is such
an effective one that it was used by both Buddhist and
Taoist schools; and often, it was considered to be the only
meditation technique that people needed to practice in order
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
to gain an authentic control of their own original minds and
spirits. This is certainly true; but that meditation is also a
very solid base upon which more advanced techniques can be
developed, both in the martial arts and in other meditative
technologies.
In presenting this technique here in the manner that I am,
I realize that I am diverging somewhat from the discursive
structure of this inquiry; but, I am doing so consciously,
out of deference to a meditative approach of truly timeless
grandeur.
Besides, if we are going to be talking about conscious states
as they exist before consciousness-of-self, it really is a good
idea to avail ourselves of the opportunity to experience at
least a little of what that would be like. That way, we can at
least say that we know what we are talking about, even as
we try and decide what it is that we can say of such states.
Here, then, is how I introduce others to The Golden Flower
Meditation for Turning The Light Around:
>>>
It is often said that meditation is about stilling the mind.
If this is so, then maybe people meditate simply by making
their minds go blank.
Yet anyone who tries to simply still their conscious mind
quickly finds out that this does not seem possible. Just try it
and see!
Do not think of anything, I will tell people.
As a joke, I often then ask: Are you thinking of nothing
yet? (because jokes are a fun way for learning, and of
remembering things). And of course as soon as I ask this,
well, anyone hearing me say that would automatically be
thinking of their answer, rather than of nothing.
The answer, then, is invariably no.
47
Then I will say: Okay, lets try something else. I want you
to look straight ahead at whatever is in front of you. Now, I
want you to not see whatever it is you are looking at... are you
doing that yet?
Again that is kind of funny, too; because people will
either say they are, or that they are not: because, since it is
a ridiculous thing to ask a person to do, and since it doesnt
make any sense, their answer might not either.
But, anyone who is at all honest with themselves (and this
is something people need to be before they can benefit from
meditation; or from philosophy, I might add) will at some
point realize that they are always going to see anything they
are looking directly at; because that is what our eyes do: they
see things that are in front of them.
Once someone admits that very basic fact of perceptual
reality, it is then time to ask them something which should be
just as obvious:
Then why would you expect your mind not to think, when
thinking is what the mind does?
After phrasing that realization, I point out one more
obvious fact:
Look at what is in front of you again. Do you see what is
there? Now turn your head to the side. Are you still looking
at what was in front of you?
And this is the essential technique of turning the light
around: not to stop all activity in the mind, but to turn
the mind toward something inside which is always there
anyway, as a constant. Instead of leaving the mind to think
whatever comes to it from outside, the mind is instead turned
toward our natural process of breathing.
The mind is directed to rest itself on the breath, to form
itself as a simple awareness of our gently breathing in and
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
out, to be just a simple awareness of the fact that we are
breathing... and to be only that awareness.
The mind will naturally wander a little here and there; but
it is an easy thing to just let the mind rest again on the breath
gently; not forcing it toward focusing upon the breath but
just letting the breath be what the mind is directed toward,
just letting the breath be what the mind rests itself on, in its
necessary awareness of something.
After a while, as we become more familiar with resting our
mind on our breath, we eventually realize something very
important: although our mind might not be taken up with
such random thoughts as we are use to seeing it generally
produce, it is still very far from being empty. What is found
there instead of thoughts, something which is almost always
hidden behind the random thoughts that pop into our heads,
is a very delicate yet definite sense of ENERGY!
It is a sense of feeling, of awareness, of tonality that is
bright, buoyant, and uplifting; and if we relax our minds to
rest on our breath, then this awareness-energy will open for
us like the petals of a flower open in golden sunshine.
This is our true mind: this is our spirit; this is who we
really are underneath the experiences which have given us
our personalities.
Sometimes finding this can be quite a surprise - even a bit
of a shock: to finally see oneself in this way, in a moment of
inner stillness and clarity, can even be a little bit frightening
because we are all much bigger and stronger inside than we
realize... yet this is who we really are, and this is the essence
of our greatest strength and greatest freedom.
Usually we only experience who we are as the brief, fleeting
fragments of personality which come and go in our minds
response to things around us (or, as the memory of such
things). But the Golden Flower Meditation for Turning The
Light Around gives us direct access to the core of our being,
and frees us from the random thoughts which our minds
48
produce (because that is what minds are for).
The Buddhists consider this the ultimate source of our
personal freedom, and say that from here we can free
ourselves from anything which has twisted our thoughts and
feelings away from whom we would have ourselves be, if we
had a choice in the matter... because we can have that choice.
We are our own consciousness; and we can be that
consciousness coming into being: because, we humans are
conscious beings.
>>>
Because I am a philosopher (or so I tell myself), I do like
to think about thought a fair bit. One of the thoughts that
I entertain about this meditation, is: I wonder how far back
in evolutionary history one would have to go before the
Golden Flower Meditation was no longer a practical exercise;
I wonder when we humans might have first been able to avail
ourselves of this technique.
I suppose the only answer here is, one would invariably
need some reason to proceed with such a meditation; and I
cant really seem to imagine our closest primate relatives ever
conceiving of such a reason. Perhaps this sets us apart from
other species: we may not be the only ones who produce tools,
but, we might be unique in producing our own conscious
states, just to do so, as an end in itself.
So it does appear that, for at least one thousand
documented years (and probably for many, many thousands
of years before), a very basic meditative technique has been
in use which functionally integrates motor reflex activity
with sensory perception; and in doing so, this meditative
technique is recognized as essentially forming the most basic
of conscious states possible.
In having access to the direct experience of this most basic
of conscious states, we can thus orient ourselves within
any inquiry which attempts to characterize either how
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
conscious states arise or, most importantly for our inquiry,
how conscious states support the production of any further
instances of their occurrence. Whatever might be produced of
conscious states will inevitably form as do conscious states.
In that the Golden Flower Meditation specifically and
unerring seeks to form an originary conscious state precisely
from the co-extension of sensory perception (the inner
observation of turning the light around) and motor reflex
activity (simply, breathing), it is the one meditative technique
that, most simply and directly, allows anyone to experience
in its immediacy the essential nature of consciousness as it
forms of such co-extensive articulation
Not only does this provide the opportunity for anyone
to know from first-hand experience exactly what is being
referred to by the term conscious states; but in addition, the
considerable body of insightful commentary and observation
accumulated from very experienced and advanced
practitioners provides an invaluable archive of information
concerning the functional nature of such articulations as
conscious states are formed from.
With this in mind, let us consider for a moment some
of the actual text being referenced here. This might take
us momentarily away from the primary purpose of this
philosophic inquiry; but, I do not think it will be very difficult
to find our way back on track after this temporary diversion.
Quotations from The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Translated by Thomas Cleary; with associated
annotations by T. Cleary.
Page 23
IV. Turning the Light Around and Tuning the
Breathing.
2) On the whole, beginners suffer from two kinds
of problems: oblivion and distraction. There is a
device to get rid of them, which is simply to rest
the mind on the breath.
49
Cleary notes: Oblivion and distraction are
commonly treated in Buddhist meditation
manuals as the two main sicknesses to which
meditators are prone. Focusing the mind on the
breathing is an ancient Buddhist practice that is
especially popular among modern-day Zennists.
Spiritual Alchemy for Women, a late-nineteenth-
century Taoist work, says, In general, what is
most essential at the beginning of this study is
self-refinement. Self-refinement is a matter of
mind and breathing resting on each other. This
means that the mind rests on the breathing and
the breathing rests on the mind (from Immortal
Sisters).
A close study of such texts quickly reveals that what is being
presented is in fact a methodology for producing a distinct
and distinguishable sense of consciousness as such; and in
doing so, the sense of refinement being referenced really
relates to the fact that something, rather than nothing
must be worked upon: that we are, in fact, dealing with
basic ontological determinations which are predicated
upon the nature of being human as being conscious. Here,
the most basic conscious state possible is clearly indicated
as being accessible from the co-extensive articulation of
motor reflex activity (breathing) and sensory perception
(inner observation); and that such occurrences of this very
basic sense of articulation form between nothingness (an
essential non-functionality), and, the productive processes
which occur within conscious states: between the oblivion
where awareness dissipates at the threshold of non-conscious
states, and, the distractions which consciousness produces
of itself. By definitional, this is indeed exactly the position
we have been looking for in relation to conscious states:
the localization of the functional nature of non-conscious
processes, in becoming articulated with consciousness,
BEFORE the objects which occur within consciousness are
formed.
This is where anything that consciousness can produce for
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
itself will come into existence; and that means, specifically
for the purposes of this inquiry, anything which will come
to constitute writing: and in that this determination is an
essentially ontological one, it will necessarily hold for any
other artifacts which are produced in the course of being
human upon this earth. Which is to say, should we wish to
examine the context in which human consciousness produces
artifacts before consciousness-of-self comes to be formed,
then this is precisely where we must begin looking.
Page 23
3) The breath is ones own mind; ones own mind
does the breathing. Once mind stirs, then there
is energy. Energy is basically an emanation of
mind.
Cleary notes: Taoists and Buddhists both
observe the intimate natural connection
between breathing and mental state. When the
mind is excited, the breathing accelerates; when
the mind is calm, so is the breath. The practice
of resting mind and breath on each other makes
deliberate use of this relationship to calm the
mind down and gradually bring it to a state of
stillness.
Thomas Cleary, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
There are innumerable references in Taoist texts to the state
of stillness in which the energy of mind becomes apparent:
indeed, that the mind can be so experienced as it occurs
before objective or subjective references are formed within
it and, that this experience is one of energy patterns, is
something which we encountered in examining the more
active practices of Taijiquan and Kum Nye Relaxation. To
mention a few such references:
Page 120
The exercise of stillness is in each interval of
time. Even within a quarter hour there are the
exercises of refining vitality into energy, refining
50
energy into spirit, and refining spirit back into
openness.
Zhang Sanfengs Taiji Alchemy Secrets, in Taoist
Meditation: Methods for Cultivating a Healthy
Mind and Body. Translated by Thomas Cleary;
copyright 2000 by Thomas Cleary. Published by
Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston MA, USA.
Page 9
When there is attention in stillness, there is
perceptivity in action. When there is autonomy
in stillness, action can be decisive. When there
is certitude in stillness, actions are auspicious.
Stillness is the foundation of action, action is the
potential of stillness. When action and stillness
are always as they should be, ones path is
illuminated.
The Book of Balance and Harmony: A Taoist
Handbook. Translated by Thomas Cleary;
copyright 1989 by Thomas Cleary. Published by
Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston MA, USA.
Page 103
Energy, Vitality, Spirit
The Tao is in the body. Within the body is
hidden another person, who always accompanies
you, whatever you do. Awake or asleep, it
is always there; looking, listening, talking,
walking, it is very close. This is not the awareness
of conditioned knowledge, it is the original sane
energy, vitality and spirit. If you seek this in
terms of form or shape, you are mistaking the
servant for the master.
Liu I-Ming, Awaking to the Tao. Translated by
Thomas Cleary; copyright 1988 by Thomas Cleary.
Published by Shambhala Publications Inc.,
Boston MA, USA.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
We have already encountered such energy patterns, in the
form of those waveform signatures which characteristically
activated motor reflex responses in Taijiquan. There, we
noted that these energy configurations, as differential
transferences, were functionally proto-linguistic in nature.
Elsewhere, we noted that, as intensive ordinates, such energy
differentials could be used compositionally in the formation
of concepts. Here, in addition to those intensive ordinates
which localize any transference of energy differentials, we
are also encountering an essential stillness which seems to
be the nature of awareness at the transition between non-
conscious processes and conscious states.
Interestingly, it is also now becoming apparent within
modern research protocols that the energy configurations of
our underlying neural processes, when in a resting state, are
in fact measurable using current imaging technologies:
Page 44-46
It turns out that when your mind is a rest -
when you are daydreaming quietly in a chair,
asleep in a bed or anesthetized for surgery
- dispersed brain areas are chattering away to
one another. And the energy consumed by this
ever active messaging, known as the brains
default mode, is about 20 times that used by the
brain when it responds consciously to a pesky fly
or another outside stimulus. Indeed, most things
we do consciously, be it sitting down to eat dinner
or making a speech, mark a departure from the
baseline activity of the brain default mode.
Key to an understanding of the brains default
mode has been the discovery of a heretofore
unrecognized brain system that has been dubbed
the brains default mode network (DMN). The
exact role of the DMN in organizing neural
activity is still under study, but it may orchestrate
the way the brain organizes memories and
various systems that need preparation for future
events: the brains motor system has to be revved
51
and ready when you feel the tickle of a fly on
your arm. The DMN may play a critical role
in synchronizing all parts of the brain so that,
like racers in a track competition, they are all
in the proper set mode when the starting gun
goes off. If the DMN does prepare the brain for
conscious activity, investigations of its behavior
may provide clues to the nature of conscious
experience.
Page 47
In the mid-1990s we noticed quite by
accident that, surprisingly, certain brain regions
experienced a decreased level of activity from the
baseline resting state when subjects carried out
some task. These areas - in particular, a section
of the medial parietal cortex (a region near the
middle of the brain involved with remembering
personal events in ones life, among other things)
- registered this drop when other areas were
engaged in carrying out a defined task such as
reading aloud. Befuddled, we labeled the area
showing the most depression MMPA, for medial
mystery parietal area.
A series of PET experiments then confirmed that
the brain is far from idling when not engaged in
a conscious activity. In fact, the MMPA as well as
most other areas remains constantly active until
the brain focuses on some novel task, at which
time some areas of intrinsic activity decrease.
Marcus E. Raichle, The Brains Dark Energy;
in: Scientific American, March 2010.
Does this documented occurrence of a global energy pattern
within the brain in any way correspond to the experience of
a baseline energy pattern experienced through the Golden
Flower Meditation? Well, it is notoriously difficult to establish
any direct correspondences between neural states and the
experience of consciousness; and, it is with a notoriously
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
equal ease that baseless associations are often interpolated
from cursory resemblances.
One thing can be said with absolute certainty, though:
when conscious activity causes a deviation in that baseline
energy state which characterizes dormant neurology in
this overall fashion, the decrease in background energy is
accompanied by an increase in activity localized to specific
areas of the brain.
In other words, if the activities of consciousness can be
characterized as transcendent, nonetheless, such activities
are always localized within the brains neurology: there is
no place outside of itself where the actions of consciousness
occur. When consciousness is produced, it occurs within the
neural substrate of the brain.
Page 24
5) So should one have no thoughts? It is impossible
to have no thoughts. Should one not breath? It is
impossible not to breath. Nothing compares to
making the affliction itself into medicine, which
means to have mind and breath rest on each
other. Therefore tuning the breath should be
included in turning the light around.
Cleary notes: Taoist and Buddhist texts
describe many manifestations of human
tendencies toward polarization and extremism.
These include notices of people trying to stop
thinking completely, believing this to be the goal
of meditation practice. In Taoist literature there
is also mentioned of people who even try to stop
breathing. The idea of making the affliction
itself into medicine is characteristically
Buddhist, also described in later Taoist literature
as temporarily using things of the world to
cultivate principles of the Way.
Thomas Cleary, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
52
In allowing individuals to become aware of the energy
patterns which define conscious states, such meditative
practices greatly facilitate the development of an ability to
cognitively process conscious states as energy patterns; and
this in turn is essential to any substantial progress that can
be made in martial arts such as Taijiquan. Such awareness
is thus just one necessary step in an ongoing process that
has been very thoroughly determined with reference to
a proscribed sequence of developmental stages. This is a
process that has been followed by countless individuals;
historically, such a practice extends back at least 1,000
years: and it is generally recognized within the cultures
that established these practices that, they originated from
techniques extending back into Paleolithic times. Questioning
the authenticity of such practices makes about as much sense
as asking if corn, rice, or wheat is edible.
Page 51
X. The Light of Essence and the Light of
Consciousness
Cleary notes: The distinction between the
light of essence and the light of consciousness
is critical to success in the practice of Taoist
alchemy or Chan Buddhism. Paragraph 1 in
Section II makes this clear when it says, Only
the true essence of the original spirit transcends
the primal organization and is above it.
It is unfortunate that Wilhelm did not
translate this tenth section, because if properly
understood it would have been of inestimable
value to Jung, who was evidently unable to make
the critical distinction in his own experience.
Indeed, Jung does not seem to have even had
a clear theoretical grasp of this issue; what he
assigns to the unconscious would in Taoism
still be considered part of the consciousness
of the human mentality, not the essence that
transcends the primal organization.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
Thomas Cleary, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Here again is a very clear indication of that very basic
distinction between consciousness-of-self and conscious
states. It is the very same distinction which we saw as
established between an ontological approach to defining
being human, and an anthropological approach which
necessarily proceeds within definitional parameters
inescapably drawn from established preconceptions
concerning what being human must be said to entail. If
we are to attempt an ontological analysis of being human
as defined by being conscious, we must of course not only
have some grasp on what we mean by being conscious
but we must also have some expectation of being able to
recognize how consciousness arises, that we might hope to
notice any characteristics which could indicate the point
in our prehistory where what we could call being human
arose. Some suggest we must consider this point to have been
reached when our species first reared itself up onto two feet;
and I think that we now have the philosophic tools we need
to take a rather interesting look at that matter, in due course.
Page 51
1) The method of turning the light around basically
is to be carried on whether walking, standing,
sitting, or reclining. It is only essential that you
yourself find the opening of potential.
Cleary notes: In modern times, followers of
sectarian Zen and Taoism have come to lay great
stress on sitting meditation, but classical masters
have pointed out that addiction to stillness can
have serious mental and physical drawbacks.
If the practice of turning the light around is
carried on only in specific settings or postures,
it may be impossible to integrate it fully with
everyday life, leading to a kind of split in the
personality.
Thomas Cleary, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
53
My own experience with this meditative technique has
always been of the essential sense of energy which one
cultivates in the stillness of the mind; and that this energy
and this stillness invariably occurred together as inseparable.
To me, the entire range of such energy patterns extends
from the sensation of physical motion, into the persistence
of emotion, and on through the myriad relational
configurations which constitute events; in short, all such
differences which might be said to form intensive ordinates:
changes in energy configuration which can be positionally
localized.
I think that Gilles Deleuze expressed this quite beautifully
in his last published essay:
Page 29
A life is everywhere, in all the moments that
a given living subject goes through and that are
measured by given lived objects: an immanent
life carrying with it the events or singularities
that are merely actualized in subjects and
objects. This indefinite life does not itself have
moments, close as they may be one to another,
but only between-times, between-moments; it
doesnt just come about or come after but offers
the immensity of an empty time where one sees
the event yet to come and already happened, in
the absolute of an immediate consciousness.
Gilles Deleuze, Immanence: A Life;
in Pure Immanence.
In keeping with those observations which Deleuze and
Guattari have made regarding thought in the non-subjective,
non-objective context of what they call geophilosophy (that
is, thought as formed through relationships of territoriality
with the earth), the suggestion of a situational aspect in the
formation of persistent conscious is particularly interesting:
for however humans evolved an upright status, to the
extent that it involved conscious states interacting with
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
a surrounding environment, it wasnt achieved through
Descartes preference for sitting in chairs or lying in beds.
But perhaps we might hope to reactivate something of how
an upright stance became characteristic of our being human,
should we manage to define the situation in which we arose
as so very different than that which had been before us. This
is certainly something to keep in mind; and, this is something
we might hope to inquire into only if we have some ready
sense of how consciousness might have been experienced
as it was produced before consciousness-of-self came to be
established.
Page 53
11) When turning the light around, you properly
turn around the primary unattributable light, so
not a single conscious thought is applied.
Cleary notes: Sometimes the exercise of
turning the light around is described as looking
to see where thoughts comes from, but this is
not the same as the psychoanalytic exercise of
looking to see the unconscious roots of conscious
manifestations. In Chan practice, psychoanalysis
comes after seeing essence, because it is only
from the central standpoint of essence that
the contents of consciousness can be witnessed
objectively.
Thomas Cleary, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Similarly, regarding the relationship between ontological
considerations and the practicality of phenomenological
investigations, it has been clearly established that ontological
concerns prefigure what can be addressed through
phenomenological inquiry. I find it quite interesting that
the same methodological considerations which define the
Golden Flower Meditation are consistent with the procedural
methodologies that constitute basic inquiry within post-
structural philosophy; bearing in mind, of course, that
post-structural philosophy arrived at such a position after
a notoriously bitter and protracted critique of modern
54
psychology and psychoanalytic theory.
Still, this point is well taken: there is no better way to
inquire into the nature of conscious thoughts than through
an analysis of how consciousness comes to be produced.
Page 54
13) Now if you turn the light around without falling
into consciousness, you are using the original
essence in the sense organs. If you turn the light
around fallen into consciousness, then you use
the nature of consciousness in the sense organs.
Herein lies the hairs-breadths distinction.
Thomas Cleary, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Here we see another clear indication that the conscious
state which is being described is characterized by its co-
extension with sensory perception, and not by any sense of
consciousness established through anything but an originary
encounter with the articulation of sensory perception and
motor reflex activity. This is a subtle distinction, and it cant
be stressed too often, because it is all too easy to simply
assume that such a conscious state as is being referred
to here over and over again is exactly coincident with the
experience of consciousness each of us has had as an ongoing
basis throughout our lives. Maybe it is, maybe it isnt - but
the distinction is such that it will yield radically divergent
results, depending upon which approach we take: that of an
ontological analysis of being human as being conscious;
or that of an anthropological approach assuming human
consciousness as a given (when it is, after all, something
produced).
Page 54
14) Deliberate meditation is the light of
consciousness; let go, and it is then the light of
essence. A hairs-breadths difference is that of a
thousand miles, so discernment is necessary.
Thomas Cleary, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
This is in itself a particularly interesting passage.
It seems to suggest that, in fact, intentionality defines the
distinction between conscious awareness and that which is
essential to consciousness.
We are also told something else, though: that the
difference between what is fundamental to consciousness,
and consciousness itself, is infinitesimal; and yet this subtle
distinction is enough to define a world of difference.
And in fact, what is being described here can only be
difference itself: specifically, the nature of those differentials
of transference which articulate the co-extensive nature of
non-conscious processes and conscious states.
Here, we find ourselves in accordance with Deleuze
and Guattari, rather than Husserl: in this, we see that
consciousness IS difference, and nothing else: consciousness,
as awareness, is the ability to be cognizant of difference. This
is why, even with the stillest of minds, one is still aware of
consciousness as a sense of inherent energy patterns.
What we are being told here is that the transference of
differentials that produces conscious states are in themselves
always potentially distinguishable from the co-extensive
situation through which they function; and that the
stability of co-extension, and the articulations of differential
transference are not to be confused with each other.
Precisely, the nature of this distinction is: to be aware
of such articulations is to be conscious-of-self; whereas to
beware of the co-extension from which such articulations
form is simply to be in a conscious state.
Consistently, the essence of the primary insight obtained
through the Golden Flower Meditation is that the functions
of non-conscious processes form articulations with conscious
states which are characteristically prior to and essentially
integral with the production of consciousness-of-self. Further,
55
the process through which conscious states are produced
is accessible to us, through our direct experience, and can
be determined in its essential nature as the production of
articulations formed of a co-extension between motor reflex
activity and sensory perception. As such, this meditative
technique can be described as a procedural methodology
(for a productive activity) which is consistently repeatable
and verifiable by others. This, of course, is a requirement
of any scientific methodology (which in itself has a rather
interesting history of development); and that is perhaps as
good a reason as any for including a section on the Golden
Flower Meditation within this inquiry: that anyone interested
in this investigation into the origin of writing can assure
themselves of having an interpretive context which is shared
equally between all those who might avail themselves of the
results this study will in its due course produce.
Page 65
Questions and Answers Opening Up
The Mysteries of the Doctrine of the Golden Flower.
Forms are all conditioned. Cognition is a
function of mind, empty silence is the substance
of mind. If you fix the mind on anything
conditioned, then temperament is in control, so
you cannot govern it completely or comprehend
it thoroughly.
What cannot be spoken and cannot be named
is the generative energy, which is the substance
of the Way. When the substance is established,
the function operates.
Thomas Cleary, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
That seems fairly straightforward: the generative,
productive capabilities of consciousness are localizable within
a baseline of apparent non-activity; which is to say, that the
non-conscious processes which determine the products of
consciousness are positionally localizable to the threshold of
consciousness as such production.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
It is the nature of this threshold, then, which should
ultimately concern us here. Specifically, in determining the
distinction between what is non-conscious and what is
conscious, this threshold seems to articulate the nature of
awareness.
Earlier, we saw how Sartre pushed our understanding
of such a threshold into what he called nonthetic
consciousness: consciousness which is functionally so, yet is
not conscious of itself as such.
Here, we saw that the distinction between subject and
object was no longer applicable. We also saw that the nature
of this distinction between nonthetic consciousness and
synthetic consciousness-of-self was determined precisely
within memory: that the effects of nonthetic consciousness
are only apparent through memory.
This tells us that the distinction between non-conscious
processes and conscious states is defined by a threshold which
differentiates between function and awareness.
In that motor reflex activity is essentially functional in
nature; and sensory perception is necessarily characterized
by awareness: it would seem that the threshold between
non-conscious processes and conscious states is one of co-
extension as typified by motor reflex activity and sensory
perception. Here, we might say there is an awareness
gradient within situations of co-extension, and of which
articulations form.
The functionality of non-conscious processes is not attended
by awareness; and in that the awareness of which we speak
here is attended by memory, we might postulate that non-
conscious processes are attended by a functional forgetting
that essentially distinguishes their nature from that of
conscious states.
If this is so; and, given that non-conscious processes
articulate with conscious states, it then it stands to reason
56
that we should be able to trace something of the nature of
this functional forgetting into conscious states, and so have
a distinct indication of how these articulations are effected.
We already saw something of this when we considered
how concepts are formed; in the fusing together of the
intensive ordinates which constitute the endoconsistency of
any concept. There, the rendering of component elements
as indiscernible in their individuality was in effect the
forgetting of their discrete origins; and in this, we can
readily see how the awareness gradient that characterizes
the threshold between non-conscious processes and conscious
states persists within the articulations which constitute
events for conscious thought. By examining the way in
which conscious states come to be produced of non-conscious
processes, we also see something of the way in which the
contents of consciousness come to be produced.
>>>
Since it is the nature of non-conscious processes to function
continuously, that they might always provide immediate
responses, it must be considered that these processes are
always in a state of forgetting those functional outcomes
which they produce; because, were these energy differentials
which are constantly being produced to persist in a stable
state, then we would expect them to become constituent
components of conscious states.
In not being retained, delayed, or articulated, the energy
differentials produced of the ongoing functionality of non-
conscious processes must somehow be unceasingly drawn off
so that new operant parameters might form.
In one sense, this is a functional aspect of any nerve cell:
signals are passed through nerves in the form of waves
of electrical potential which sweep along the cell walls of
nerves, in the form of shifting concentrations of electrically
charged ions. At each moment, the actual transferences are
across the cell wall, in packets that move along the cell wall
as the electrical gradient is polarized and reversed. There is
a constant shifting of potential across the cell walls; and this
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States
then triggers the release of neurotransmitters at the ends of
neurons.
However, it also takes energy to move electrically charged
ions across cell membranes: this occurs as chemical energy,
but also necessarily produces energy released in the form
of heat. It is these forms of energy build-up, chemical and
thermal, which must ultimately be somehow dissipated in
order that neurons continue to function properly.
Whatever mechanism drives this form of energy dissipation,
it should in some way be directly connected with the
essential, functional forgetting which necessarily attends
non-conscious processes.
Ultimately, if I had to define a neuro-physiological
process that might underlie the functionality of forgetting
which is characteristic of non-conscious processes, I would
probably look to a support structure within nerve cells called
microtubules.
Microtubules are hollow, fluid-filled tubes which are found
in great numbers within nerve cells. These structures provide
physical support for those long, branching cells; and as
entirely co-extended with the physical body of neurons, these
structures have been postulated by some as being essential
to the production of consciousness: a possibility extensively
investigated by Stuart Hameroff, Roger Penrose, and David
Chalmers, among others (in, for instance, the seminal paper
Orchestrated Objective Reduction of Quatum Coherence in
Brain Microtubules: The Orch OR Model for Consciousness).
It seems fairly likely to me that, in addition to providing
physical support to neurons, these structures might also
act to dissipate any excessive build-up of energy within
continuously functioning nerve cells. In such a scenario,
small structures which connect the cell walls of neurons
with microtubules, called Microtubule Associated Proteins
(MAPs), would convert excess energy occurring at the
cell walls of neurons into vibrational energy that would be
dissipated through the microtubules, by way of physical
57
resonance. In this way, excess energy from more active
neurons would dissipate into less active neurons, where it
would serve to lower activation thresholds in those cells.
This would seem to be consistent with the relationship
already documented and noted of the background energy
levels found within the brain as a whole, and the wholesale
shift in energy patterns which occurs when specific neural
activations occur.
Thus, even at the molecular level, there would be a direct
relationship between the transference of energy differentials
in the activation of neural tissue, and, a functional
forgetting that serves to simultaneously dissipate energy and
to facilitate the formation of transferential thresholds.
Hameroff and Penrose do suggest that there is a direct
connection between the energy-related functions of
microtubules and the awareness threshold between non-
conscious processes and conscious states; with non-conscious
processes typically involving microtubule functions, and
conscious states typically involving classical neural firings:
however, their explanation is much more involved than
my rather simple (by comparison) approach. In either
case, though, the suggestion occurs that consciousness is
produced through a constant reduction in organizational
complexity within nerve cells; a reduction which I take to
be a consistently articulated transference of energy patterns
between co-extended neural structures.
There is certainly no great need to investigate these neural
processes at a molecular level in the course of this inquiry;
but I would like to further investigate the nature of the
functional forgetting which seems to attend non-conscious
processes. Since such a characteristic appears to be one of
the better ways we have in distinguishing non-conscious
processes from conscious states; and in that we might be able
to trace how such forgetting occurs within conscious states
through their productive articulation with non-conscious
processes, it seems that a better understanding of such
relationships might more clearly define precisely how non-
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 05.0) Considering Conscious States 58

conscious processes and conscious states are integrated.

In addition, we do need to keep in mind that the processes

of integration which we are working toward defining (for use
in producing concepts, within the context of conscious states)
in terms of articulation do need to ultimately come from
somewhere, and to have identifiable characteristics which
will determine what we might be able to say of the functional
nature of writing.

Should we find reason to implicate non-conscious processes

in the production of writing, then, whatever we have
managed to grasp of how such processes contribute to the
formation of conscious states may be of some use to us.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
Consciousness-of-self, and language as signification, are
both contingent upon memory; and so both are subject to
the process of forgetting. There is no way to directly retrieve
that which is forgotten in the depths of time without
somehow reconstituting the sense of the initial encounter
with that which has been forgotten.
However, if we are dealing with situations where
consciousness-of-self has not yet formed, we must rethink
whatever role would be played by memory. If our inquiry
is an ontological one, then we must have a closer look
at the nature of memory. This also means that we must
consider again exactly what is constituting this process of
forgetting.
Such an approach is suggested by Jean Hyppolite (as
referenced by Jacques Derrida):
Page 87-88
The possibility of writing will assure the
absolute traditionalization of the object, its
absolute ideal Objectivity - i.e., the purity
of its relation to a universal transcendental
subjectivity. Writing will do this by
emancipating sense from its actually present
evidence for a real subject and from its present
circulation within a determined community.
The decisive function of written expression, of
expression which documents, is that it makes
communication possible without immediate
or mediate address; it is, so to speak,
communication become virtual.
That virtuality, moreover, is an ambiguous
value: it simultaneously makes passivity,
forgetfulness, and all the phenomena of crisis
possible.
By absolutely virtualizing dialogue, writing
59
creates a kind of autonomous transcendental
field from which every present subject can be
absent.
In connection with the general signification
of the epoche, Jean Hyppolite invokes the
possibility of a subjectless transcendental
field, one in which the conditions of
subjectivity would appear and where the
subject would be constituted starting from the
transcendental field. Writing, as the place of
absolutely permanent ideal objectivities and
therefore of absolute Objectivity, certainly
constitutes such a transcendental field. And
likewise, to be sure, transcendental subjectivity
can be fully announced and appear on the
basis of this field or its possibility. Thus the
subjectless transcendental field is one of the
conditions of transcendental subjectivity.
But all this can be said only on the basis
of an intentional analysis which retains from
writing nothing but writings pure relation
to a consciousness which grounds it as such,
and not its factuality which, left to itself, is
totally without signification. For this absence
of subjectivity from the transcendental field,
an absence whose possibility frees absolute
Objectivity, can be only a factual absence, even
if it removed for all time the totality of actual
subjects. The originality of the field of writing
is its ability to dispense with, due to its sense,
every present reading in general. But if the text
does not announce its own pure dependence
on a writer or reader in general (i.e., if it is
not haunted by a virtual intentionality), and
if there is no purely juridical possibility of it
being intelligible for a transcendental subject in
general, then there is no more in the vacuity of
its soul than a chaotic literalness or the sensible
opacity of a defunct designation, a designation
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
deprived of its transcendental function. The
silence of prehistoric arcana and buried
civilizations, the entombment of lost intentions
and guarded secrets, and the illegibility of the
lapidary inscription disclose the transcendental
sense of death as what unites these things to the
absolute privilege of intentionality in the very
instance of its essential juridical failure.
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
Here, what is at stake becomes clear: the illegibility, as
silence, of prehistoric arcana and lapidary inscription
is conditioned by the interpretive primacy granted to an
intentionality determined as consciousness-of-self. Yet, the
functional formation of language was shown earlier to
not be contingent upon such self-conscious subjectivity. In
fact, it has been demonstrated that the simple formation of
conscious states is a sufficient precondition for establishing
the functionality of proto-linguistic events.
If we find that consciousness states are in fact articulate in
co-extension with non-conscious processes, then it becomes
apparent that forgetting, as it exists before consciousness-
of-self becomes established, is in fact contingent upon
the relationship between non-conscious processes and
conscious states. This is to say: in that non-conscious sensory
perceptions necessarily dissipate as quickly as they are
formed, in order for such impressions to occur as immediate
in their relationship to surrounding environments; we must
assume some aspect of this functionality would persist within
such articulations as form between non-conscious processes
and conscious states. So, if we can determine anything of
this in the nature of those articulations, then we will have
established something of the functional nature which attends
the origin of writing as articulation.
This is to say: it may well prove to be the case that at least
some aspects of the forgetting which attends any linguistic
construct are in fact derived from functional aspects of
60
non-conscious processes. Since these processes are integral
to the formation of conscious states, we may find that such
forgetting is in some way essential for the formation of
language, and of writing. If we assume that writing is entirely
characterized by memory (as is perhaps more or less true for
phonetic forms of writing), then we may miss noticing very
important functional aspects of writing which are in fact
contingent upon non-conscious processes; and as such are in
some way characterized by what we would have to describe
as forgetting. Far from being the failure of writing to
function as intended, such functional forgetting may instead
prove to be an integral part of writings ability to intend
anything.
Yet, there is even more at stake here. It would seem from the
above quote that something of subjectivity can be constituted
from writing itself; and that writing can be seen to exist in
itself as subjectless.
We have had a good look at how conscious states are
produced and have seen how this occurs without subjectivity
forming. We observed such formation at the threshold
of awareness which divides non-conscious processes and
conscious states.
It would seem more than probable that writing is
being presented here as a transcendental field which is
capable of forming subjectivity, simply due to its somehow
corresponding to this threshold of awareness we have noted.
This would really only be to say that writing is articulated
(an obvious statement of fact) as is consciousness; however,
this also suggests that a closer examination of forgetting is
in order here.
We know of forgetting as it attends memory, in such a form
as we expect to see with reference to consciousness-of-self:
writing as knowledge which is learned, intended as such,
and forgotten as that which is no longer known. However, if
we are dealing with writing as having formed of processes
in effect before consciousness-of-self becomes established,
then, we are in fact dealing with a very different form of
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
forgetting.
Instead, we would be encountering forgetting as a
necessary functionality which is related to some form of
transferential continuity: that is, as the basis of any form
of syntactic organization holding between such instances
of writing as words: in other words, what is called
grammatology. In effect, we are looking here at the way in
which distinct signs or words or symbols are considered
as somehow connected together, such that they can be said to
make sense.
And we did see something very similar to this earlier, when
we briefly considered the possible neuro-cellular functions
of microtubules: there, we projected how a functional
forgetting which dissipates the excess energy generated
by neural processes would be at the same time a lowering
of activation thresholds in neurons beyond those active
processes, into which that excess energy was physically
dissipated through resonance; and this is indeed entirely
consistent with the way in which words are carried along in
consciousness through the course of reading a sentence. Here,
what we are reading is at every moment determining how
we will understand the words that follow, even as each word
fades from thought while we continue on to the next. This
is also entirely consistent with Sartres descriptions of how
conscious states motivate their own production; and it is an
aspect of forgetting which is absolutely essential to the way
in which writing functions.
As I mentioned, we need not concern ourselves with
explanations by way of a molecular analysis here; but, we
definitely should give ample thought to the role played by
non-conscious processes in the formation of conscious states.
By all appearances, it would seem that the nature of this
functional forgetting which appears to attend non-conscious
processes in their articulation with conscious states may in
fact provide important insights into the origin and nature of
writing.
Considering Non-Conscious Processes
61
For the moment, then, our inquiry has led us to question
what the experience of forgetting might be like with
reference to non-conscious processes. On the surface, this
might seem an absurd avenue of inquiry: after all, what
could it possibly mean to suggest that there might be some
form of forgetting which is characteristic of things which
by definition do not even occur within consciousness? Yet, we
know for a certainty that such processes necessarily occur as
co-extensive with consciousness; and we thus have reason to
believe that conscious states form as articulations with such
non-conscious processes. If conscious states persist - a fact
we acknowledge by referring to them as states - then their
dissolution must also be taken as a fact (or there would be no
way in which to distinguish such persistence). This clarifies
somewhat the nature of our inquiry here, and allows us to
ask: to what extent, and in what way, might the articulation
with non-conscious processes determine not only the
formation, but also the dissolution, of conscious states?
To date, a considerable amount of research has been
compiled concerning non-conscious processes. Often, this
research is based at least in part - and often, has been
motivated by - specific cases wherein neurological damage
suffered by a subject has resulted in a loss of some of those
abilities which we all take for granted as constituent of
consciousness.
Melvyn Goodale and David Milner have made particularly
valuable contributions in this area in the course of their
research into the non-conscious processes which underlie
the functional nature of human vision. Within this research,
a significant division has emerged between patients who
have suffered neurological damage that impacts upon their
conscious sense of vision, and, patients who have suffered
damage to the neurology which underlies non-conscious
visual processes:
Page 108-109
We began the book by introducing Dee
Fletcher, a young woman who has lost all visual
experience of the shapes of objects. We have
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
often asked Dee what the world looks like to her.
She finds it very hard to put into words. As we
mentioned earlier, she sometimes says that things
run into each other so that she finds it hard to
tell where one object ends and the other begins,
especially when the two objects have a similar
color or are made from the same material. She
also mentions that things often look fuzzy to
her. But, as we noted, it is not like the experience
that a short-sighted person has when he takes off
his glasses. Dont forget that Dee has excellent
acuity - she can see fine detail. The problem may
be that we are asking Dee to talk about what she
doesnt see - we are asking her to describe what
is not there in her conscious experience.
The same questions have been asked of
patients with blindsight. These people have a
complete absence of visual experience in the
visual field opposite their brain damage. But
they dont say that everything on that side looks
blank or that theres some kind of hole in their
field of vision. They find the question impossible
to answer. Just as you would find it impossible
to say what you see beyond the edges of your
visual field, or behind your back. So perhaps
we are expecting too much of Dee when we ask
her what she sees. She cannot describe what she
cannot see.
Yet despite the fact that Dee has no conscious
visual experience of object shape, she retains
the ability to use information about the shape
to guide her actions. Dees case, along with
evidence from a broad range of studies from
frogs to humans, tells us that visual perception
and the visual control of action depend on
quite different brain systems. What we have
learned from these studies is that conscious
visual experience of the world is a product of
the ventral not the dorsal stream. You might
62
perceive the tennis ball that has just been lobbed
over the net by your opponent, but you can
never be conscious of the particular information
that your visuomotor system uses to guide your
successful return. This visuomotor computation
happens entirely unconsciously. You are not
aware of the fact that the ball is expanding at
a certain rate on your retina and that this is an
important cue for knowing exactly when to swing
to hit it with the sweet spot of the racket. When
you are running around the court chasing the
ball, the visual scene is changing on your retina
quite dramatically. The shape of the projected
image of the net, for example, will be constantly
changing - and yet you will continue to see the
net as a stable and unchanging object in the
scene. It is perhaps a good thing that you are not
aware of all these viewer-dependent changes. If
you were, the world would become a bewildering
kaleidoscope of unrelated and disconnected
experiences in which objects change their sizes
and shapes as you move about. What you need
are the enduring constancies of perception in
order to make sense of the world.
Melvyn Goodale / David Milner, Sight Unseen.
>>>
Thus, two particularly salient characteristics emerge of
what might be loosely termed forgetting in the context of
non-conscious processes:
1). A complete loss of functionality, which reveals the
existence of neurological process that are otherwise
completely non-conscious; such that the effects produced
within consciousness by such processes can no longer even
be described. A directly analogous example would be of
limb paralysis: we cannot even say what this is experience
is like, except to say that in one case the limb can be moved
by conscious intention; and in the other, it cannot. There is
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
however no conscious perception of that which constitutes the
signal that motivates a limb to move: we just intend to do so,
and it happens without conscious awareness of the process
triggering the movement.
2). A functionality of non-conscious processes which
is shown to be essentially discontinuous, such that said
processes do not function through persistence but rather
are predicated precisely on the fact that continuity between
instances of occurrence are in fact precluded by the very
nature of the way in which these processes function. These
processes are often ones which enable other conscious
activities to proceed, by supplying a constant stream of
ever-changing information about our surroundings, and
the physical orientation of our body parts. When such non-
conscious information is not available, other conscious states
are disrupted and this is experienced through a state of
confusion and other indications which we broadly (and
appropriately) call disorientation.
This is an important distinction. It is very clear that
the form of forgetting which is being referenced in the
silence of prehistoric arcana by Husserl is of the first form
of forgetting: a complete loss of functionality. But, what if
this is in fact primarily a characteristic encountered with
consciousness-of-self?
What if the form of forgetting which would attend writing,
if it were to form of the articulations holding between
conscious states and non-conscious process, was an essential
form of functionality which in fact defines the formal
structure of such writing?
This is certainly a possibility which we cannot afford to
ignore: in and of itself, this warrants a further inquiry into
exactly what this form of functional forgetting might be.
>>>
It would seem possible, then, to clearly distinguish between:
instances in which non-conscious processes are not co-
63
extended with, and therefore do not form articulations of,
conscious states; and, a characteristic threshold of awareness
which defines the apparent (that is to say, definitional)
distinction between non-conscious processes and conscious
states.
This observation must, however, be further qualified: for
it seems to suggest that conscious states are simultaneously
co-extensive with, and, formed of articulations with non-
conscious processes; and how could conscious states be co-
extensive with non-conscious processes, before coming into
existence as an articulation with said processes?
Yet, as oddly contradictory to the rules of logic as this
sounds, such is exactly the case (notwithstanding the
fact that, as a subset of philosophy, logic does not in fact
juridically define the ways in which conceptual formations
can legitimately occur as philosophic thought: and to think
otherwise is a common misconception, concerning the role of
logic within philosophy, that Deleuze and Guattari describe
as infantile). Sartre very clearly describes the way in
which aspects of consciousness contribute to the formation of
conscious states:
Page 25-26
A consciousness does not possess an opaque
and unconscious surface by which it can be seized
and attached to another consciousness. Between
two consciousnesses, the relation of cause-and-
effect cannot hold. A consciousness is a synthesis
through and through, thoroughly intimate
with itself: it is at the heart of this synthetic
interiority that it can join, by an act of retention
or protention, with a preceding or succeeding
consciousness. Moreover, for one consciousness
to act on another consciousness, it must be
retained and recreated by the consciousness on
which it is to act. There are never passivities, but
internal assimilations and disintegrations at the
heart an intentional synthesis that is transparent
to itself. One consciousness is not the cause of
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
another consciousness: it motivates it.
Page 107 - 108
But, precisely, there can be no causal
connection between two consciousnesses: a
consciousness cannot be provoked from outside
by another consciousness; rather it constitutes
itself according to its own intentionality and the
only link that could unite it with the previous
consciousness is a link of motivation...
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
Would it still be nonsensical to say that non-conscious
processes motivate conscious states? Certainly not; and indeed,
it makes a great deal of sense to say that the essential nature
of conscious states is motivated by non-conscious processes;
particularly when it has been established that such non-
conscious processes are functionally defined as visumotor
systems: aspects of our sensory perception which are
dedicated to facilitating the activities of our motor reflexes.
This description certainly clarifies Bergsons observations
concerning motor reflex activity, and that form of memory
defined within the context of movement.
It would seem, then, that non-conscious processes do in
fact meet a primary criterion which Sartre uses to define
the nature of consciousness: so, despite being by definition
non-conscious, such processes must be seen as inherently
compositional of consciousness, in ways that any aspect
of consciousness are expected to integrate with other such
aspects.
And here, the double nature of that forgetting which
is characteristic of non-conscious processes is functionally
revealed: in what would be experienced as a lack of
motivation within consciousness when such processes are
non-functional; and as the determinate alterity, or difference,
between motivational instances when such processes are
functioning in their non-conscious fashion. Non-conscious
processes articulate with conscious states precisely in
64
motivating the formation of conscious states. This essentially
productive relationship differentiates any conscious state so
formed from the circumstances which are formational for
it; and it is this differentiation which retains the essential
nature of forgetting which attends the functionality of non-
conscious processes.
Does it make sense to say that, non-conscious processes
cause conscious states to forget their previous configurations
through their very motivation of the formation of conscious
states? Of course it does; and further, we can see here that a
partiality of forgetting is also in effect, such that a gradient
of awareness is functionally implicated. Again, we see a
distinct characteristic of the threshold between non-conscious
processes and conscious states effectively determining the
way in which conscious states form (or, are motivated).
We might well expect to see something of this somehow
implicated in the initial formation of writing.
As noted of the background energy level of the brain, and
its transition into specific activation states for intentional
activities; and of the formation of subjectivity within the
subjectless transcendental field of writing: the formation
of conscious states can be described as something which is
motivated. As Deleuze and Guattari noted, even without
reference to subjectivity we can still say that this earth
compels us to think.
In other words, it is precisely the transition from non-
conscious process to conscious state that defines the
transference of energy patterns occurring within nerves
as an articulation: it is this functionality that establishes
the formation of conscious states from the processes which
support them. This is where consciousness can be said to
come into being or, at least, this is where we can first notice
that it does exist.
>>>
Such a functional occurrence of forgetting, with reference
to non-conscious processes, is quite different than the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
experience of forgetting commonly taken as the other
of memory. Primarily encountered as a fundamental
aspect defining consciousness-of-self, such memory-related
forgetting most saliently occurs in what Husserl describes
as modifications of the personal ego:
Page 98
Forgetfulness of truth itself will thus be nothing
but the failure of an act and the abdication of
a responsibility, a lapse more than a defeat -
and this forgetfulness can be made to appear
in person only on the basis of an intentional
history.
From then on, whether it remains as the
disappearance of intersubjective truth or, as we
said above, a historical category, forgetfulness can
nevertheless be described as a phenomenon of
the ego, as one of its intentional modifications.
As intentional sense, everything can and should
be described only as a modification of the pure
ego, provided the sense of each modification is
prudently respected, as Husserl tries to do, for
example, concerning the difficult constitution of
the alter ego. We also see that, for the same reason,
forgetfulness will never be radical, however
profound it may be, and sense can always, in
principle and de jure, be reactivated.
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
We thus have a very subtle distinction being established
with reference to conscious states: as motivation on the part
of non-conscious processes; and as modification on the part
of consciousness-of-self.
We can say here that: non-conscious processes, in
being motivational of consciousness, are characterized
by forgetting; while consciousness-of-self, in modifying
conscious states, is characterized by memory.
65
We might then ask if this distinction is a product of
real determinations, or if it is simply a matter of variant
terminology being employed by different philosophers. We
might ask that of the philosophers themselves, through
a close study of their texts; or we might think the matter
through for ourselves, asking: Is consciousness motivated
without being modified; and, Is consciousness modified
without being motivated?
It is of the nature of consciousness that it not be motivated
without being at the same time modified. However, for a
modification to be in turn motivational, it must be intended
as such. In other words: although consciousness changes,
it does not change itself without intending to do so. For it
makes no sense to say that non-conscious processes modify
consciousness: to do so would by definition render such
processes conscious. To say that conscious states are instead
motivated in their formation by non-conscious processes
is to realize that this relationship is a generative one.
Modification, in contrast, assumes that a conscious state has
already been produced: modification is transformational,
not formative. So, we can say that motivating the formation
of a conscious state will in effect enable modifications of
consciousness; but that consciousness, in modifying itself, is
not motivating the formation of a conscious state: such a state
must already be in evidence before it can be modified, and
this modification must be intended.
And again, this distinction does not seem particularly
certain; until, that is, it becomes clear that this is exactly
the distinction with which Sartre wrestles in distinguishing
the nature of direct perception from what he terms imaging
consciousness: a distinction which in the final analysis
hinges upon the existence of what he calls nonthetic
consciousness.
At times, it seems that nonthetic consciousness is simply
a term that Sartre employs in the attempt to make non-
conscious processes conform with what the Cartesian ideal
of reflective consciousness demands of any and all conscious
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
states. Be that as it may, it makes little difference to us here:
since we are taking all instances of consciousness to be
functionally co-extensive with each other, and are focussed
upon an analysis of the articulations formed of such variants
of consciousness, our end result will not be contingent upon
determinations established by Ren Descartes. The only
real difficulty we might face here - that of the apparent
disjunction which Sartre documents between perception and
imaging consciousness - is in fact resolved by specifying
that the nature of the articulations formed of non-conscious
processes and conscious states are characterized by that
dynamic of forgetting which attends the functional nature
of non-conscious processes. Nonthetic consciousness must by
definition be transparent to itself, and so be aware of itself;
but this transparency is so complete that it is only aware of
itself as something which is continuously forgotten.
In effect, then, the term nonthetic consciousness is
really just a way of saying non-conscious processes which
are integral components of consciousness; a paradoxical
distinction which is only needed in the first place because the
word consciousness came into being before the nature of
non-conscious processes was realized and documented.
In this, we are dealing here with a twist of language rather
than a lapse in thought; but it is a twist of language which
wraps around something we will need to consider later:
the distinction between consciousness as motivated, and
consciousness as modified; as contingent upon a distinction
between consciousness functionally articulated in co-
extension with non-conscious processes, and consciousness
as functionally articulated in co-extension with itself.
In the latter case, we will necessarily be dealing with
consciousness-of-self; and this can only be seen as some form
of developmental modification to the baseline experience of
conscious states.
>>>
As noted earlier, it can be said that, within the context
of emotion, perception and nonthetic consciousness are
66
indistinguishable. Here, this observation can be further
qualified: perception and non-conscious processes both
motivate emotional states of consciousness. But, only
consciousness-of-self can intentionally modify such emotional
states.
On the one hand, this can be attributed to fact that
egological modifications are intentional and as such attend
consciousness with a certain temporal continuity, through
which intention is retained in the resulting modification.
But on the other hand, the very fact that non-conscious
processes are inherently discontinuous and functionally
determined by what we would call, were it to occur in
consciousness-of-self, forgetting, causes us to consider
that perception and nonthetic consciousness can never
be the intention to modify action; precisely, because they
are characterized by such forgetting and as such are not
characterized by retention.
Simply, neither perception nor nonthetic consciousness
can undertake such modifications as consciousness-of-
self is capable of: to do so would be to move outside of the
temporal functionality which, in essence, ontologically
defines their existence. Since all such neural functionality
has been established through evolutionary development
and determined by the process of natural selection, we must
acknowledge that these processes will necessarily conform
with their basic functions. Indeed, we might even go so far as
to say that, although perception and nonthetic consciousness
motivate consciousness, they do not do so intentionally:
instead, such motivation must be seen in terms of simple
functionality.
Now of course, there is certainly no shortage of examples
illustrating how the non-conscious processes of perception
alter the direct sensory input that arrives in our neural
processing systems: but such changes are functionally
normative, and do not change the nature of sensory
perception; rather, such functional adjustments serve to
stabilize what constitutes perception within the constraints
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
of normal occurrence. For instance, while non-conscious
processes automatically adjust our perception of color so
that a wide range of light sources appear to us to be white,
such alterations in the sense of our perception produce
results in keeping with what we expect to see, and not
new perceptions outside of what we normally experience.
In contrast, imagining a non-existent creature, even one
composed of elements drawn from common animals, is a very
different process altogether.
Goodale / Miner have made the point that non-conscious
processes are necessarily disjunctive from conscious states,
specifically so that visumotor systems might function
efficiently. Sartre has also made the point that this very
same, very real distinction is first and foremost one which is
determined within temporal constraints:
Page 182-183
What is common between Pierre as imaged
and the centaur as imaged is that they are two
aspects of Nothingness. And it is also this that
distinguishes the lived future from the imagined
future. There are in fact two sorts of features: one
is but the temporal ground on which my present
perception develops, the other is posited for itself
but as that which is not yet. When I play tennis I
see my opponent hit the ball with the racket and
I leap to the net. There is therefore anticipation
here, since I foresee the trajectory of the ball.
But this anticipation does not posit for itself the
passage of the ball to this or that point. Actually,
the future is here only the real development of
a form begun by my opponents movement and
this opponents real movement communicates
its reality to the whole form. If one prefers, the
real form with its zones of real-past and real-
future is entirely realized through my opponents
movement. As for my foresight, it is also reality, I
continue to realize the form in foreseeing it, since
my foresight is a real movement internal to the
form. Thus, step by step, there is always a real
67
future that occurs simply, like the real past, as the
sense of a current form in development or, if one
prefers, as the signification of the universe. And,
in this sense, it makes no difference whether we
present the real unperceived aspects of objects
as a present reality and aimed at emptily, or
as a real future. The arabesques hidden by the
armchair are the real complement of my bodily
movement by which I move the armchair, as well
as the present and latent existence concealed by
the armchair. All real existence is given with
present, past and future structures, therefore the
past and the future as essential structures of the
real are equally real, which is to say correlates of
a realizing thesis. But if, on the other hand, lying
on my bed, I forsee what could happen when my
friend Pierre returns from Berlin, I detach the
future from the present that constitutes its sense.
I posit it for myself and I give it to myself. But,
precisely, I give it to myself as not yet, which is to
say as absent or if you prefer as a nothingness.
Thus, I can live a future in reality as grounded
in the present (when for example I go to look for
Pierre at the station and all my acts presuppose
as their real sense the arrival of Pierre at 7:35
p.m.), or on the other hand I can isolate the
same future and posit it for myself but by cutting
it off from all reality and annihilating it, by
presentifying it as nothingness.
We can now grasp the essential condition for
a consciousness to be able to image: it must have
the possibility of positing a thesis of irreality.
But we must make this condition more precise.
It is not a question of consciousness ceasing to
be consciousness of something. It is in the very
nature of consciousness to be intentional and
a consciousness that ceases to be consciousness
of something would thereby cease to exist.
But consciousness must be able to form and
posit objects affected by a certain character of
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
nothingness in relation to the totality of reality
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
Here we can see that, at its most extreme, the disjunction
between non-conscious processes and consciousness-of-self
(as articulated through conscious states) is essentially one
defined through whatever is taken as constituting temporal
continuity. Such continuity is always in contrast to those
disjunctive acts which distinguish themselves from the real
through their invocation of a relational nothingness.
We already know that all variant instances of consciousness
must necessarily be co-extensive with each other; and here
we see that the nature of their articulation with each other
is to be found precisely as that extent to which they differ in
their relation with any continuity toward the future.
We noticed this before, when considering the productive
events of consciousness as concepts. Here, we can say: the
nature of the articulations which constitute consciousness is
that of the event: and whatever occurs as consciousness will
thus have a distinctly temporal nature.
In non-conscious processes, perceptions of any present must
constantly cease being such, in order for any sense of the
future to follow; but for consciousness-of-self, the future can
only be imagined through a much more radical act, which
posits the future as a nothingness. Thus, such forgetting
(in determining any relational sense of continuity oriented
toward the future) becomes the very articulation through
which non-conscious processes and consciousness-of-self are
determined as co-extensive within conscious states:
Page 120
At the beginning of this work I have shown the
difficulties raised by every attempt to constitute
perception by an amalgam of sensations and
images. We now understand why these theories
are inadmissible: because the image and the
perception, far from being two elementary
68
psychic factors of similar quality and that simply
enter into different combinations, represent the
two great irreducible attitudes of consciousness.
It follows that they exclude one another... But the
structure of images called mental is the same as
that of the images whose analogon is external:
the formation of an imaging consciousness is
accompanied, in this case as in the preceding,
by an annihilation of perceptual consciousness,
and reciprocally.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
For me, then, the situation being described is not overall
one of exclusion (since after all I have already decided to
view all instances which compositionally contribute to the
formations of consciousness as co-extensive) or annihilation
but rather, of an articulation that is functionally determined
by the productive nature of non-conscious processes; and this
implies that some form of forgetting will be functionally
implicated here..
Which is to say: if non-conscious processes are best defined
by a functional form of forgetting, then this same distinction
separates conscious states from non-conscious processes,
and can be found also attending in its functionality what we
call in consciousness memory. In other words, what we call
memory is simply a variation of that form of functionality
which defines the nature of the (lack of) persistence which
non-conscious processes exhibit. In a further derivation, such
forgetting again asserts itself as the nothingness through
which Sartre defines imaging consciousness.
By implication, this strongly suggests that there is a
direct and definable relationship of derivation holding
between non-consciousness processes, conscious states, and
consciousness-of-self. This in itself is entirely consistent with
the fundamental characteristic which Sartre ascribes to
all consciousness: that acts of consciousness are produced
through and motivated by its very processes and states. That
this must be so can clearly be demonstrated by the complete
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
integration of such a basic process as functional forgetting
throughout the various aspects of consciousness.
These distinctions all appear to be temporal in nature:
the ongoing function of non-conscious processes (which
constantly dissipate), the persistence of memory (which is
only distinguishable in contrast to forgetting), the positing
of any futures (which are always as a nothingness). Any
further definitional localization (in the sense of position
that grounds any positing: that is to say, the gathering
point where any concept comes to be formed) concerning
the interrelationships (articulations) holding between such
formalizations of consciousness (as non-conscious processes;
conscious states; and consciousness-of-self) should thus
proceed through an examination of temporality.
>>>
Sartre again addresses the functional relationship between
non-conscious processes and conscious states when he
provides a phenomenological description of a tennis match.
The distinction drawn of this functional differentiation is
very much contingent upon Edmund Husserls description
of temporal flow as being composed of retentions and
protentions:
Page 136
As we have seen, the Living Present is the
phenomenological absolute out of which I
cannot go because it is that in which, toward
which, and starting from which every going out
is effected. The Living Present has the irreducible
originality of a Now, the ground of a Here, only if
it retains (in order to be distinguishable from it)
the past Now as such, i.e., as the past present of
an absolute origin, instead of purely and simply
succeeding it in objective time.
Page 137
But this retention will not be possible without
a protention which is its very form: first, because
69
it retains a Now which was itself an original
project, itself retaining another project, and
so on; next, because the retention is always
the essential modification of a Now always in
suspense, always tending toward a next Now.
The Absolute of the Living Present, then, is only
the indefinite Maintenance [the Nowness] of this
double enveloping. But this Maintenance itself
appears as such, it is the Living Present, and it has
the phenomenological sense of a consciousness only
if the unity of this movement is given as indefinite
and if its sense of indefiniteness is announced in
the Present (i.e., if the openness of the infinite
future is, as such, a possibility experienced, as
sense and right).
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
Much of what Sartre determines in his text The Imaginary
can be seen to have originated in Husserls phenomenology
(since Sartre was, after all, conducting a phenomenological
investigation): the retention of the past in the now as the
form in which one consciousness motivates another; and
the radical freedom of consciousness, to name just two such
instances. But if Sartres own investigations were originally
contingent upon those of Husserl, there is no doubt that the
philosophic rigor with which Sartre proceeded allowed him
to reach conclusions quite different than those obtained by
Husserl. As Jacques Derrida notes:
Page 125
[Note 141: It is by beginning with the direct
thematization of imagination in its situation as an
original lived experience (utilizing imagination as
the operative instrument of all eidetics), by freely
describing the phenomenological conditions
for fiction, therefore for the phenomenological
method, that Sartres breakthrough has so
profoundly unbalanced - and then overthrown
- the landscape of Husserls phenomenology and
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
abandoned its horizon.]
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
One of the primary tools which Husserl employed in
his phenomenological method was that of what he called
imaginary variation. This was the process whereby all
the possible variations for a situation were considered; and
whatever was common to all such imagined scenarios was
then taken as the essential nature of the situation under
consideration. Sartre sought to examine the fundamental
principles of this approach through a meticulous study of
the imagination. Thus, any of his findings which applied
to imagination would also apply to Husserls technique
of imaginary variation, and so to the entire body of
phenomenology.
The results of Sartres close study of the very core of
Husserls phenomenology are particularly evident in the
contrasting concepts they each form of the future, as that
interpretive horizon upon which we proceed to make sense of
the events in which we are immersed through our being upon
this earth.
This can be seen quite clearly in Sartres ability to
distinguish between the nature of temporality which attends
to the irreal constructs of the imagination, and, the temporal
continuity which directly attends that of Husserls description
of protention and retention. Throughout his analyses,
Sartre consistently opposes what would be the teleological
certainty of Husserls infinite project of the future, with, an
unqualified freedom for the self, in its ability to produce itself
for itself: the fundamental freedom through which Sartre
characterizes consciousness-of-self.
Clearly, the way in which we choose to conceptualize time
is going to directly determined the way in which the nature
of consciousness is described: in effect, such determinations
as to the nature of temporality relative to consciousness are
ontological ones, and as such will define the nature of being
70
conscious as being human.
If nothing else, this also tells us: when we come to define
writing at its origin, we will necessarily do so in terms of the
temporal; and this suggests, through concepts as the events of
consciousness. This is an important issue, because there is an
implicit determination of the nature of temporality within the
grammatological structure of the phonetic forms of writing
used by Western culture: that of past/present/future which
is, in the final analysis, predicated upon exactly the kind of
distinction we just saw Husserl employing. This is not a small
matter: although this form of determination is ontological in
its origin, it then becomes epistemological in it application
throughout the sciences; and there, it covertly defines the
truth value of anything which is brought before the sciences.
Thus, we find that phonetic writing is often described in
modern linguistics as true writing; implying that any other
form of writing must be, by definition, somehow false.
>>>
We are not yet finished with Husserl here: for even if his
conclusions regarding the essentially ontological nature
of being human are refuted by Sartres analyses, still, the
grounds upon which these two giants of philosophic thought
contend are thoroughly determined by their adherence to a
Cartesian ideal for consciousness-of-self; and we may yet find
something of use in Husserl with regard to other aspects of
what we can say constitutes human consciousness.
In our analysis of forgetting, we eventually saw evidence
that such an essential aspect of non-conscious processes
appeared to be evident, in a derived form, within the
articulations formed of non-conscious processes and
conscious states; and that there were derivations of such
functional forgetting which also seemed to be inherent
within consciousness-of-self.
Perhaps, then, we might find other such derivations which
extend from non-conscious processes, through conscious
states, and on into consciousness-of-self.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
Again, this would be an essentially ontological
determination which we seek; so perhaps the best place to
start looking for more of such derivational sequences would
be within any ontological determinations which Husserl
makes for consciousness-of-self.
Husserl determines the nature of being human beginning
from the temporal distinction of a universal Now, as
characterized in a way which can only be described as the
articulation of retention and protention:
Page 145
[Note 174: Reason is not an accidental de facto
ability, not a title for possible accidental matters
of fact, but rather a title for an all-embracing
essentially necessary structural form belonging to all
transcendental subjectivity.
If Reason is but the essential structure of
the transcendental ego and the transcendental
we, it is, like them, historical through and
through. Conversely, historicity, as such, is
rational through and through. But being, which
articulates Reason and History in relation to
each other, is a sense, a teleological ought-to-be
which constitutes being as movement. The last
pages of the Origin are engaged in this problem.
Do we not stand here before the great and
profound problem-horizon of Reason, the same
Reason that functions in every man, the animal
rationale, no matter how primitive he is?
Each type of factual humanity has this
essence of animal rationale. Each type, Husserl
continues, has a root in the essential structure
of what is universally human, through which
a teleological Reason running throughout all
historicity announces itself...
Page 146
71
Like the first geometrical act which supposes
it, the first philosophical act is only the sense-
investigation of this historical rationality in the
constant movement of self-elucidation. Teleological
Reason already occupied civilizations before
the philosophical sense-investigation (a sense-
investigation which awakened Reason to itself)
and announced the pure sense of historicity, i.e.,
the very sense of Reason, to history. The sense-
investigation of what was already there marks a
rupture and, consequently, a radical and creative
origin.
[Note 175: Thus philosophy is nothing other
than rationalism, through and through, but it is
rationalism differentiated within itself according
to the different stages of the movement of
intention and fulfillment; it is ratio in the constant
movement of self-elucidation, begun with the first
breakthrough of philosophy into mankind,
whose innate reason was previously in a state of
concealment, a nocturnal obscurity.] [Note 176:
Just as man and even the Papuan represent a
new stage of animal nature, i.e., as opposed to
the beast, so philosophical reason represents a
new stage of human nature and its reason.]
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
This description of the essential nature of being human
as being rational is, in fact, an ontological determination
that is undertaken within the context of a specific form of
temporality. Thoroughly teleological in its dynamic form,
such temporality is certainly encountered in situations such
as the tennis match which Sartre describes; and, we know
from the description of a tennis match presented by Goodale
/ Milner that this temporal dynamic is in turn characteristic
of those non-conscious processes which make up our
visumotor systems. These observations also corresponds to
what Bergson said earlier of actions which are determined in
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
relation to objects, through movement (which we examined
in the context of proto-linguistic functions and Taijiquan);
and we do indeed have every reason to believe that such
determinations concerning reason, and rationality, are
certainly characteristic, in a very basic way, of being human:
for it has been demonstrated that the basis of rationality, as
the sense of ratio inherent in proportionality, is functionally
evident within non-conscious processes:
Pages 34-35
The visual properties of objects seen - shape,
location, and orientation properties in particular
- are represented in visual experience as a
package deal. When we try to determine whether
two objects have the same shape, we often have
to factor out our experience of orientation and
position, by transforming those objects into the
same orientation and location. Is representation
in imagery similarly a package deal? It seems so.
It is well known, for example, that when subjects
are asked to make judgments of shape-similarity
between objects imaged at different orientations,
the time taken to answer is proportional to
the angle of separation between the images
(Metzler and Shepard, 1971). With imagery as
with vision, differences of orientation need to
be transformed away so that we can isolate and
focus on information about shape. It has recently
been shown that the same is true for location.
In an experiment carried out by Cave and his
colleagues, subjects were shown a cue in one part
of the visual field, which was then replaced by a
stimulus in another part of the visual field. The
times taken for subjects to arrive at judgments of
shape-similarity were seen to be proportional to
the distance between the cue and the stimulus
(Cave et al., 1994), suggesting that an image
of the cue was formed and that the distance
between the image cue and the stimulus had
to be factored out before a judgment of shape-
similarity could be given. But Cave and his
72
colleagues argue that the location to be factored
out is retinal rather than spatial location: visual
input is initially organized according to retinal
location, but at some stage in visual processing
information from different fixations is integrated
so as to produce a visual representation of objects
in space.
[Note 14: Cave et al. argue that a late
dating for the transformation is plausible on
the grounds that there is evidence Ungerleider
&Mishkin,1982) for a two visual systems view
according to which object-location is processed
within a posterior parietal area, while object-
identity is processed within a temporal area,
and the transformation from retinal to spatial
location would be simpler if it were conducted
at a point where object identity information has
been factored out.]
Gregory Currie, Visual Imagery as the Simulation
of Vision, in Mind & Language Vol. 10, No. 1/2,
March/June 1995.
Here we see that the direct proportionality which guides
the human mind expands into considerations which unfold
within time. Not only are we capable of determining if two
shapes are in direct proportion to each other and so are
a match but, also, the cognitive processes we employ to
make such comparisons themselves exhibit an inherent
proportionality with the situation we are considering.
This proportionality seems to be an essential feature of
human consciousness, rather than an arbitrary ability we can
discard at will.
As noted earlier with reference to non-conscious processes,
neither perception nor nonthetic consciousness is capable of
functionally modifying the occurrence of such proportional
ratio, which seems to be inherently manifested within (for
example) grasp.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
Page 18
To have grasped the pencil in this skillful way,
she must have turned her wrist in flight so that
her fingers and thumb were well positioned in
readiness for grasping the pencil - just like a fully
sighted person. Yet it was no fluke: when we took
the pencil back and asked her to do it again, she
always grabbed it perfectly, no matter whether
we held the pencil horizontally, vertically, or
obliquely. Dees ability to perform this simple
act presented a real paradox. How could she see
the location, orientation, and shape of the pencil
well enough to posture her hand correctly as she
reached it to grasp it, while at the same time
she couldnt tell us what she saw? She certainly
could not have grasped the pencil accurately
without using vision. A blind person couldnt
have done it, nor could a sighted person wearing
a blindfold. For her to have grasped the pencil
so deftly, her brain must have had all kinds of
advanced information about where it was and
what it looked like. Since there was no other way
she could know how we were holding the pencil,
Dee had to be using vision. Yet at the same
time it was clear that she wasnt using conscious
vision.
Page 22-23
The exquisite tuning of the hand to the target
of the grasp was first documented in detail by
the French neuroscientist Marc Jeannerod. He
made high-speed films of normal individuals
reaching out to grasp solid objects like balls and
cylinders of different sizes... As soon as the hand
left the table en route to the object, the fingers
and thumb begin to open. Then, about two-
thirds of the way toward the object, they began
to close in on the object so that a smooth and
accurate grasp was achieved. Even though the
maximum opening between the fingers and
73
thumb was much larger than the width of the
object itself, Jeannerod showed that the two were
closely related: the bigger the object, the bigger
the maximum grip size.
When we tracked how (Dee) opened her
hand when she reached toward the object, we
found that she showed exactly the same scaling
of her grip mid-flight as the normally sighted
individuals we tested.
Melvyn Goodale and David Milner, Sight Unseen.
There is every reason to believe, then, that what we call
reason has functional precursors which are identifiable
within non-conscious processes as the proportionality of grip
scaling in the hands; and that, while we might not wish to
entirely define the nature of being human in terms of these
derivatives of those processes, nonetheless such a derivation
certainly does appear to contribute at least somewhat to
the overall ontological definition of being human as being
conscious. It is undeniably part of what we are that we
naturally think in terms of proportions and ratios: our
thoughts have essentially rational aspects.
But, this is hardly surprising: one must suspect that no
species which evolved while living in trees could have
avoided extinction, if, the non-conscious processes which
determine the functionality of its ability to grasp objects
within its immediate environment could be actively modified
by what Sartre characterizes as imagination. Grabbing
at things which are not there is simply not a viable
option when survival depends on an ability to quickly and
accurately grasped handholds; and where failure to do so will
result in fatal falls. This appears to be demonstrably true:
Page 83
But as we noted earlier, scene-based metrics
are the very opposite of what you need when you
act upon the world. It is not enough to know that
an object you wish to pick up is bigger or closer
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
than the neighboring object. To program your
reach and scale your grasp, your brain needs to
compute the size and distance of the object in
relation to your hand. It needs to use absolute
metrics set within an egocentric frame of
reference. It would be a nuisance, and potentially
disastrous, if the illusions of size or distance that
are a normal part of perception were to intrude
into the visual control of your movements.
Page 84
The students consistently judged a target block
paired with a large companion as smaller than
the same target when it was paired with a small
companion. In contrast, when they reached out
to grasp the target object, they opened their hand
to an identical degree whichever companion it
was paired with. In other words, the scaling of
grip size to the size of the target block was not at
all subject to the size-contrast effect that was so
compelling during perceptual judgments.
Page 85
Of course, it makes good sense to have a
visuomotor system that works with real size
rather than relative size, so it shouldnt be so
surprising that the system is immune to the size-
contrast effect. Nonetheless, we can see here a
graphic example of our actions being controlled
by visual information that is clearly different
from our conscious visual experience.
Melvyn Goodale and David Milner, Sight Unseen.
If such a sense of inherent ratio in the proportionality of
grasp activations of the hand does indeed define something
of what being human as being conscious can be said to be,
it certainly does not exhaust the necessary qualifications
attending such an ontological determination.
It does however provide what will no doubt prove to be
74
a useful example of how non-conscious processes can and
do articulate with conscious states and, in doing so, further
determine the nature of what we consider ourselves to be in
having developed a subjective sense of consciousness-of-self.
However, it is not at all clear how the allegedly universal
sense of now which Husserl invokes is related to
consciousness-of-self: does one determine the other? Do
both come into existence simultaneously? In short, what
reality can Husserl ascribe to temporality without recourse to
consciousness-of-self?
Jacques Derrida voices such reservations as he draws near
to the conclusion of his Introduction to Husserls Origin of
Geometry:
Page 150-151
As we have sufficiently seen, this consciousness
(which phenomenology alone can bring to light)
can only be a teleological consciousness. This
is because the sense to which we have access
is not an events being; because this sense can
always not be incarnated, it can die out or not
to born; because the why owes its seriousness
to a phenomenological certainty and through
this seriousness recovers the virulence of an in
view of what? The ontological question, then,
seems able to arise only out of a teleological
affirmation, i.e., out of freedom.
Page 152-153
Since this alterity of the absolute origin
structurally appears in my Living Present and
since it can appear and be recognized only in
the primordiality of something like my Living
Present, this very fact signifies the authenticity of
phenomenological delay and limitation. In the
lackluster guise of a technique, the Reduction is
only pure thought as that delay, pure thought
investigating the sense of itself as delay within
philosophy. Could there be an authentic thought
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
of Being as History, as well as an authentic
historicity of thought, if this consciousness of
delay could be reduced? But could there be any
philosophy, if this consciousness of delay was
not primordial and pure? Now a primordial
consciousness of delay can only have the pure
form of anticipation. At the same time, pure
consciousness of delay can only be a pure and
legitimate, and therefore a priori, presumption,
without which (once again) discourse and
history would not be possible.
The impossibility of resting in the simple
maintenance [nowness] of a Living Present, the
sole and absolutely absolute origin of the De
Facto and the De Jure, of Being and Sense, but
always other in its self identity; the inability to
live enclosed in the innocent undividedness of
the primordial Absolute, because the Absolute
is present only in being deferred-delayed without
respite, this impotence and this impossibility are
given in a primordial and pure consciousness of
Difference. Such a consciousness, with its strange
style of unity, must be able to be restored to its own
light. Without such a consciousness, without its
own proper dehiscence, nothing would appear.
The primordial Difference of the absolute
Origin, which can and indefinitely must both
retain and announce its pure concrete form
with a priori security: i.e., the beyond or the
this-side which gives sense to all empirical
genius and all factual profusion, that is perhaps
what has always been said under the concept
of transcendental, through the enigmatic
history of its displacements. Difference would
be transcendental. The pure and interminable
disquietude of thought striving to reduce
Difference by going beyond factual infinity
toward the infinity of its sense and value, i.e.,
while maintaining Difference - that disquietude
75
would be transcendental.
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
Here, Derridas reservations concerning Husserls use of a
universal Now in defining the nature of being human
are consistent with the alternative approach developed by
Deleuze and Guattari: that of viewing the nature of human
consciousness as essentially differential; and of considering
consciousness as the awareness of difference.
>>>
Clearly, Husserls conception of the living present as
integrating the past (retention) and the future (protention)
is not the absolutely fundamental essence of consciousness
which he took it to be. Remaining true to Husserls
methodology of reducing the occurrences of consciousness
down into their most basic components, Derrida finds that
the universal Now, through which Husserl establishes the
universality of human rationality, is in fact divided: even this
apparently fundamental component of consciousness can
only sense itself by being divided to itself. Therefore, we must
conclude that consciousness itself is only so by way of some
primordial sense of difference which allows consciousness
to be self-aware. It is such difference which we encounter as
temporality, not the rationality of a universal now.
How, then, are we to conceive of such a pure state of
difference in the context of temporality? And how does such a
conception contribute to the sense of an ontological definition
for being human as being conscious?
For if any ontological determination as to the nature of
being human as being conscious is necessarily defined
through temporality (through sense as consciousness
differing from itself); and if consciousness as we know
it is invariably determined by this fundamental sense of
difference, then, how we conceive the nature of time in terms
of difference will invariably decide how we can describe what
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
it is to be human.
In the context of Husserls analyses, this question might be
phrased: In what way is difference an essential aspect of any
sense of Now?
Let us return here to Henri Bergson, and to the
determinations which he made with regard to the nature of
temporality:
Page 38
The important thing here is that the
decomposition of the composite reveals to us
two types of multiplicity. One is represented
by space (or rather, if all the nuances are
taken into account, by the impure combination
of homogenous time): It is a multiplicity of
exteriority, of simultaneity, of juxtaposition,
of order, of quantitative differentiation, of
difference in degree; it is a numerical multiplicity,
discontinuous and actual. The other type of
multiplicity appears in pure duration: It is an
internal multiplicity of succession, of fusion, of
organization, of heterogeneity, of qualitative
discrimination, or of difference in kind; it is a
virtual and continuous multiplicity that cannot be
reduced to numbers.
Page 39
In fact for Bergson it is not a question of opposing
the Multiple to the One but, on the contrary, of
distinguishing two types of multiplicity.
Now, this problem goes back to a scholar
of genius, G.B.R. Riemann, a physicist
and mathematician. Riemann defined as
multiplicities those things that could be
determined in terms of their dimensions or their
independent variables. He distinguished discrete
multiplicities and continuous multiplicities. The
former contain the principle of their own metrics
76
(the measure of one of their parts being given by
the number of elements they contain). The latter
found a metrical principle in something else,
even if only in phenomena unfolding in them or
in the forces acting in them.
Page 40
Continuous multiplicities seemed to him to
belong essentially to the sphere of duration. In
this way, for Bergson, duration was not simply
the indivisible, nor was it the non-measurable.
Rather, it was that which divided only by
changing in kind, that each was susceptible
to measurement only by varying its metrical
principles at each stage of the division.
Page 41
In short, object and objective denote not
only what is divided, but what, in dividing, does
not change in kind. It is thus what divides by
differences in degree. The object is characterized
by the perfect equivalence of the divided and the
divisions, of number and unit. In this sense, the
object will be called a numerical multiplicity.
For number, and primarily the arithmetical unit
itself, is the model of that which divides without
changing in kind. This is the same as saying that
number has only differences in degree, or that its
differences, whether realized or not, are always
actual in it.
Page 42
In reality, duration divides up and does so
constantly: That is why it is a multiplicity. But it
does not divide up without changing in kind, it
changes in kind in the process of dividing up:
This is why it is a nonnumerical multiplicity,
where we can speak of indivisibles at each
stage of the division. There is other without there
being several; number exists only potentially.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
In other words, the subjective, or duration, is
the virtual. To be more precise, it is the virtual
insofar as it is actualized, in the course being
actualized, it is inseparable from the movement
of its actualization.
Page 43
For actualization comes about through
differentiation, through divergent lines, and
creates so many differences in kind by virtue
of its own movement. Everything is actual in
the numerical multiplicity; everything is not
realized, but everything there is actual. There
are no relationships other than those between
actuals, and no differences other than those
in degree. On the other hand, a nonnumerical
multiplicity by which duration or subjectivity is
defined, plunges into another dimension, which
is no longer spatial and is purely temporal: It
moves from the virtual to its actualization, it
actualizes itself by creating lines of differentiation
that correspond to its differences in time. A
multiplicity of this kind has, essentially, the
three properties of continuity, heterogeneity,
and simplicity.
Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism. Translated by
Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam.
Copyright 1988 by Urzone, Inc.
Published 1991 by Zone Books, New York NY.
If we are to stay true to the kind of inquiry which Bergson
sought to foster, then we would have to say: the infinitesimal
distinction of difference which necessarily holds between
any before and its after is invariably too miniscule to
ever hold something as incomparably vast as a universal
Now. Thus, that which Husserl calls a universal Now simply
cannot exist as an essential aspect determining the nature of
temporality. Whatever it is that Husserl is designating with
this term, it cant be an essential determination of time and it
certainly cant be an ontological principle through which the
77
nature of being human as being conscious can be defined.
Rather, it would appear that what we have already
encountered elsewhere in this inquiry as a conscious state
has been taken by Husserl as the ontological principle upon
which human consciousness-of-self has been predicated.
Indeed, in considering this possibility, it is difficult not to
see in the articulation of retention and protention through
which Husserl defines his universal Now a very fundamental
process we have already examined ourselves.
Our ongoing experience of respiration, of breathing
in and out, seems to correspond exactly with the basic
sense of that more extended application for retention and
protention which Husserl uses to establish the rationality of
a universal now. We can note something else of interest here:
the rationality which Husserl takes as defining the nature
of being human appears to be a composite, a blending of
retention and protention as derived from breathing, and, of
ratio as derived from proportionate grip scaling. Husserls
rationality is indeed a concept; and, it is composed from non-
conscious processes which have become articulate within
consciousness.
This is particularly interesting for us, because the conscious
states which we encountered were characterized by energy
configurations and not to by rationality; and in fact, we know
that we can compose concepts from energy configurations,
when they are considered as intensive ordinates: so we can
certainly proceed with our ontological inquiry into the nature
of being human as being conscious secure in the knowledge
that we will indeed be able to construct the concepts we need
of the situations we examine as our inquiry progresses. Even
though it is not possible now to experience consciousness as
it existed and persisted before it became consciousness-of-
self, we can nonetheless establish something of the cognitive
functionality which characterized such conscious states; and
in this, it might just prove possible to recompose something
of the conceptual formations which attended this precursor
state to our own consciousness-of-self. If we can hope to find
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
some trace of the origin of writing, this is how we will do it.
To this end, it should be noted here that Bergsons
description of the temporal as nonnumerical multiplicity
defines the nature of what can be called an event: and
events, according to Deleuze, can be said to constitute the
singular nature of a life without necessarily invoking any
distinction between subject and object. Indeed, in defining
thought in terms of territorial relationships with the
earth, Deleuze and Guattari opened up the possibility of
determining the ontological status of being human, as being
conscious, beyond what any originary perspective defined
through subjective consciousness-of-self could ever allow.
For if, like Husserl, we instead use a perspective in which all
objects originate relative to a subjective self-consciousness,
then we will never be in a position through which we can
inquire into how consciousness-of-self has come to be such as
it is.
For Husserl, who hoped to make all matters which are
attributable to human consciousness as certain as those
pertaining to mathematics, the Cartesian ideal of a
consciousness which determines itself, which finds its own
measure within itself, was entirely seductive. But such an
approach, whatever it might produce in certainty (and the
contributions to human knowledge made through Husserls
phenomenological method are substantial), can certainly
never produce the ontological inquiry demanded by any
investigation into the nature of being human as being
conscious.
An approach based upon consciousness-of-self can never
reach beyond relationships between subjects and objects,
and so will not be able to inquire into a time when human
consciousness did not produce what we know as subjectivity.
And we do know that, at some point in our evolutionary
history, the beings which we are became conscious of their
own existence. We consider what it is to be human, to
be characterized by that. So to inquire into what human
consciousness is, necessarily demands that we somehow
examine the nature of such consciousness as it existed before
78
it became conscious of itself: here, we need access to that very
sense of difference which divides before and after by way
of event.
Consistently, throughout our inquiry, we have seen that
we are capable of conceptualizing this sense of event in
terms of energy patterns: in Taijiquan; in proto-linguistic
formations; in persistent feeling tones forming somewhere
between motor reflex activity and emotion; as energy
differentials transferred through articulations of co-extended
sense and motor reflex; as the intensive ordinates of which
concepts are composed; and as the very temporality of
event. These are all aspects of consciousness which we
can assume remain consistent regardless of the complexity
of conscious development involved. There most certainly
will be more complex formations which are characteristic
for consciousness-of-self; but at no point in our inquiry will
these considerations cease to be functional parameters for
consciousness.
So even though it is not possible to directly examine such a
state of consciousness as our consciousness-of-self arose from
(because such a form of consciousness no longer exists), we
can however do a few things instead: we can examine how
human consciousness functions in a non-subjective state; we
can examine the non-conscious processes which determine
the composition of conscious states; we can define how non-
subjective consciousness produces thought in relation to a
surrounding world; we can determine how such production,
as event, must conform to the essential nature of the
temporal; and then we can have a really close look at the
kinds of things which early humans and hominid species
were producing in addition to their thoughts.
We can do this, and we can do this knowing that the
ontological essence of being human as being conscious is
necessarily defined through temporality. This means that
the principles through which such determinations can be
made are not to be found already constituting humans, as
a metrical properties to be measured and catalogued (as
with a self made to its own measure). What can be said
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
to constitute human thought can only be established with
reference to an outside which compels thinking to occur in
the first place.
>>>
After the foregoing survey of some current philosophic
standards, I think we have managed to assemble a very
useful collection of philosophic tools.
Such tools are, of course, used to construct concepts: one
never knows what goes into any particular concept until one
has a close look; and that, of course, is made a lot easier by
knowing how concepts are put together.
Concepts are like events, and as such are contingent upon
the real. Similarly, one never knows what will be involved
in an event, or how an event will unfold, until it has come
to pass. Events are always the difference between a before
and an after; and difference is the essence of what makes
individual events and concepts unique.
Although they are composed of differences, we know
that concepts are brought together through a principle of
consistency. This was something we saw in Husserl, through
his attempts to define the again and again of anything
he was investigating philosophically. Such consistency
occurs within phenomenology as thematic inquiry: for
example, as with Sartres thematic use of images for his
phenomenological inquiry into imaging consciousness
and human imagination. So in that case, as Deleuze would
say, the theme of imaging sweeps through the concept
of imagination, at once surveying all its components; and
through this concept, Sartre defines what he calls imaging
consciousness.
We also know that the components of concepts are brought
together through the use of such a thematic gathering point;
and that this can be said of any theme which defines such a
process of survey: that such a process of survey infuses the
various differences of any concept with a sense of consistency.
79
If we are going to inquire into the origin of writing by
seeking to understand what constitutes human consciousness,
then what we need to do now is to try and define such a
gathering point more clearly.
We have from the beginning of this inquiry sought to
integrate what has been scientifically determined of non-
conscious processes, with, what has been philosophically
concluded concerning consciousness-of-self; and, we have
attempted to undertake this integration from within our
understanding of conscious states.
In undertaking to construct a concept of being human in
the context of being conscious, we have been conducting an
ontological inquiry. Since the term ontology comes from
the Greek word ontos, which means the thing, what we
are saying here is that we are looking for the nature of the
thing we call being human. We now know that concepts are
directly tied to the event of the thing they portray; and so
it is the temporal nature of our inquiry that has qualified the
way in which it is ontological.
In this way we are looking in a specific place, a specific
location; which is to say, a determinate position taken
in the sense of positing or placing within the reality of
being. This position, the point of gathering through which
we can construct our concepts in their consistency, is that
of consciousness; but, consciousness taken in the sense of
event: so we are looking at the events which produce
conscious states in order that we may construct a concept of
what being human is.
Specifically, we are looking for that point where what
we consider being human came into being, by becoming
conscious in a way we can recognize as consistent with our
own experience of consciousness; and it is with reference to
this developmental point that we will attempt to define the
origin of writing.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
>>>
Lets take a closer look then at the events through which we
come to inhabit this place we call a conscious state. We have
already established a number of characteristics of such states.
To this point in our inquiry, we have noted:
- sensory perception and motor reflex activity, in being co-
extended, produce conscious states as their articulation;
- conscious states occur as articulated with the non-
conscious processes which they are co-extensive with;
- conscious states articulate non-conscious processes with
consciousness-of-self;
- the functional dynamics of non-conscious processes define
the nature of the articulations which then form of conscious
states and consciousness-of-self;
- a relationship of derivation is thus established between
non-conscious processes, conscious states, and consciousness-
of-self;
- such derivational relationships can be seen to occur in
other instances; for instance, in the derivational relationship
apparently linking the non-conscious scaling of grasp with
the conscious ability to compare similarity between objects,
and on into the very nature of what we call reason, as
grounded in functions defined by proportionality and
ratio.
We also noted that conscious states, as the articulation of
sensory perception and motor reflex activity, seemed to be
defined by a derivational relationship holding between the
activation patterns of muscle / tendon groups and a sense of
tonality which is, in our direct experience, prototypical of
emotional states.
The very nature of transitions between emotional
states, as motivated equally by perceptions and nonthetic
consciousness (either of which can be determined as being
constituted, to varying degrees, by non-conscious processes;
and both of which are indistinguishable within a conscious
state wherein emotion functions as memory), establishes
that the articulated occurrences called conscious states are
80
sufficient for the production of proto-linguistic events. Simply,
a motor reflex action can be triggered equally by either a
perception or by the partial formation of a conscious state;
and since the two are indistinguishable within the emotional
retention which motivates their outcome, both function
equally (and indistinguishably) well in producing conscious
articulations with motor reflex activity.
A careful examination of the ways in which non-conscious
processes can be articulated with conscious states does
indeed seem to yield insights into the functional nature of
language; and will no doubt prove equally integral to any
inquiry into the origin of writing.
>>>
In each instance of occurrence through which the process
of articulation has been examined, it has consistently been
shown to be characterized in some way as transitional.
This, we noted, was consistent with Deleuzes description of
consciousness as always being the in between of sensation;
and that in turn corresponds to the ordinal intensities which
characterize the concept as event.
We also know that any event, as temporal duration, is a
continuous multiplicity which occurs as difference-in-kind;
so we can say that, in all of these instances of articulation,
we have a transition between a before and an after: this
is precisely why articulations, as transitional, are events and
must be defined in terms of the temporal.
Articulations are thus by definition continuous
multiplicities; and as transitions, their defining
characteristics are located outside themselves: a conclusion
which is entirely consistent with our original viewpoint that
such articulations are formed of co-extended aspects of
consciousness. Thus, we can always find further aspects of
consciousness as co-extended with the articulations which
constitute conscious states: in doing so, we will simply
establish new articulations which motivate the further
formation of conscious states.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
approach the analysis of these faint traces of our distant past:
This becomes the process whereby concepts are composed.
Page 64
We also know that, in defining the occurrence of
consciousness in terms of events, we can examine something
of how consciousness functions before the conceptual
formation of either objects, or of subjectivity. This in turn
allows us to conduct an investigation into the nature of
conscious states as determined before consciousness-of-
self begins to form. Here, we are able to inquire into the
nature of any objects, such as they occur in the event of an
encounter with consciousness; and in doing so, examine the
resulting states of consciousness which are thus formed. This
is absolutely essential to this inquiry, once we acknowledge
that it is this earth which we are here upon that compels us to
even begin thinking in the first place.
>>>
Having gained a firmer grasp of how we can conceive the
nature of what constitutes conscious states, we can now
consider how to use this knowledge in furthering our inquiry
into the origin of writing.
The purpose of inquiring into the sense of what we mean
when we talk about conscious states was to establish a
conceptual gathering point through which to better define
our ontological conception of being human. As noted earlier,
this process must be undertaken within a historical context,
in an attempt to determine something of how being human
arose; and this necessarily means with reference to the
limited traces of our species early existence.
When we seek to examine the most remote roots of our
human ancestry, we are for the most part left considering the
few and far flung artifacts that have survived long enough
to be discovered through the diligence of those who persist
is seeking such tenuous traces of our collective past. Such
objects constitute all that is left (beside ourselves) of what
we can call our historical origins; and what we can claim to
know of these origins is necessarily conditioned by how we
81
The conditions of Objectivity are then the
conditions of historicity itself.
When Husserl farther on devotes a few lines
to the production and evidence of geometrical
sense as such and its own proper content, he will
do so only after having determined the general
conditions of its Objectivity and of the Objectivity
of ideal objectivities. Thus, only retroactively
and on the basis of its results can we illuminate
the pure sense of the subjective praxis which
has engendered geometry. The sense of the
constituting act can only be deciphered in the
web of the constituted object. And this necessity
is not an external fate, but an essential necessity
of intentionality. The primordial sense of every
intentional act is only its final sense, i.e., the
constitution of an object (in the broadest sense
of these terms). That is why only a teleology
can open up a passage, a way back toward the
beginnings.
If the sense of the geometrical sense is
Objectivity or the intention of Objectivity, if
geometry is here the exemplary index of being
scientific, and if history is the highest and most
revelatory possibility for a universal history (the
concept of which would not exist without it), then
the sense of sense in general is here determined
as object: as some thing that is accessible and
available in general and first for a regard or
gaze. The worldly image of gaze would not be
the unnoticed model of the theoretical attitude
of pure consciousness but, on the contrary,
would borrow its sense from that attitude. This
is very much in accord with the initial direction
of phenomenology: the object in general is the
final category of everything that can appear,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
i.e., that can be for a pure consciousness in
general. Objects in general join all regions to
consciousness, the Ur-Region.
Truly, there is not first a subjective geometrical
evidence which would then become objective.
Geometrical evidence only starts the moment
there is evidence of an ideal objectivity. The
latter is such only after having been put
into intersubjective circulation. Geometrical
existence is not psychic existence; it does not
exist as something personal within the personal
sphere of consciousness; it is the existence of what
is Objectively there for everyone (for actual and
possible geometers, or those who understand
geometry).
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
Here we again see the rationale behind Husserls earlier
conceptual move, wherein he substituted a collective sense
of intersubjective humanity as the unifying commonality
giving meaning to our existence, in place of the consistency
of the Earth as our experiential ground. For Husserl, the
general sense of what we can say exists is defined by the
concept of the object. And while we can certainly always
say that objects exist, we can only say that the theoretical
constructs which constitute our knowledge of the world
exist objectively insofar as they can be demonstrated for
everyone, everywhere. It is in this sense that the collective
knowledge we gather as our sciences or our histories is
presented as objective: the very sense Husserl seeks to
investigate, examine, and define in detail through his
phenomenological method.
The problem we find arising with Husserl is that the way
in which he conceives objectivity is necessarily determined
by his functional definition of consciousness, such as it
was taken from Descartes. For Husserl, appearing before
consciousness as the same is as characteristic of objects as
82
the subjective certainty of self-awareness is for consciousness.
This should clarify what is truly at stake with our initial
inquiries into meditative techniques that seek to cultivate
a sense our most basic conscious states: if any sense is to be
made of the artifacts which constitute the archaeological and
anthropological heritage of our species, such understanding
can only be established within anything resembling a
scientific context if is first constituted within a shared
commonality of referential experience.
For the most part, this generally means within the
established academic traditions which define the
aforementioned sciences. However, we decided from the
very beginning of this inquiry that we need to do something
which is different than what can be sanctioned within the
established norms and accepted parameters of those fields.
So in attempting an ontological analysis of what can be said
to constitute being human in the context of being conscious,
we are in essence seeking to define the collective sense
through which the artifacts of prehistory, as objects, are
defined within an objective systemization of knowledge. In
deference to Gilles Deleuze, we might here say: when we raise
the objects of our experience to that transcendental status
of objectivity, they still have to go somewhere; and the place
where we are so putting them is one which is defined by the
functional parameters of human consciousness. To the extent
in which we gather such objects together into what we call
a scientific field, we must realize that such gathering occurs
through a place which is no longer the space in which such
objects were found. Instead, such objects are being positioned
within conceptual spaces which are determined by the
essential nature of our own consciousness.
We will be constructing our own concepts as we go,
though; so we can expect to find ourselves thinking in terms
of events, rather than with predetermined relationships
holding between a pre-established sense of subjectivity and
the correlated sense of objectivity this would necessarily and
structurally imply.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
Taking the time to examine closely how our own
consciousness comes to be constituted as conscious states is
then the attempt to allow ourselves to proceed in our inquiry
into the origin of writing without the preconceptions which
would otherwise attend those determinations previously
made within the fields of anthropology and archaeology.
Here, as with our earlier inquiry concerning the relationship
between Sartres sense of consciousness as motivated, and
Husserls sense of consciousness as modified, we have two
possible approaches we can take in this: we can rethink
whatever we can find within the anthropological and
archaeological record, in an attempt to remove whatever
preconceptions we can identify; or, we can think the entire
matter through for ourselves, doing the best we can to remove
any such preconceptions at the onset of our inquiry.
>>>
The first option would demand several lifetimes of diligent
effort within the scientific traditions of anthropology and
archaeology; while the second approach is one which is the
essence of philosophic inquiry.
Deleuze and Guattari pushed this kind of analysis beyond
the distinction between an observing subject and an observed
object. In doing so, they sought access to a direct sense of
experience, of events as they include us in occurring upon
this earth. This is the nature of that very basic commonality
which they sought to establish: an intersubjectivity which
exists even before consciousness-of-self comes into being.
Here we can say: in that conscious states and those objects
we identify as artifacts are both produced, we can establish
an interpretive commonality in the form of events, as these
compositionally constitute concepts.
Needless to say, such a radical philosophic approach
extends into the fundamental ground upon which science
is based; but it does so in a very original way, through what
Deleuze refers to as a wild and powerful transcendental
empiricism.
83
So perhaps we can touch upon something of this here:
for, we have a sense of conscious states which are free of
subjectivity; and we can use this sense positionally, as the
place where we gather the components from which we will
make our new concepts. We know that whatever constitutes
consciousness does so as an essential difference: the
difference of the temporal, of the event which always occurs
as difference-in-kind, the difference between every before
and after.
Here, we can surely say that the differences which make
being human a matter of being conscious are so basic as to
constitute the kind of commonality which science demands: a
shared sense of existence in which such temporal difference is
so fundamental that it can be seen as extending to all living
things on this earth:
Page 97
When certain biologists invoke a notion
of organic virtuality or potentiality and
nonetheless maintain that this potentiality is
actualized by simple limitation of its global
capacity, they clearly fall into a confusion of
the virtual and the possible. For, in order to
be actualized, the virtual cannot proceed by
elimination or limitation, but must create its own
lines of actualization in positive acts. The reason
for this is simple: While the real is in the image
and likeness of the possible that it realizes, the
actual, on the other hand does not resemble the
virtuality that it embodies. It is difference that
is primary in the process of actualization - the
difference between the virtual from which we
begin and the actuals at which we arrive, and
also the difference between the complementary
lines according to which actualization takes
place. In short, the characteristic of virtuality
is to exist in such a way that it is actualized by
being differentiated and is forced to differentiate
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
itself, to create its lines of differentiation in order
to be actualized.
Gilles Deleuze; Bergsonism.
This is of course entirely consistent with evolutionary
theory: that organisms evolve by adapting what they are
to where they are; and that this process proceeds through
differentiation, not by the removal of whatever was already
there in an organism.
The nature of our task here, then becomes a little clearer: in
looking for the differences which constitute being human,
we are looking at what had been before us and inquiring into
the nature of whatever events caused such a difference-in-
kind as us to occur after whatever we find being before us.
Page 103
Each line of life is related to a type of matter
that is not merely an external environment, but
in terms of which the living being manufactures
a body, a form for itself. This is why the living
being, in relation to matter, appears primarily
as the stating of a problem, and the capacity to
solve problems: the construction of an eye, for
example, is primarily the solution to a problem
posed in terms of light. [Note 15, Chapter V: This
character of life, posing and solution of a problem,
appears to Bergson to be more important than
the negative determination of need]. And each
time, we will say that the solution was as good
as it could have been, given the way in which
the problem was stated, and the means that the
living being had at its disposal to solve it.
Gilles Deleuze; Bergsonism.
Being human isnt just about being conscious; it is about
all of those things which make us distinct as a species, which
determine the various ways in which we can interact with
the earth we experience. And while we have been looking
84
primarily at how consciousness is produced, this is just one
aspect of how our species came to be this very different
kind of creature that we are. For Bergson, the productive
nature of life was a fundamental principle which guided
his philosophic inquiries; and it is also a primary concern
for us here: not only must we consider how consciousness is
produced, but also how the artifacts we must consider in the
course of our inquiry were produced. As Bergson points out,
though, it doesnt matter if we are considering consciousness;
or artifacts; or fossilized skeletal remains: the principle of
productive difference, in that temporality of events which
divides-in-kind between before and after, remains
consistent.
Events are always a multiplicity, because time is a specific
type of multiplicity. As with a concept, one can never say
what might be included in an event until one has taken a
very close look. But we do know that such differences do not
proceed from what is not: even in our analyses of forgetting
and the nothingness of the image, we found that a
productive functionality was in fact being articulated within
consciousness, and not that some lack of consciousness was
responsible for the effects we noted.
Thus, we come to one final philosophic point I would like
to address here. All too often, when the nature of an object is
reconstituted, this is done with the presupposition that such
an object is created to fill a lack, a need for something
which is not there. As Bergson has pointed out, productive
activity always proceeds from something which already
exists: even concepts cannot be created out of nothing,
and need to have components which might always be later
identified. Similarly, for any temporal difference-in-kind,
there is no after of an event without there having been a
before.
When we come to examine archaeological artifacts, then,
we must remember this in attempting to reconstruct the
nature of the consciousness which attended their production:
such objects were never made out of lack or of simple,
empty need; there is always a complete world of which such
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes
productive events arose, a multiplicity of component elements
in and of which any such object came to be. Even what we
call desire, as a productive force for creative activity which
motivates that event we call consciousness, never proceeds
from a lack or from what is not:
D as in Desire
Parnet begins by citing the biographical entry
on Deleuze in the Petit Larousse dictionary (1988
edition), that refers to his work with Guattari on
(among other topics) desire, citing Anti-Oedipus
(1972). Since Deleuze is considered to be, says
Parnet, a philosopher of desire, so what is it?
What they meant to express was the simplest
thing in the word: until now, you speak abstractly
about desire because you extract an object
supposed to be the object of desire. Deleuze
emphasizes that one never desires something or
someone, but rather always desires an aggregate
(ensemble). So they asked what was the nature
of relations between elements in order for
there to be desire, for these elements to become
desirable. Deleuze refers to Proust when he says
that desire for a woman is not so much desire
for the woman as for a paysage, a landscape,
that is enveloped in this woman. Or in desiring
an object, a dress for example, the desire is not
for the object, but for the whole context, the
aggregate, I desire in an aggregate. Deleuze
refers back to the letter B, on drinking,
alcohol, and the desire not just for drink, but for
whatever aggregate into which one situates the
desire for drinking (with people, in a caf, etc.).
So, there is no desire, says Deleuze, that does
not flow into an assemblage, and for him, desire
has always been a constructivism, constructing
an assemblage (agencement), an aggregate: the
85
aggregate of the skirt, of a sun ray, of a street, of
a woman, of a vista, of a color... constructing an
assemblage, constructing a region, assembling.
Deleuze emphasizes that desire is constructivism.
Parent asks if its because desire is an assemblage
that Deleuze needed to be two, with Guattari, in
order to create. Deleuze agrees that with Felix,
they created an assemblage, but that there can
be assemblages all alone as well as with two,
or something passing between two. All of this,
he continues, concerns physical phenomena,
and for an event to occur, some differences of
potential must arise, like a flash or a stream,
so that the domain of desire is constructed. So
every time someone says, I desire this or that,
that person is in the process of constructing an
assemblage, nothing else, desire is nothing else.
LAbcdaire de Gilles Deleuze, avec Claire Parnet
<Gilles Deleuzes ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet>
Directed by Pierre-Andr Boutang (1996).
Overview prepared by:
Charles J. Stivale, Romance Languages & Literatures,
Wayne State University
Revised version: May 3, 2000
[extra special thanks to John Morton!]
-- Last Update, May 27, 2004
http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/D-G/ABC1.html
Whether we are considering the production of an object
as artifact; or of a conscious state: we are always dealing
with an aggregate, an assemblage, an event which is a
multiplicity. This is why we can proceed in our inquiry by
constructing concepts, and by paying particular attention
to the conditions which determine both the endoconsistency
and the exoconsistency of what we create in doing so.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 06.0) Toward Non-Conscious Processes 86

>>> historical. Such a beginning must inevitably lead us to the

origin of writing; and that, after all, is the ultimate goal of
In previous eras, philosophers such as Leibniz would these concurrent inquiries.
qualify their speculative metaphysics with concepts such as
compossibility: for something to be said to exist, it wasnt
enough to prove that it was possible; it also had to be proven
that any such thing was possible given what we know of the
nature of the world in which it must be said to exist. Nothing
could exist on its own, simply as itself: the existence of
anything that might be could not contradict the existence of
anything which was.

Therein lies a particular problem with approaches which

seek to explain the production of some object, or artifact,
or conscious state on the basis of lack, or of what is not:
in creating the concept for any such thing within the
vacuum of a lack which demands it, there is absolutely no
assurance that what is so created will in fact be compossible
with the world in which it is assumed to be occurring. Even
thought, compelled by the encounter with this earth upon
which we occur, has to occur somewhere: and we will never
for ourselves think beyond the organic constraints of the
neurological substrates in which our thoughts occur. So, in
constructing our concepts, we must always be aware that
these multiplicities, these events of thought that we are
putting together, will always be defined as much by their
exoconsistency with the circumstances from which they
arose, as they are by the endoconsistency we impose upon
them by bringing their constituent components together.

Let us then proceed to assess those differences which will

serve as the components we need here: the various objects,
artifacts, and observations which constitute the historical
and pre-historical record of being human.

Lets see how these component-differences might constitute

some consistent sense of being conscious.

And since the difference between the historical and

the pre-historical is defined precisely by the distinction of
whether or not writing is involved, lets start with the pre-
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
07.0) The Archaeological Record
We humans are a truly unique species, with a number
of distinguishing traits. We walk on two feet; and we use
our hands to manipulate tools, which we fashion under the
guidance of our unusually large brains. We communicate
amongst ourselves, and we create written records of
our thoughts: we are conscious of our own existence as
individuals.
From the archaeological record which demarcates our
prehistory, we have a slowly accumulating number of
clues as to when such features arose in our evolutionary
lineage. However, WHY such changes took place remains
open to conjecture; and although a general consensus has
emerged concerning some of the more irrefutable aspects
of our evolutionary history, all such hypotheses remain to a
certain degree speculative.
As Richard Leakey notes in the introductory chapter to his
The Origin of Humankind, the history of anthropology
is littered with now discarded theories as to why humans
have evolved into such as we are. Leakey documents a
steady progression of unifying concepts, each of which
defined anthropology for a time. Charles Darwin saw the
invention of weapons as contributing to the development
of bipedalism, increased brain size, and technology. Others
have emphasized the expansion of brain size; the invention
of tools; a predatory nature; hunting and gathering;
hunting and gathering as distinct from each other; and
other cultural attributes.
Probably the greatest focus of such speculation has been
on the origin of our upright stature. Evidence of evolving
bipedalism exists very early in the lineage leading to
humans, perhaps as long as 5-7 million years ago. Walking
upright required a major shift in body structure; so much
so that R. Leakey argues we should consider the human
lineage to have commenced with the advent of bipedalism.
All current evidence points to bipedalism predating all
of our other human traits, with the use of stone tools, for
87
instance, first occurring around 2.5 million years ago.
Determining what caused bipedalism to evolve in the
human lineage would allow us to understand how the first
steps were taken upon that long path leading to what we
have become.
>>>
The most popular and commonly held idea is that
humans evolved an upright stance by walking out onto
the open grasslands of the African savanna. Yet, this
scenario just doesnt make any sense. When we trace our
evolutionary heritage, we see our closest relatives moving
from branch to branch, and tree to tree; even venturing
onto the ground between trees. But, what would possess
early hominids to head off onto the open savanna with
no end goal in sight? Even today, by all accounts, this
is no place to spend an afternoon on foot; so how could
one expect early hominids to become so habitualized to
such excursions as to survive and, even thrive in such an
environment - to the point where they evolved into animals
with an upright stance? Altogether, the devolution of
savanna inhabiting hominids toward a more quadruped
status would seem a more likely outcome: even those
primates which do regularly venture onto the savanna in
large numbers, troops of baboons, do so on all fours.
Again, accepted wisdom has climatic change desiccating
the forest environments, spacing trees farther and farther
apart and forcing early hominids to walk ever increasing
distances between trees. But, forests didnt disappear
altogether; so, why would early hominids not just retreat
to areas where forests still dominated the landscape? And
there is still a big difference between walking between
trees, and walking out onto an open savannah, with no
end goal in sight. Such an eventuality requires a complete
change in behavior; tacitly implying that the adoption of an
upright stance occurred before the territorialization of open
savannah happened.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
There is something missing from the widely accepted
savanna scenario; some event of major consequence that
necessarily occurred between the before of our arboreal
ancestors, and, the after of their upright descendents
striding purposefully out onto the open savanna. This event
could only have occurred as an extended encounter with an
intermediary environment, one somehow in between the
vertical world of forests, and the horizontal world of the open
plain.
>>>
As it turns out, the evolution of bipedalism could not have
been caused simple by the territorialization of the African
savanna. As R. Leakey notes, researchers at Harvard and Yale
Universities have established that savanna environments
arose about 3 million years ago - long after bipedalism had
evolved in humans.
R. Leakey describes the geological changes which
eventually caused the savannas to form:
Page 15-16
If we take our minds back to an Africa of
fifteen million years ago, we find a carpet of
forest from west to east... Geological forces were
stirring, however, which would dramatically
altered the terrain and its occupants during the
next few million years.
The earths crust was tearing itself apart
beneath the eastern part of the continent, in a line
from the Red Sea through present-day Ethiopia,
Kenya, Tanzania, and into Mozambique. As a
result, the land rose blisterlike in Ethiopia and
Kenya, forming great highlands more than 9000
feet in altitude. These great domes transformed
not only the continents topography but its
climate. Disrupting the previously uniform west-
to-east airflow, the domes threw the lands to the
east into rain shadow, depriving the forests of
88
their sustenance. The continuous tree cover began
to fragment, leaving a mosaic environment of
forest patches, woodland, and shrubland.
At 12 million years ago, a continuation
of tectonic forces further changed the
environment, with the formation of a long,
sinuous valley, running from north to south,
known as the Great Rift Valley. The existence
of the Great Rift Valley has had two biological
effects: it poses a formidable east-west barrier
to animal populations; and it further promotes
the development of a rich mosaic of ecological
conditions.
The valley has dramatic highlands with cool,
forested plateaus, and precipitous slopes that
plunge 3000 feet to hot, arid lowlands. Biologists
have come to realize that mosaic environments
of this kind, which offer many different kinds
of habitat, drive evolutionary innovation... But
while most ape species suffered because of the
environmental shift, one of them was blessed
with a new adaptation that allowed it to survive
and prosper. This was the first bipedal ape. Being
bipedal clearly bestowed important survival
advantages in the changing conditions. The
job of anthropologists is to discover what those
advantages were.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
Ive never had the opportunity to visit Africa, much less see
those places in which humankind are reasonably thought to
have arisen. I have, however, managed to spend some time
on the West Coast of Canada; and as much of that as possible
was spent in the various mountain ranges found there.
As important as ropes, harnesses, connective hardware, stiff
boots, helmets, and headlamps are to safe climbing, there is
one absolutely vital factor that climbing is suicidal without.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
That factor is, simply, our upright stature.
I absolutely guarantee that you will never hold your body
as rigidly and completely upright as you will on a sheer cliff
face, with nothing between you and serious injury or death
(apart from you ropes and climbing companions) except
your ability to keep you body weight directly above whatever
tiny protrusions of rock your feet have managed to find,
and directly below whatever tiny grips your fingertips and
flattened hands have managed to grasp. Even your flattened,
barrel-like chest (as compared to the funnel-shaped chest
of an ape) is a factor in allowing you to keep as close to that
rock face as is humanly possible.
If I were to pick an environment intermediary between
forest and open savanna, an environment in which an
upright stance would be naturally selected for, I would
make but one choice: the sheer face of a rock cliff. Such an
environment is intermediary in two ways: geographically,
as the (apparently) the fastest route between the lowland
savanna and the highland forests of East Africa; and
topologically. Vertical like a tree, yet flat like a plain, cliffs
have remained outside of anthropologists considerations
concerning the origin of our upright status because they
dont look like the kind of place a hominid could live. Indeed,
they are not the kind of place a hominid could live: they are
the kind of place a hominid would die... without an upright
stature.
Therefore, I would think that the base of such cliffs would
be the most logical place to look for the fossilized remains of
hominids who had not yet achieved full upright status, and
perhaps had not been all that successful in their attempts at
climbing sheer rock walls.
While evidence of this might eventually be found, for the
moment we can instead take another approach which might
help to logically validate such a hypothesis. In the previous
section, we noted:
- the import role played by an experiential engagement
89
with any specific environment for the formation of thought:
this is what compels thinking in the first place, whether that
thought is self-conscious or not.
- if we are dealing with thought formed without
consciousness-of-self, such cognitive processes will occur in
the context of territorialization: deterritorializations from one
place, often as motivated by a relative abundance elsewhere,
and reterritorializations forming in that new place of relative
abundance.
- as an event, as a temporal occurrence, there will
invariably be a multiplicity of components involved in such
territorializations: these components can be determined as
differentials, which can in turn be used to produce concepts
which are descriptive of the situation under consideration.
- if we have the location, the milieu, the environmental
aspects from which to constitute the exoconsistency of such
concepts, then we may well be able to determine something
of the internal consistencies which characterize the thought
processes compelled by such a place.
Lets see what consistencies arise, and the degree of
compossibility established, through this hypothesis: our
upright stance evolved because hominids in our lineage
began to climb upon sheer rock cliffs with an ever increasing
frequency.
We know, from R. Leakeys outline of the geological forces
which shaped the African environment of our distant
ancestors, that although the preferred forest habitat of early
hominids was decreasing at the time when bipedalism
evolved, it remained stable in the highland areas sitting atop
cliffs of up to 3,000 feet. We also know, from archaeological
evidence, that such early hominids were not isolated on one
side or the other of such massive geological features as the
Great Rift Valley. So, we can say: early hominids probably
would have had sufficient reason to scale cliff faces; and early
hominids probably did scale cliff faces. We cannot, however,
establish the frequency with which such events occurred.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
Cliffs often occur as the shortest route between two points;
and sometimes, cliffs occur on the only possible route to a
desired goal.
When hominids first scaled cliffs, in all probability it was to
escape predators or to obtain food. Cliffs are actually a good
place to avoid predation by, for instance, any of the big cats:
claws, which are effective in climbing trees, are worse than
useless on rock faces. Cliffs are also the best place to find
the protection of caves, which are demonstrably one of the
preferred living sites for humans and many of our hominid
ancestors. This is true everywhere in the world where
prehistoric human remains are found; and even today, there
are many places where humans can still be found living in
(much nicer) caves.
Cliffs also present good foraging prospects: conditions
between the top and bottom of a cliff can be different enough
in their microclimates to support different kinds of plants,
and different kinds of animals. Even if the biological diversity
between the top and the bottom of a cliff is not radically
different, the growing conditions can be; such that plant food
sources can ripen or generally be available at staggered times
across the vertical extent of a cliff. In addition, there are food
sources which can be specific to the face of a cliff: birds nests,
for instance, and bee hives. Any food source found at any
vertical point on a cliff will tend to be available for the lateral
extent of the cliff; so such food sources can be surprisingly
abundant. Sources of water are easily spotted running down
cliff faces; and since the atmospheric pressure drops in air
forced up over cliffs, less moisture can held suspended as
vapor: areas above significant rises in elevation tend to
receive abundant rainfall.
If any early hominids were in the habit of frequently
climbing cliffs for any reason, then they would have
quickly begun to adapt to the task of climbing: and failing
to successfully climb a cliff would very often have resulted
in death. Of course, that isnt the whole story of natural
selection: some advantage had to be obtained by those who
90
could successfully climb cliffs.
R. Leakey, with reference to a paper on bipedalism
published in Science by Owen Lovejoy in 1981, notes:
Page 17
Bipedalism, he argued, is an inefficient
mode of locomotion, so it must have evolved for
carrying things. How could the ability to carry
things give bipedal apes a competitive edge over
other apes?
Ultimately, evolutionary success depends on
producing surviving offspring, and the answer,
suggests Lovejoy, lay in the opportunity that
this new ability gave male apes to boost the
reproductive rate of the female, by gathering
food for her. Apes, he pointed out, reproduce
slowly, having one infant every four years. If
human females had access to more energy - that
is, food - they might successfully produce more
offspring. If a male helped provide a female
with more energy by collecting food for her and
for her offspring, she would be able to boost her
reproductive output.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
Of course, it isnt possible to carry food while climbing a
cliff face. And it wouldnt be possible for pregnant females,
or females caring for infants, to climb a cliff face either.
Assuming that such cliff apes made their home at the base
of a cliff, perhaps in a cave, it would seem probably that
those gathering food at the upper heights would have had no
alternative, assuming an abundance of food being available,
but to drop the collected food down to those who had stayed
below.
This very simple act, demanded by physical limitations, has
enormous consequences.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
A division of labor is forced upon those involved: it is the
only way to get around the impossibility of carrying gathered
food down a cliff face. That such a division of labor somehow
arose somewhere in human prehistory has often been noted
by anthropologists; but the reason for such a division has
never been adequately explained.
Any plants dropped to the base of a cliff would very
likely colonize that location, through vegetative or seed
propagation. This would in time provide more accessible
sources of these foods; sources which would provide an
indication of when the original resources above were ready to
be harvested.
Plants that were a food source, growing in the drop spots at
the base of a cliff, would attract herbivores. No doubt there
was some familiarity with the ballistic speeds attained by
rocks and sticks thrown from the top of a cliff; knowledge
possibly acquired in keeping foragers away from dropped
food supplies that had not yet been collected. This would
in turn provide a much needed source of animal protein. It
would also establish a somewhat opportunistic but none the
less predatory ability to hunt using weapons.
Interestingly, this could also be the origin of the first
stone tools. Archaeologists consistently lament the near
impossibility of discerning a difference between the earliest
stone tools, and rocks flaked through natural processes. If
early hominids became bipedal by territorializing cliff faces,
then they would have had ample access to stones flakes
created by natural causes: rocks falling on other rocks at the
base of the cliff. If they first hunted animals drawn to their
food-gathering drop spots at the base of cliffs, then they
would have had the sharp stone flakes they needed to butcher
the animals ready at hand.
Thus, another human adaptation comes to the forefront:
the use of tools. And from this perspective, the environment
of a cliff face provides a necessary adaptive mechanism
which seems to have been completely ignored within
anthropology.
91
Primates, apes included, have hands that are adapted
to tree branches. Humans have hands that are adapted to
stone. Just by comparing the feeling of how well a stone tool
fits in the hand, and how in contrast grasping a branch feels
slightly uncomfortable, anyone can come to realize that at
some point in our evolutionary history the use of our hands
deterritorialized from branches and reterritorialized onto
stone. So in all probability, living in association with a cliff
face environment was transitional toward not just our bipedal
nature, but also to our natural tendency of grasping stone
instead of tree branches.
So, when early hominids did eventually stride out onto the
open savanna, it wasnt from a steadily diminishing forest:
it was from the relative safety and abundance of cliffs. These
ancestors of man had already developed an upright stature,
from scaling cliff faces. They were use to having rocks in their
hands, from grasping handholds as they climbed. They knew
that fast moving objects could kill, because they used that
principle to hunt animals drawn to their drop spots on the
base of cliffs. They had a taste for meat, acquired in such a
way. They had the ability to make use of such meat, using the
sharp stone flakes they had encountered at the base of cliffs -
stone flakes they could make themselves, as needed. And they
had a reason to venture out onto the savanna: because they
could see animals they wanted to hunt, or kills they wanted
to scavenge and predators they needed to avoid, from the
vantage point of their cliff tops.
>>>
The hypothesis that early hominids territorialized
environments associated with cliff faces seems to
have yielded a large number of externally associated,
developmental consistencies. This suggests that we would be
justified in considering what cognitive characteristics might
have arisen within such a situation.
Such an approach is certainly not without precedent. By
way of example. It has been suggested that there is a direct
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
link between cogitative development and the way in which
food is obtained:
Page 22-23
Natural selection strongly favors traits that
enhance the efficiency of foraging. Hence, as
plant foods assumed increasing importance over
evolutionary time (thousands, indeed millions of
years), selection gradually gave rise to the suite of
traits now regarded as characteristic of primates.
Most of these traits facilitate movement and
foraging in trees. For instant, selection yielded
hands well suited for grasping slender branches
and manipulating found delicacies.
Selective pressures also favored considerable
enhancement of visual apparatus (including
depth perception, sharpened acuity and color
vision), thereby helping primates travel rapidly
through the three-dimensional space of the
forest canopy and easily discern the presence
of ripe fruits or tiny, young leaves. And such
pressures favored increased behavioral flexibility
as well as the ability to learn and remember
the identity and locations of edible plant parts.
Foraging benefits conferred by the enhancement
of visual and cognitive skills, in turn, promoted
development of an unusually large brain, a
characteristic of primates since their inception.
Page 27-28
To me, the striking expansion of brain size in
our genus indicates that we became so successful
because selection amplified a tendency inherent
in the primate order since its inception: that of
using brainpower, or behavior, to solve dietary
problems. Coupled with the anatomic changes
- and with the associations in living primates
between larger brains and a high-quality diet
- this increase also points to the conclusion
that the behavioral solution was to concentrate
92
on high-quality foods. In fact, I suspect early
humans not only maintained dietary quality in
the face of changing environmental conditions
but even improved it.
Katherine Milton, Diet and Primate Evolution;
Scientific American, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2006:
Special Edition, Becoming Human: Evolution
and the Rise of Intelligence.
It seems apparent, then, that such a dangerous practice as
climbing cliff faces would only arise if this provided a more
efficient way of foraging. If we can assume that our hominid
ancestors became habitualized to climbing up cliff faces in
order to access high value food sources, then we must assume
that there were certain cognitive adaptations which were
favored along with those physical developments that may
have so originated. Principle of these would be any which
allowed a hominid to climb cliff faces more safely.
Climbing a sheer rock face is never an easy task. It
is physically draining, but it also has certain cognitive
demands. Routes have to be planned, insofar as available
finger and toe holds must be taken into consideration. Such
climbing is never about the fastest route to the top but, the
best available route. Actual flat-out climbing can be avoided
in many instances if more circuitous routes between rough,
sloping, or even highly eroded areas are followed. The best
route in any case is only one which leads to the top; and of
course, safely back down to the bottom again.
Cognitively, this would at the very least suggest an ability
to weight alternatives, and to choose options leading to a
desired goal. It also suggests the ability to retain plans made
with reference to end goals (a route chosen from below,
before starting to climb); and to modify those plans, in the
course of the activity, on the basis of on-site conditions. Of
course, that isnt such a huge conceptual step when the end
goal is up, and where down is all too easy to determine;
but there is one additional factor in play. When climbing,
line-of-sight references are greatly reduced. Even if a route
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
was identified from below, it might not be as clearly visible
while actually climbing the cliff face. Cooperation with, in
the form of direction from, those remaining below would
always be the safest way to proceed. It would also be
significantly less memory intensive; and this would have been
a definite advantage, assuming that a hominids memories
tended for the most part to consist primarily of emotional
intensities (of which, I can attest, climbing cliff faces provides
an ample supply).
In that climbing requires foresight, anticipation, and the
ability to weigh and choose between alternatives; and in that
these abilities were thus developed in a success or death
context, such an environment would have highly selected
for such logical processes - in direct articulation with motor
reflex activities. As we have already seen in our preliminary
inquiries, proto-linguistic formulations require little more
than an articulation of motor reflex activations with partial
formations of non-conscious structures in order to function
within an emotional context: which is to say, simple sounds
are established very early in our primate lineage as a way of
directing the actions of another; so very little thinking need
be involved for such cooperation to prove successful.
It seems, then, that one of the primary cognitive
characteristics attributable to living in a cliff face
environment is an interdependency between those sharing
such a territory. This would seem to define a remarkable
divergence from the social organization of other primates
which, although very complex, does not seem to demand the
same degree of stability:
Page 146
Primates are quintessentially social creatures.
Just a few hours in the presence of a troop
of monkeys is sufficient to get a sense of the
importance that social interaction has for its
members. Established alliances are constantly
tested and maintained; new ones are explored;
friends are to be helped, rivals challenged; and
constant vigilance is kept for opportunities to
93
mate.
Page 147-148
Primatologists now know that the network
of alliances within primate troops is extremely
complex. Learning the intricacies of such a
network, as individuals must if they are to
succeed, is difficult enough. But the task is made
vastly harder by the constant shifting of alliances,
as individuals constantly seek to improve their
political power. Always looking out for their
own best interests, and for the interests of their
closest relatives, individuals may sometimes
find it advantageous to break existing alliances
and form new ones, perhaps even with previous
rivals.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
If cliffs were to be successfully scaled in search of food,
assisted by rudimentary directions from below; if food
resources so gathered had to be dropped to those below, who
not only had to wait and share these resources with those
who had climbed to do the gathering but, also had to stay at
the base of the cliff face to provide any necessary directions
for climbing back down: then cognitive abilities best
described with terms such as care, concern, trust, loyalty,
and dependability had to be developing.
This, in a sense, would have been a very early instance of
social climbing.
Something else of particular interest would also have been
developing here: what we would have to call agreement.
Not just between the stability of experiences relative to the
earth, as common to all perceivers: but between hominids
involved in a division of labor, even if that division had been
forced by environmental factors. A gatherer wouldnt have
to drop food down to the cliff bottom; each could eat its fill
at the top, and climb down safely. A collector wouldnt have
to wait for a gatherer to climb to the bottom and share the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
dropped food. But if both held to a common course of action,
then a successful division of labor could continue to function
time after time. And even if both those climbing and those
waiting below did eat their respective fill at the earliest
opportunity, the need to interact with observers below in
order to safely climb for foraging would still be coincident
with the need of those below for food dropped by the foragers
who climbed under their direction.
This common course, this agreement in action, achieves
exactly what Husserl was attempting to establish by
substituting a horizon of intersubjectivity for the shared
commonality of a grounding Earth: it realizes cognitive sense
as meaningful. Here, two or more individuals share in the
same experience, but each in a very different way; yet all
grasp the nature of the others actions relative to their own
contribution to the event they create and experience together.
And although it would still lie an almost unimaginable
distance in the future, this would be a necessary precursor for
writing: without this kind of agreement, there would never
be any kind of communicative connectivity possible for two
individuals so far removed from each other as a writer and a
reader might be.
At that distant point in the past, hominids would have been
becoming more like us than we might have imagined.
So, while it is still often assumed that the advanced
behavioral characteristics of early hominids evolved within
some savanna-like environment, I would suggest that most of
the evolutionary innovations which came to characterize our
species might have initially arisen in an environment which
was transitional between dense forest and open plain: in
areas found along the edges of cliffs.
Page 28
Survival of the individual thus came to depend
on a number of technological and social skills. It
demanded not only having a brain able to form
and retain a mental map of plant food supplies
but also having knowledge of how to procure or
94
transformed such supplies. In addition, survival
now required an ability to recognize that a stone
tool could be fashioned from a piece of rock and
a sense of how to implement that vision. And it
required the capacity to cooperate with others
(for instance, to communicate about who should
run ahead of a hunted zebra and who behind),
to defer gratification (to save food until it could
be brought to an agreed site for all to share) and
both to determine ones fair portion and to ensure
that it was received. Such demands undoubtedly
served as selective pressures favoring the
evolution of even larger, more complex brains.
Katherine Milton, Diet and Primate Evolution.
I also suspect that the cognitive development of early
hominids was not as is often assumed. We know from our
own experience of the Golden Flower Meditation what very
basic conscious states are like: they tend to be most efficiently
dedicated toward articulating sensory perceptions with motor
reflex activity. There is very little of what we now recognize as
conscious activity involved, because there is no requirement
for consciousness-of-self to become established. Hunger is
entirely able to motivate consciousness toward procuring
food, without any elaborate mental maps of plant locations
requiring conscious representation. Similarly, the production
of stone tools would not require the process of what we now
call recognition. We noted in our earlier philosophic inquiries
that a sense of ratio, or proportionality seems to be a very
basic characteristic of human cognition; and this seems to
have its origin in non-conscious processes. If such a sense
of proportionality is derived from our visumotor processing
for scaling our grasp, then no more is needed to accurately
duplicate naturally formed stone flakes found at the base of
cliff faces than a very basic monkey see, monkey do ability
to proportionally transfer that natural process of formation
into one of artificial production.
Although few in number, the rare and revealing fossilized
finds of hominid skeletal remains are by far the most
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
revealing traces of human prehistory. However, such finds
are vastly outnumbered by the copious amount of stone tools
left behind by our early ancestors. Intermediary between the
consciousnesses which created them, and the world in which
they were used, stone tools tell us something about how the
earliest humans held themselves to the world in which they
lived.
The most amazing thing about early stone tools is how
slowly innovations were made to the most basic forms created
by hominids. The first stone tools appeared around 2.5
million years ago:
Page 36-37
Humans began producing sharp-edged
tools 2.5 million years ago by hitting two stones
together, thus beginning a trail of technological
activity that highlights human prehistory.
The earliest tools were small flakes, made by
striking one stone - usually a lava cobble - with
another. The flakes measured about an inch
long and were surprisingly sharp. Although
simple in appearance, they were put to a variety
of uses. We know this because Lawrence Keeley,
of the University of Illinois, and Nicholas Toth,
of Indiana University, microscopically analyzed
a dozen such flakes from a 1.5-million-year-
old campsite east of Lake Turkana, and looking
for signs of use. They found different kinds of
abrasions on the flakes - marks indicating that
some had been used to cut meat, some to cut
wood, and others to cut soft plant material like
grasses.
As a result of his experimental toolmaking,
Nicolas Toth suspects that the earliest toolmakers
did not have the specific shapes of the individual
tools in mind - a mental template, if you like -
when they were making them. More likely, the
various shapes were determined by the original
95
shape of the raw material. The Oldowan industry
-which was the only form of technology practiced
until about 1.4 million years ago - was essentially
opportunistic in nature.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
What is absolutely amazing about this timeframe is that
it takes approximately 10,000 years for a genetic mutation
to stabilize within a population; yet, the original form of
the stone tool remained in use, more or less unchanged,
for about one million years! Further, the form of the stone
tool being used was basically one which was most probably
discovered opportunistically, in the form of sharp chips and
flakes found at the base of cliffs, where stones from above
had fallen onto the rocks below. So while the use of stone
tools was innovative, their creation was anything but: in all
probability, it was simply a matter of copying what had been
seen to occur naturally.
The complete lack of invention or even innovation with
respect to stone tools strongly suggests that nothing we would
call imaginative thinking was in any way responsible for the
invention of stone tools. Indeed, their very use would seem
to be little more than a direct substitution for teeth and, more
particularly, nails: and one has to suspect that, indeed, sharp
stone flakes were held in the fingers precisely as a harder,
sharper version of fingernails.
The next stage in the development of stone tools occurred
about 1.4 million years ago; but again, what has been
presented as a major innovation does not appear to be so
upon closer examination. Called the Acheulean industry
after the site in northern France where examples were first
found, these tools were typified by what is often called a
hand axe:
Page 39
For the first time in human prehistory, there
is evidence that the toolmakers had a mental
template of what they want to produce - that they
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
were intentionally imposing a shape on the raw
material they used. The implement that suggests
this is the so-called hand axe, a teardrop-shaped
tool that required remarkable skill and patience
to make.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
But again, no major innovation to stone tool-making
techniques were introduced until over 1 million years had
passed: the next major technological innovation did not occur
until around 250,000 years ago.
To use two terms we have already examined: we would
have to say here that, although the use of stone tools was
clearly motivated, there is no evidence to indicate that the
conscious states which were so motivated to form of stone tool
usage were in any way being modified; because, neither were
the basic forms of the tools being produced.
As much as we all like to see ourselves in the histories of
our ancestors, the fact that such long periods of time passed
between identifiable innovations in stone working seems to
indicate fairly conclusively that we are in no way observing
what can be called imaginative thought: in other words, we
are not witnessing here any evidence which would indicate
that consciousness-of-self had become established as a
cognitive fact.
Even the innovations which did occur seem to be
attributable to little more than the physical parameters of
the materials involved, and the simple formation of conscious
states, as the articulation of sensory perception and motor
reflex activity. I seriously doubt that the invention of hand
axes involved much more than the repeated use of one stone
as a source of stone flakes; although this in itself does suggest
that, at that point in time, hominids were regularly spending
extended periods of time away from their original sources of
the stones they made flake tools from. This in turn suggests
that by 1.4 million years ago, hominids had indeed begun to
territorialize the open savanna; and lacking the opportunity
96
there to readily avail themselves of the kinds of stone from
which they were accustomed to striking their stone flake
tools, they began to carry source stones with them. Such
stones would be repeatedly used as a source for stone flakes,
rather than being discarded after a flake or two had been
removed; and so would eventually acquire sharp edges that
had in effect been worked.
What we can see here is the same kind of foresight which
would have been essential in finding safe climbing routes
upon cliff faces. Whereas at the base of a cliff, a rock
would be discarded after a few flakes had been removed as
attention focused upon whatever task at hand demanded the
flakes be made in the first place, out on the open savanna
the source stone which had been brought along for use in
making flakes would be kept for further use. If this source
stone eventually acquired a useful shape in itself from
being chipped so regularly, it might be saved in that shape
indefinitely.
The fact that the basic shape of the hand axe remained
basically unchanged for over a million years despite the
wide dispersal of the form and the technology suggests that
in fact a mental template was not involved; because mental
templates are subject to a much greater rate of innovation,
simply through copying errors due to lapses in memory. A
million years is an awfully long time to collectively hold
an idea in mind. And of course, we have seen no other
indications from that time of the kind of conscious imagery
which a mental template demands. It seems much more likely
that we are instead seeing the propagation of a physical
template; and that the spread of the hand axe needed
little more to enable it than the same kind of hominid see,
hominid do mentality which had originally copied naturally
formed stone flakes found at the base of cliffs. Once a
particularly useful shape had been created from a source
stone by hominids who had ventured out onto the savanna,
it would have been kept intact; and its shape could then have
been copied, more or less unchanged, by other hominids.
The copies would then have been recopied; and so on: with
the fact that the shape of the stone hand axe had an actual,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
practical use functionally moderating the final shape of any
copies made.
In effect, then, the kind of cognitive ability absolutely
necessary for establishing such a progression in tool
manufacture is little more than that seen in a primate that is
moving from branch to branch, and tree to tree - modified,
of course, by a certain sense of foresight, such as would be
acquired in consistently scaling cliffs; and a certain sense
of intersubjective agreement which defines a common
interpretive horizon standing in place of that common
experiential ground which the earth provides.
It seems that the changes we do see in early stone tool
technology can be traced back to a motivation toward
accessing food sources, rather than a modification of
conscious states. This is why such early technological
innovations do not produce lines of creative development
leading to further invention: in effect, we see the possibility of
such creative acts cast aside as attention invariably refocuses
upon the motivated aim of procuring food.
As R. Leakey notes:
Page 80
If we look back into history beyond the
origin of writing, some 6,000 thousands years
ago, we can still see evidence of the modern
human mind at work. Beginning about 10,000
years ago, nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers
throughout the world independently invented
various agricultural techniques. This, too, was
the consequence of cultural or technological, not
biological, evolution. Go back beyond that time
of social and economic transformation and you
find the paintings, engravings, and carvings
of Ice Age Europe and Africa, which evoke the
mental worlds of people like us. Go back beyond
this, however - beyond about 35,000 years ago
- and these beacons of the modern mind gutter
out. No longer can we see in the archaeological
97
record cogent evidence of the work of people
with mental capacities like our own.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
>>>
The defining moment when what would become
humankind reached toward our future came when the
first hominid sighted an intact highland forest atop a cliff,
and determined to reach that forest, gasped its first stony
handhold to begin pulling itself up the evolutionary ladder.
Here was the moment which defined all humanity to come:
a delay between hand and mouth, a deferral of putting food
in the mouth, wherein the hand was instead filled by a grip
on a stone. Here was a pattern which would be repeated,
again and again: food, dropped to the base of a cliff, is out of
reach and potentially out of mouth if an animal eats it before
the hominid who dropped it there can climb down; but a
rock dropped from the top of the cliff would scare the animal
away, and perhaps even kill it. Animal hides too tough for
hominid teeth and nails to penetrate can be easily sliced
with a sharp stone flake, such as chip from cliff base rocks
when stones from above fall. Marrow-filled bones too hard to
bite through can be shattered by a hand holding a rock. Any
dangerous animal within arms reach could, at last resort, be
killed by crushing its skull with a hand axe; any animal out
of arms reach might be hobbled by the toss of a hand axe,
(according to William H. Calvins assessment) and then run
down on foot.
Yet, for we modern humans, the essence of who we are for
ourselves remains a matter defined by our consciousness-
of-self. It is completely alien for us to even begin to think of
being conscious without being aware of our personal identity:
and indeed, anyone who has attempted the Golden Flower
meditation will probably say that it isnt all that easy to NOT
think within a context provided by aspects of our personality.
So immersed are we in our modern state of mind (and
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
indeed, where else would we be?) that it is often difficult
to leave the conceptual trappings of this day and age, and
attempt to reconstruct what conscious states would have been
like before consciousness-of-self became established. Still,
we know that our present experience of self-consciousness
probably only dates back 40,000 to 50,000 years; and
that any transitional states leading to our current way
of experiencing consciousness would probably not have
appeared much before 100,000 years ago. This leaves
somewhere between one and two million years during
which hominids were conscious without being conscious of
themselves; and perhaps another 5 million years beyond that
in which even the degree of consciousness experienced by our
distant ancestors is open to debate.
In fact, the entire question of just exactly how and when
consciousness as we now know it emerged is a matter which is
vigorously debated.
William H. Calvin has advanced a number of interesting
theories regarding the evolution of humans from hominids.
In his view of this process, a steady progression of the
increased cognitive abilities acquired by ancient hominids is
firmly grounded upon their motor reflex abilities:
Page 92
In phylogeny and its ontogeny, human
intelligence first solves movement problems and
only later graduates to ponder more abstract
ones. An artificial or extraterrestrial intelligence
freed of the necessity of finding food and
avoiding predators might not need to move - and
so might lack the what-happens-next orientation
of human intelligence. There may be other ways
in which high intelligence can be achieved, but
up-from-movement is the known paradigm.
William H. Calvin,
The Emergence of Intelligence;
Scientific American, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2006:
Special Edition, Becoming Human: Evolution and
98
the Rise of Intelligence.
W. Calvin also sees environmental conditions as being the
dominant force driving human evolution. As noted earlier,
such a theoretical approach does allow for the correlation
of adaptations related to specific environmental contexts,
if the context can be determined and the adaptations
are known. This approach, seen as a territorial aspect of
the geophilosophy developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari, also presents an opportunity for discerning
something of the cognitive processes which might be induced
through such acts of territorialization.
Calvin begins by noting the environmental shifts which
were occurring in world climate at the time when hominids
began to evolve toward becoming what we are today:
Page 86
Although Africa was cooling and drying as
upright posture was becoming established four
million to six million years ago, brain size did
not change much. The fourfold expansion of the
hominid brain did not start until the ice ages
began, 2.5 million years ago. Ice cores from
Greenland show frequent abrupt cooling episodes
superimposed on the more stately rhythms of ice
advance and retreat. Entire forests disappeared
within several decades because of drastic drops
in temperature and rainfall. The warm rains
returned even more abruptly a few centuries
later.
The evolution of anatomic adaptations in the
hominids could not have kept pace with these
abrupt climate changes, which would have
occurred within the lifetime of single individuals.
Still, these environmental fluctuations could
have promoted the incremental accumulation of
mental abilities that conferred greater behavioral
flexibility.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
William H. Calvin,
The Emergence of Intelligence.
This is the same environmental change referenced by R.
Leakey, but seen from a slightly different perspective. In fact,
the ice ages which W. Calvin mentions were caused by the
upthrust of the Himalayan mountains as the subcontinent
of India embedded itself into Asia. This in turn disrupted the
global flow of the Jet stream. The geological forces which R.
Leakey mentions in the context of Africa are related to the
tectonic collision between India and Asia.
Calvin hypothesizes that the evolution of hominids into
humans was facilitated by some basic anatomic change,
rather than a gradual adaptation; and he further suggests
what that change might have been:
Page 88
We humans certainly have a passion for
stringing things together: words into sentences,
notes into melodies, steps into dances, narratives
into games with rules of procedure. Might
stringing things together be a core facility of
the brain, one commonly useful to language,
storytelling, planning, games and ethics? If so,
natural selection for any of these talents might
augment their shared neural machinery, so that
an improved knack for syntactical sentences
would automatically expand planning abilities,
too. Such carryover is what Charles Darwin
called functional change in anatomic continuity,
distinguishing it from gradual adaptation.
Page 88
As improbable as the idea initially seems,
the brains planning of ballistic movements
may have once promoted language, music and
intelligence. Ballistic movements are extremely
rapid actions of the limbs that, once initiated,
cannot be modified. Striking a nail with a
hammer is an example.
99
William H. Calvin,
The Emergence of Intelligence.
Certainly, all of the elements which we examined in the
cliff ape scenario are here; but, brought together in a
different manner. This is what Deleuze and Guattari were
referring to when they stated that the internal consistency
of concepts is characterized by ordinate intensities: even
with the same differential components as we used above, we
find a much different concept of what early hominids were
emerging when the compositional order of those components
is changed.
Interestingly, the ordinal arrangement of components
which defines the endoconsistency of the concepts being
produced is determined by the exoconsistency of the concepts
relation to, and grounding in, an environmental background.
W. Calvin appears to have the open savanna in mind, and
so preferences throwing and similar movements in the
order that the differential components of his concepts are
arranged; whereas we began with a cliff face environment,
and preferenced the planning activities associated with safe
and successful climbing instead.
We also introduced the basic functionality of
protolanguages in our cliff ape scenario, along with the
creation of stone tools. So there is a general agreement on
what aspects of human behavior emerged in our hominid
ancestors: the questions which arise are generally related to
how this came about.
In that context, W. Calvin has some interesting insights
concerning a possible relationship between language and
what he calls ballistic arm movements:
Page 89
Although apes have elementary forms of the
ballistic arm movements at which humans are
expert - hammering, clubbing and throwing
- they tend to be set pieces lacking novelty.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
These movements are integral to toolmaking and
hunting, which in some settings were probably
important additions to hominids basic survival
strategies.
For sudden limb movements lasting less than
one eighth of a second, feedback corrections are
largely ineffective because reaction times are
too long.
Hammering requires scheduling the exact
sequence of activation for dozens of muscles.
The problem of throwing is further complicated
by the launch window - the range of times in
which a projectile can be released and still hit
the target.
If mouth movements reply on the same
core facility for sequencing that ballistic hand
movements do, then enhancements in language
skills might improve dexterity, and vice versa.
Accurate throwing abilities open up the possibility
of eating meat regularly, and being able to
survive winter in a temperate zone. Language
ability would initially be an incidental benefit -
a free lunch, as it were, because of the linkage.
Only later would language pay its own way.
Two major lines of evidence point to cortical
specialization for sequencing, and both suggest
that the lateral language area has a lot to do
with it.
These discoveries reveal that parts of the
language cortex, as people sometimes think
of it, are more multipurpose than had been
suspected. The language cortex is concerned
with novel sequences of various kinds: both
sensations and movements, for both the hands
and the mouth.
100
William H. Calvin,
The Emergence of Intelligence.
The first thing of note is the last part of the quote above;
here, we find that the language cortex processes both
sensations and movements: the language cortex articulates
the co-extension of sensory perception and motor reflex
activity for both the hands and the mouth. This immediately
suggests something to the effect, that: there should be specific
conscious states articulate with our hands and mouths, which
form in a context that is characteristically linguistic.
Although the scenario I would choose for the origin of our
upright stance leads me to group the component differences
in my concepts a bit differently, after all of that is said and
done we still end up with the same outcome: humans. Thus,
there are a number of important points which W. Calvin
raises that I would like to consider further.
Certainly, the idea that a fundamental anatomical change
was the basis for further evolutionary developments is a
valid one. As Bergson noted, any such change is differential:
it is characterized by a divergence between that which it
originates in, and that which is the result. Simply, the after
is by definition a different kind of thing than the before had
been. Any newly territorialized cliff face would have been
a viciously efficient selective mechanism, and those best
suited for climbing on sheer rack walls would have quickly
established the traits necessary for success in this within their
population.
Ballistic hand and arm movements would not have been
one of those traits; although, as Calvin notes, it would be a
requirement much, much later when colder climates were
territorialized.
I would also disagreed with W. Calvin regarding the
reaction time needed to modify ballistic movements of
the limbs. There is an inherently compassionate aspect to
Taijiquan as a martial art in that, even at its most ballistics
speeds, strikes are entirely ineffectual unless the practitioner
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
decides at the exact moment of contact to engage skeletal
locks in the bodys articulations and so project the force being
generated into their opponent. This is the difference between
a strike which startles an attacker into reconsidering their
aggressive actions, and a strike which neutralizes an attacker
by breaking their bones or rupturing their internal organ
cavities. My analysis on this point diverges from that of W.
Calvin precisely on the issue of the degree of involvement
required from consciousness-of-self; and I would certainly
point to a lowering of activation thresholds due to the
functionality of microtubules within neurons, as established
through their structural affinity with muscle fibers, as
providing a feedback mechanism of considerably greater
efficiency than consciousness-of-self can achieve with regard
to motor reflex activity.
Certainly, minute and instantaneous adjustments to the
hand muscles are needed in order to orient the force used in
flaking stone tools directionally into the stone, so that the
propagation of the force imparted removes a flake from the
stone as intended. In effect, bouncing the force of impact
back into the stone from the hand by tensing muscles at the
moment of impact directs the force into the stone so that a
flake can be accurately removed.
Again, the order in which such traits became established,
and the resulting causality of their occurrence seems to me
to be an issue here. The use of a very basic protolanguage
would almost certainly be a factor in successful cliff climbing;
so would a division of labor, and the kind of cooperation
that both activities demand. Ballistic movements would
not be a necessary component, because the very dynamics
of the cliff face would provide all too much in the way of
natural ballistic speeds. In such a scenario, it would seem
that ballistic hand and arm movements would come after the
other developments were established.
But of course, this is only partially true: as Bergson would
say, such ballistic movements were already virtually present
in hominids, and had been in earlier primates; for even in
treetops, the acceleration from gravity during a fall makes
101
grabbing branches at such speeds the only hope for survival
an unfortunate animal would have. However, this is a motor
reflex skill which is dedicated toward grabbing, not letting go;
and, it is not a reliable survival strategy on a sheer rock cliff
face. In climbing, the need to obtain and sustain a secure grip
far exceeds the utility of desperate grabs made after the fact
of loosing ones hold on the cliff face. We must suspect, then,
that a reactive preference for grabbing things quickly began
to shift toward retaining a grip upon the cliff face. In this,
the entire dynamic of ballistic hand movements is displaced;
and nowhere in any of this can a behavioral tendency toward
letting go of things at ballistic speeds be seen.
The question then becomes one of the nature of the
territorialization which occurs in actualizing that virtual trait
of moving limbs at ballistic speeds in the new environment
of the cliff face: a shift which seems to be between grabbing
things quickly, and letting go of things quickly; but which
also seems to go through a period where both were of equal
importance before a final weighting toward letting go of
things at ballistic speeds became an established behavior.
The precedence given to grasping things quickly over letting
go of things at ballistic speeds thus seems to have been
very well established in early hominid survival strategies.
Since those developmental advances in cognitive abilities
which might otherwise be attributed to ballistic hand and
arm movements can be seen to have become established
before the utility of throwing things at high speeds arose,
we must conclude that this skill developed from those earlier
attributes, rather than the other way around. In this respect,
we would instead be looking for the initial scenarios whereby
things were for some reason being let go of quickly.
The decisive turning point in this does seem to be
associated with stone tool use. This would have occurred
through employing sharp stone flakes for butchering cliff
base kills: motivated by hunger, a hominid would have
immediately discarded the sharp flakes used to access the
meat beneath the skin of the kill the moment that food was
made available. Again, the elements of grasping and letting
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
go are in place; it is just a question of their arrangement:
and in this context, things are being let go of quickly only
that food might be grasped the moment it could be obtained.
We must say that both trait of letting go and grasping
are in evidence here, in relation to obtaining food; but, only
as a means to that end: so, the relational context of these
occurrences were already established at the base of the cliff
face, long before ballistic hand and arm movements were
used to hurl projectiles. Even in the use of weapons thrown
at ballistic speeds, we still see the same pattern that had
been established at the cliff base: a stone tool being rapidly
discarded in order to obtain food more immediately.
In any case, the motivating factor remains consistent in that
it revolves, as W. Calvin notes, around a relationship between
the hand and the face (as typified by the eyes and the
mouth): precisely, that of the hand putting food in the mouth.
Consider: hunger occurs as a factor which motivates
consciousness; and for hominids, this specifically means a
determined articulation of motor reflex activity and sensory
perception - putting food in the mouth.
When there is no food handy, then this introduces a
delay; and it is within this delay that the hand seeks the
intermediaries which will most speedily deliver food to
the mouth. The mouth being empty, the eyes instead fill
themselves in surveying the surrounding territory. If the most
likely place to find food, in the experience of a previously
arboreal creature, is in the still intact highland forest at
the top of a cliff, then the hands will grasp rock handholds
instead of food as the quickest way toward obtaining food to
put in the mouth. Here, the hand begins to territorialize onto
rock instead of branches.
Much later, when the possibility of eating animal protein
occurs in conjunction with an awareness of sharp stone flakes
(both of which are concurrent with the ballistic dynamics of
gravity at the cliff face), the hand again territorializes upon
stone within the delay of obtaining access to the meat inside
a kill. Thus the shift, from grabbing branches at ballistic
102
speed during a fall, toward throwing a rock at ballistic
speed to make a kill, articulates necessarily within a delay
of putting food in the mouth with the hand: and in this
context, throwing a stone to make a kill is little different than
quickly letting go of a sharp stone flake immediately after
obtaining access to the flesh being butchered. In both cases,
these actions are just intermediary delays necessarily suffered
before food is obtained; and, the more quickly that food
ends up in the mouth, the better. As with the choice to climb
cliff faces in order to obtain food from highland forests, the
mechanisms whereby food is obtained are secondary to the
overall aim of putting that food into the mouth.
As concerns language, it would seem that the use of a
basic protolanguage would in fact precede the employment
of any ballistic movements utilized in obtaining food. If W.
Calvin is correct in establishing a neurological basis for the
linkage between sequencing actions, language, and ballistic
hand/arm movements, then the cliff ape scenario outlined
above would determine a different developmental sequence.
Protolinguistic functionality would already be in evidence;
however, here it would be put into service in the context of an
agreement defining an intersubjective project characterized
by a division of labor: climbing a cliff face to obtain food
which is then shared with those who helped to make that
dangerous practice considerably safer.
This is already a major step beyond the kind of external
references found with the protolinguistic functions that J.
Diamond notes of vervet monkeys: here, such protolinguistic
functionality would be put to use as a supplement to the
kind of sequenced movements required in finding a safe
climbing route on a cliff face. It would seem, then, that the
use of ballistic hand/arm movements for hunting would
have been a much later innovation. Indeed, it would appear
that the development of such hunting skills was instead
predetermined by those abilities which W. Calvin postulates
may have arisen from ballistic hand/arm movements. There
is little doubt that such a developmental connection exists:
it is just a matter of determining the order in which these
intensities of motor reflex activity are combined, that we
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
might produce a concept which explains how these attributes
came to be established within our evolutionary history, with
reference to territorial interactions occurring in the specific
environments in question.
These are considerations which are also immensely
important in any analysis of the origin of writing. The
concept of what writing is ultimately articulates upon the
way in which the exoconsistencies of territorial relation that
writing retains are co-extended with the endoconsistencies
of the intensive ordinates from which writing is composed.
Since writing is an event of consciousness, and the ordering
of its components is in effect a determination of what
consciousness is said to be; and in any final analysis,
this ends up saying what being human is, through an
assumption of what writing must be.
This is why we cannot lightly choose the components
which contribute to our concept of writing; nor can we be
cursory in our integrational ordering of those constituent
elements we need for our concept of writing. Care must be
taken here; because, we are already dealing with a situation
in which the form of writing we are considering has been
excluded from academic discourse: and as Derrida notes, this
exclusion is very much a denial of the way of being human
through which those who used this form of writing defined
themselves.
>>>
As concerns writing, it would appear that a relationship of
delay between the hand and face (eye/mouth) would in fact
be fundamental; and Jacques Derrida makes the point that
the very nature of being human is in fact determined in the
context of the relationship between the hand and the face
(mouth/eye):
Page 81
Science and the Name of Man
A systematic critique of the concepts used by
103
historians of writing can seriously blame the
rigidity or the insufficient differentiation of a
theoretical apparatus only if it first locates the
false evidence that guides the work. Evidence
all the more efficacious because it belongs to
the deepest, the oldest, and apparently the
most natural, the least historical layer of our
conceptuality, that which best eludes criticism,
and especially because it supports that criticism,
nourishes it, and informs it; our historical ground
itself.
Page 83
What seems to announce itself now is, on the
one hand, that grammatology must not be one of
the sciences of man and, on the other hand, that
it must not be just one regional science among
others.
It ought not to be one of the sciences of man,
because it asks first, as its characteristic question,
the question of the name of man. To free unity
from the concept of man is undoubtedly to
renounce the old notion of peoples said to be
without writing and without history. Andre
Leroi-Gourhan shows it well; to refuse the name
of man and the ability to write beyond its own
proper community, is one and the same gesture.
Actually, the peoples said to be without writing
lack only a certain type of writing.
Page 84
But it is not enough to denounce ethnocentrism
and to define anthropological unity by the
disposition of writing. Leroi-Gourhan no longer
describes the unity of man and the human
adventure thus by the simple possibility of
the graphie in general; rather as a stage or an
articulation in the history of life - of what I have
called differance - as the history of the gramme.
Instead of having recourse to the concepts that
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
eventually serve to distinguish man from other
living beings (instinct and intelligence, absence
or presence of speech, of society, of economy,
etc.), the notion of program is involved. It must
of course be understood in the cybernetic sense,
but cybernetics is itself intelligible only in terms
of a history of the possibilities of the trace as the
unity of a double movement of protention and
retention. This movement goes far beyond the
possibilities of the intentional consciousness. It
is an emergence that makes the gramme appear
as such (that is to say according to a new structure
of nonpresence) and undoubtedly makes possible
the emergence of the systems of writing in the
narrow sense. Since genetic inscription and
the short programmatic chains regulating the
behavior of the amoeba or the annelid up to the
passage beyond alphabetic writing to the orders
of the logos and of a certain homo sapiens,
the possibility of the gramme structures the
movement of its history according to rigorously
original levels, types, and rhythms. But one
cannot think them without the most general
concept of the gramme. That is irreducible and
impregnable. If the expression ventured by
Leroi-Gourhan is accepted, one could speak of
a liberation of memory, of an exteriorization
always already begun but always larger than
the trace which, beginning from the elementary
programs and so-called instinctive behavior
up to the constitution of electronic card-indexes
and reading machines, enlarges differance and
the possibility of putting it in reserve: it at once
and in the same movement constitutes and
effaces so-called conscious subjectivity, its logos,
and its theological attributes.
The history of writing is erected on the base
of the history of the gramme as an adventure of
relationships between the face and the hand.
104
Jacques Derrida: Of Grammatology.
All of which might seem somewhat obtuse on Derridas
part; but the point he is making is quite simple. What is in
question here with regard to language and to writing is not
something which can be determined as having formed of
signification, such as we are use to seeing occur in the context
of consciousness-of-self: rather, the essential nature of the
matters we are considering here (not the least of which is
a determination of how being human is defined) can be
entirely circumscribed by the concept of functionality.
As Felix Guattari notes:
Page 148
For Hjelmslev, a substance is semiotically
formed when form is projected onto matter or
sens [purport], just as an open net casts its
shadow down on an undivided surface. It is
well known that the signifying chains put into
play, at the level of the substance of expression,
finished batteries of signs rendered discrete
and digitalized whose formal compositions are
linked to the formalization of their signified
contents. It seems to me that linguists have too
hastily equated Hjelmslevs distinction between
expression and content with that of Saussures
between signifier and signified. Indeed, the
separation between non-semiotically formed
matter and semiotically formed substance,
insofar as it is established independently of the
relations of expression and content, opens the
way to the study of semiotics independent of
signifying semiologies, that is to say, semiotics
which, to be precise, would not be based on the
bipolarity of signifier-signified.
Page 149-150
Lets once again summarize the classification
that we have proposed elsewhere on this subject.
We will distinguish:
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
1) A-semiotic encodings: For example: genetic
encoding or any type of so-called natural
encoding which functions independently of
the constitution of a semiotic substance. These
modes of encoding formalize the field of material
intensities without recourse to an autonomous
and translatable ecriture {code of inscription}.
Do not succumb to the semiotic illusion of
projecting an ecriture onto the natural field.
There is no genetic handwriting.
2) Signifying semiologies: These are based
upon sign systems, on semiotically formed
substances which enter into relations of
formalization on the double plane of content
and expression. One can distinguish two types
of signifying semiologies: symbolic semiologies
and the semiologies of signification.
a) Symbolic semiologies: These put into
play various types of substances. For example,
in archaic societies: a gestural semiotics, a
semiotics of sign language, a postural semiotics,
a semiotics of inscriptions on the body, a ritual
semiotics, etc. The constitution of the world
of childhood or the world of madness equally
put into play several decentered semiotic circles
which are never completely translatable into
any system of universal signification. Semiotic
substance therefore retains a certain autonomous
territoriality which will correspond to a certain
type of specific jouissance {A joy that grasps ones
being; specifically used to bring out the sense of
grasping in relation to territoriality}.
b) Semiologies of signification. By contrast,
all their substances of expression (sonorous,
visual, etc.) are centered on a single signifying
substance. This is the dictatorship of the
signifier. The referential substance can be
105
understood as arche-ecriture, but not in the
Derridean way: it is not a matter of an ecriture
which would originate all the semiotic
organizations, but of the sudden, historically
dated appearance of writing machines, which is
to say of a fundamental instrument of the great
despotic empires.
Felix Guattari, The Place of the Signifier
in the Institution; translated by Gary Genosko, in
The Guattari Reader; edited by Gary Genosko.
Copyright 1996 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Oxford UK.
In the final analysis, language in general and writing in
particular have a much wider range of application than that
which can be determined exclusively by phonetically based
systems of signification. Beyond the range of determinability
defined by signification through the ideal of translation, one
finds instead simply that linguistic and grammatological
functionality is in effect. The nature of a genetic code is found
precisely in the functions which it undertakes: it is exactly the
molecular functions which it enables, and nothing about this
is in any sense of the word written (although the advent of
gene sequencing may have finally instilled such a sense into
some aspects of genetic encoding). Similarly, there are a wide
range of ways in which language functions which are not
tied to signification, to the word-object pairings of signifier-
signified; and such systemizations can be broadly defined as
anasemantic in nature.
Obviously, the final determination for the utility of any
linguistic function is whether or not it works. If any manner
of linguistic systemization is found to be in use, then, it can
be assumed that it has some definable form of functionality.
Yet, until all too recently, it has been an academic norm to
see any of such functionalities which fall outside the general
systemization of signification as somehow deficient, and thus
demonstrably inferior to phonetic forms of writing.
This is the point which Derrida and Guattari both make
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 07.0) The Archaeological Record
in their own way: that there has in the past been a definite
tendency within disciplines such as anthropology to define
being human in terms of linguistic capabilities which are
derived from one specific form of language: phonetic speech
which is typified by signification.
I think it obvious, though, that this kind of
predetermination would render our present inquiry into the
origin of writing a completely futile waste of time. We cannot
say how writing originated until we have a clear idea of
where humans began to be conscious in a way which would
have enabled writing to take place. Even if we manage to
find a point where this seems to have become the case, we
will still have to determine how such writing took form, if
we are to have any chance of finding where it first occurs.
To this end, we will have to determine how writing functions
with respect to the articulations of which consciousness is
composed; otherwise, we wont even know it if we bump our
noses up against it.
In light of such considerations, we will continue upon our
present course of inquiry, which has directed our attention
toward relationships which form between the hand and the
face (as typified by the mouth and the eyes). Ultimately, we
are remaining here within the context of those functions
which the hand assumes in obtaining food to put within
the mouth; and similarly, we will establish nothing that
essentially defines language or writing if we cannot discern
the basic functionalities which determine these activities
within that context. It is a context in which an ever increasing
delay correlates to a gradually expanding range of conscious
states; so if we can assume that at some point the reach of
consciousness states eventually grasps abilities which enable
the formation of writing to take place, then maintaining this
course of inquiry should eventually lead us to where writing
comes into being.
Certainly, Derridas pivotal work Of Grammatology seems
to be a valuable resource for this inquiry. I consider this text
to be a direct result of Derridas meticulously close reading
of Edmund Husserls The Origin of Geometry. In response
106
to that reading, one can see quite clearly Derridas intention
to define the nature of being human in terms of writing, a
counter-position to Husserls contention that reason and logic
define what being human is.
For the moment, though, our inquiry into the origin of our
upright stature hasnt even brought us close to our stated goal
of investigating the origin of writing through an examination
of being human as being conscious because, it is all too
obvious that the kind of consciousness which we presently
experience as humans was not shared by our hominid
ancestors.
It has, however, given us some concrete reference points
concerning the evolution of some very basic traits which
define our ancestral lineage; and indicated that the
transition between ancestral hominid and modern human
was a surprisingly recent one, given the extreme length of
time that hominids had an upright stature.
Given that our examination of the possible origin of
an upright stature in early hominids has been somewhat
productive, yielding at least a few prerequisites for the
invention of writing; and given that we are attempting to
define writing through an examination of being human
as being conscious: it stands to reason that determining
the difference between hominid consciousness and human
consciousness would take us one step closer to our goal here
of determining the origin of writing.
With this in mind, lets have a much closer look at the
consciousness of hominids.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 107

08.0) Considering Paradigmatic glaciers tens of millennia ago.

Templates One other odd, comparable example has turned up since;

but, in a highly weathered state. These two examples are
Personally, as someone who has a long standing interest in
pristine.
the philosophy of language; a background in photography;
and who has worked with First Nations organizations for
One of these two examples was not so very different from
some time, I have found my encounter with the traditional
what I had been regularly looking at that I wouldnt recognize
form of image writing used by the First Nations of North
the hands of others had shaped it. In addition, it seemed to
America an utterly intriguing experience.
be coated with red ocher, or dried blood, or a mixture of the
two; so I decided to photograph it, in case something might
Once I realized what I had happened upon, I began to
be caught on film which my eye was unable to discern. Out of
continuously scan my surroundings for more examples of this
curiosity, I decided to photographic it in both diffuse sunlight
fascinating form of writing. Over a year passed between my
and by firelight.
finding the first example I had noticed, and the second; but
thereafter, I soon realized such examples simply abounded,
As I had hoped, the color temperature of the firelight was
and were to be found within a short distance of anywhere
low enough to accentuate features more toward the red
one might look.
wavelengths of light; and one such photograph revealed the
image of a horse etched with breathtaking precision.
I do have a few personal favorites among those stones
I have picked from amidst disturbed sites of a completely
randomized provenance; and among these are just two
unweathered examples that literally dropped to my feet as
I brushed against the overhanging slope of a cliff face on
Canadas Northwest Coast.

Having pick up so many stones previously, I decided not

to just turn my back and leave these two lying where they
had fallen; since I was but a stones throw from the ocean
and, inevitably they would have disappeared forever within
a not too distant future. And although these two stones
looked nothing like the examples of image writing I had been
collecting, they did nonetheless appear anomalous enough
that I simply didnt feel comfortable with walking away from
them. They were my responsibility now.

The site itself was rather odd, too: an small, arched

structure sat isolated just above the oceans edge, several
meters from the cliff face. In retrospect, I would not be
Nothing about that other stone, from the same location,
surprised to find that the cliff face had once been the back
looked at all like anything which a person had fashioned;
wall of a cave, the rest of which had been ground away by
with the exception of one curious protuberance which seemed
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 108

overly regular in its angularity. However, having lived

decades before even realizing I was surrounded by examples
of the First Nations image writing, I knew the fact that I
couldnt see anything of interest did not mean that there was
nothing there worth seeing. Since both stones appeared to
be covered with a coating of the same reddish substance, I
decided to photograph this second example when I had once
again acquired suitable photographic equipment.

When I was finally in a position to replace the rather

marginal camera I had been using, this stone was one of
the very first that I decided to photograph. I had by then
begun to note images upon this particular example; but, they
were very different in form from the interconnected image
composites I had to that point been documenting.

It wasnt until I decided to have a few 8X10 enlargements

printed that I noticed, quite unexpectedly, the presence of
hominid images upon this particular stone.

Now, years later, having photographed this artifact

time and again, I have been compelled toward a rather
controversial conclusion: there are so many images of
hominids on this stone, and so few of humans, that in all
probability the images found on this stone were produced by
hominids... which would of course explain why it has never
appeared to me to be something which human hands had
fashioned, although it has always seemed to be somehow
anomalous.

>>>
Luckily, I am in a position to share with you a few of the
images of hominids Ive noted upon what I call The Hominid
Stone. These images are not what I will be considering for
the most part here: instead I will be focusing my attention
upon the curious protuberance I noticed when I first
picked up this stone; but as someone once famously said,
extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proofs, so I
dont feel that anyone will feel too put off if I indulge in a bit
of photography here. Besides, where else can you expect to
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 109

see accurate images of hominids, as produced by hominids,

from living examples of hominids?

To produce these photographs, I am now using:

- a Nikon D700 full frame dSLR camera, which is just a

wonderful piece of imaging equipment that achieves a degree
of photographic quality I found to be unobtainable using
35mm film equipment;

- an MK Digital Direct Photo eBox Plus, which allows me to

use lighting from a variety of consistent color temperature
sources, distances, and directions;

- two Olympus Zuiko bellows mount macro lenses: an

80mm f/4 1:1 originally designed for medical imaging; and
a 38mm f/2.8 lens (which is an amazing piece of glass),
both of which are mounted on an Olympus Auto Bellows.
This lens assemblage is connected to the Nikon D700 using
a homemade adaptor (I had a local jeweler assist me in
constructing this): no such adaptors are commercially
available, because the lens mount Nikon uses sets their
lenses farther from the focal plane of their cameras than the
distance at which Olympus lenses sit on theirs; but of course
that is of no consequence for bellows mount macro lenses,
since they cant focus to infinity anyway. I do have some
very nice Nikon digital lenses with macro capabilities; but
Olympus started out making microscopes in the 1920s and
the bellows mount macro lenses for their 35mm film cameras
are absolutely outstanding.

- a nice little HP Pavilion tx2110 tablet computer to tether

the Nikon D700 to, so that I can control it using Nikons
at minimum aperture, and correct for that using the Fovea
Camera Control Pro 2 software.
Pro 4 filter for interactive deconvolution, in Photoshop CS 4
Extended on my desktop computer system.
I currently photograph these artifacts using a variety of
lighting configurations. I shoot multiple image sequences at
All images are shot in RAW format using Adobe RGB color
bracketed exposures, so that I can generate High Dynamic
space, and converted into TIFF in Nikons Capture NX2
Range images using FDR Tools Advanced 2.3.2; and I shoot at
software before further processing; an X-RITE Color Checker
both maximum and minimum aperture settings so that I can
Passport and Color Munki Photo calibration device are used
calculate the point spread function for the lens diffraction
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 110

to color manage my workflow and workspaces.

And sometimes, I just take some photographs.

>>>
As you can see, the detail which has been retained upon
this artifact is exquisite; a comparable example, which
had been exposed to the elements, is in contrast severely
weathered. Interestingly, the weathered example was found
thousands of miles away, to the east of the Great Lakes in
the upper St. Lawrence River region. However, that artifact
was found in a randomized setting, as were all of the other
examples of image writing I have collected (often from
decorative applications of loose stone dressing flower beds,
pathways, or roadways).

A few of the very best examples of image writing I have

collected appeared to have been left for me to find, in areas
that I was at one time or another frequenting, by members of
the First Nations. Thus I consider all of these artifacts to be on
loan to me for the purpose of my research project; and I have
been in contact with members of the First Nations concerning
my ongoing research from the beginning of this projects
inception in 1991.

>>>
As I mentioned, there are a few images of humans on The
Hominid Stone; and the most striking of these is one found
in what appears to have been the last section of this stone
modified with images. This is the only section which does
not exhibit the characteristic red ocher coating which covers
the rest of the stone (with the exception of indented areas,
where it is very noticeable); and indeed it would appear that which these images were recorded does not present the kind
this small section was exposed through a clean break of the of relational articulations which would constitute a form
stones previous surface, before these last few images were of writing; so technically, this artifact is still prehistorical.
worked onto the stone. This section is, then, the last visual However, that is a subject for philosophic debate; and I am
entry into the recorded image history contained upon this after all a human so, how can I justify any claim to know
stone. what constitutes historicity for hominids? I didnt even
recognize this stone as an artifact at first and, presumably,
I use the term history loosely here, because the form in a hominid would have; so quite a bit of careful consideration
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 111

is due here, least any rash pronouncements regarding the

historical records of other species prove to be greatly in error.

One thing I am certain of, though, is that it is possible to

correlate this last image of what was perhaps a first contact
with humans, with the other artifact found alongside it. The
image of a human shown here is clearly depicted as wearing
a hat, hood, or headdress which had been made from
the head and skin of a North American lion. Other images
immediately adjacent to that of this human also show such
a big cat; so the association was clear to the person who
produced these images. And in this, of course, one cant
help but sense a certain historical depth: not only in the
obvious age of such images, as established by the estimated
extinction date for North American lions; but also in the
deep history of our species, going back to the first upright
hominids who ventured out onto the African savanna and so
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
began to encounter lions with a certain degree of regularity.
It has been speculated that these early hominids were
scavengers, living off of the abandoned kills of such large
predators. I do not doubt that early hominids scanned the
savanna for such kills from the safety of their high cliffs;
or that, in venturing onto the savanna, more advanced
hominids followed prides of lions hoping to scavenge such
kills. It would seem that humans, and perhaps even groups
of earlier hominids, eventually took to emulating such packs
of hunting felines: indeed, the use of a lion motif can be
traced well into later stages of the image writing used by the
First Nations of North America. Whether or not advanced
hominids followed prides of hunting lions all the way to
North America is, however, again a matter subject to debate.
What can be clearly established, though, is that the other
artifact (which I will refer to as The Firelight Horse Stone),
112
found in association with The Hominid Stone, was made
by humans; and that these humans definitely thought of
themselves as Lion People.
This is readily apparent from the beautifully rendered
cameo of a young child; and from the etched image of a
young lion, happily asleep, found just above this young
childs image.
This kind of thematic association is found quite often
on The Firelight Horse Stone; but is almost entirely lacking
on The Hominid Stone. For instance, in addition to the
exquisitely etched firelight horse on the opposite side of this
stone, there is also a young foal shown; and the image of
the foal appears closely associated with that of an erupting
volcano. The young Lion Child is also shown in association
with a volcano, but one which is simply smoldering: so there
may actually be some temporal continuity depicted between
the birth of this child and a later stage in their life.
Consistently, the images of The Hominid Stone appear to
have been created through simple series; whereas the images
of the contemporary Firelight Horse Stone exhibit distinct
grouping patterns. It is the thematic nature of such grouping
patterns which will come to define the structure of the image
writing used by the First Nations.
It would seem that a fundamental difference between the
cognitive processes of hominids and humans can be defined
by the contrast between patterns in series and patterns in
groups: between, in effect, the retention and protention of
a now; and the event of a concept which occurs between a
before and an after.
A further comparative element shows that The Hominid
Stone and The Firelight Horse Stone were probably
contemporaneous: both depict the eruption of a volcano, and
seemingly from a similar perspective. There were of course
many active volcanoes on the Northwest Coast in the time
of the glaciers; but since both stones were found at the same
island location, with a clear line-of-sight to Mount Baker, it
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 113

would seem likely that this is the landmark being depicted.

One other interesting aspect of The Firelight Horse Stone

is that it presents a very distinctive landscape prominently
displayed across the better part its front: that of such
canyons and mesas as typify the American Southwest. This
strongly suggests that at least some of the first humans
moving into the Pacific Northwest at the end of the glacial
age were arriving from the south: humans were already in
North America (and were probably also already established
in ice-free refugia along the Northwest Coast) when the
glaciers began receding.

In fact, if the location where these artifacts were found

had been a cave site before the glaciers advanced and,
had subsequently been reduced to a mere rock wall by the
abrasive actions of the glaciers, then at least some humans
arrived in the Pacific Northwest before the glaciers advanced;
and they arrived there from the canyons and mesas of the
Southwest. This apparent desert landscape, however, is not
an image which is particularly photographable: it remains
the kind of image which pops into ones mind only if
the viewing conditions are just right; so it is clearly being
articulated within consciousness through non-conscious
processes.

Hominids had certainly made their way to North America

before the glaciers began to take hold: I see no reason to
assume that humans could not have done so as well.

>>>
As mentioned earlier, the most interesting aspect of The
Hominid Stone is not the exceedingly numerous depictions of
hominids that it presents; rather, it is the curious protrusion
which first caught my eye. This singular projection is entirely
anomalous to the surface of the stone, in that it displays an
angular regularity which is not in evidence elsewhere on this
object. A closer examination reveals a very carefully crafted
shape, which is gently sloped up to an abrupt and angular
edge that has been shaped in a very specific way.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 114

One need not be a genius, or a hominid, to realize that this

shape was created for a distinct function: it is designed to
slide into a specific place, and to lock into that position.

This is the design template for a sliding tongue which locks,

under tension, into a designated notch. This is hominid
technology.

Clearly, the mechanical dynamics of this shape determine

that specific use. Yet just as obviously, this particular stone
was never put to such a use: it shows no abrasion or wear
which would be consistent with such a use; and as a discrete
object, there is no clear indication of even how such a stone
could be functionally employed in that manner.

It seems fairly obvious that, instead, branches and other

such pieces of wood were being used to create tensioned
structures. And of course the whole purpose in building any
such tensioned structure using this kind of sliding/locking
notch is to enable these structures to be erected, then, taken
down and transported before being erected again; or put
together, used as a form of marine transportation, and then
taken apart again.

The logical conclusion which immediately suggests itself is

that this stone is a template through which the knowledge of
such sliding/locking notch technology was maintained.

>>>
Such a view is entirely consistent with the speculative
observations we entertained earlier, in seeking to reconstruct
how hominids came to exhibit an upright stature. There, we
found reason to suspect that the conscious states of early
hominids were such that they simply copied the nature of
objects they encountered, through a proportionality derived
from the non-conscious processes responsible for scaling the
grasping configurations of their hands. Naturally occurring
stone flakes found at the base of cliffs became the template
for the first tools. Stones carried out onto the savanna as a
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 115

source for stone flake tools became the first hand axes, which
were copied in a form that became so widespread and yet
remained so identifiably consistent that one almost has to
posit a universal commonality of hominid see, hominid do
as defining the intersubjective nature of their social reality.

Using our previously assembled conceptual tools, we have

here the opportunity to actually examine something of those
conscious states which characterized the hominid mind.
Perhaps this will also present us with the opportunity to gain
some insight into how hominid and human minds differed;
and thus how, in diverging from the hominid norm, we
humans evolved the capacity to create such a species-specific
construct as writing.

>>>
As noted earlier, the developmental dynamic which leads
to this kind of artifact seems to be fairly straightforward. The
initial stage occurs when the hands of hominids, previously
used primarily in climbing through trees, temporarily
deterritorialize from branches and reterritorialize onto stone
as hominids find themselves forced into scaling rock walls
to reach the remaining intact highland forests at the top of
cliff faces. This process of reterritorialization had significant
effects upon those hominids forced into this course of action:
upright stature results; and with it, a certain space of delay
is introduced in obtaining food precisely where the hand
shapes itself to stone instead of immediately grasping food.

At this point of delay, we know that Dorsal Stream

visumotor processes are in effect; and that these non-
conscious processes are responsible for the proportional
scaling of the hands grasping ability. Thus at this point of
delay, we see proportionality or a sense of ratio coming into
play; and such delay is, of course, exactly where anything
we call thinking occurs: because this is the articulation of
motor reflex activity and perception, this is the mechanism
of energy transference between these two co-extended
components of consciousness, and this delay is in fact
the rudimentary establishment of a stable and extended
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
conscious state which is finally becoming characterized by an
identifiable consistency and persistence of cognitive activity.
So there is a case to be made for rationality being integral
to the earliest formation of persistent conscious states; and
this is established with reference to our earliest hominid
ancestors interactions with stone. From this point on, we
can see that the basic characteristics of such interactions
remain remarkably stable; and that the use of tools is
entirely contingent upon very basic ratios of proportionate
transference, whereby observed natural processes are simply
copied and employed directly as productive techniques.
Observing a falling stone breaking a sharp flake from a
rock that it landed on motivated the act of chipping such
flakes free as needed. Carrying source stones for such flakes
onto the savanna resulted in repeatedly chipped stones being
produced, the shapes of which proved useful in their own
right. Such shapes were in turn copied, and recopied; which
established these shapes as paradigmatic forms.
Such stones were then carried about for the utility of their
shape, rather than as a source of small flakes. Consistent
with this, we find The Hominid Stone being carried around
and preserved as a more advanced form of paradigmatic
template; or in the end, hidden away safely for what came
very close to being forever.
>>>
It is very tempting to see in such a stone the reflection of
our own highly developed consciousness-of-self; yet this isnt
necessarily the case. To be entirely truthful, we must agree
with Bergson that such hominids did the best they could with
the consciousness that they had; but that we still do not see
here any indication that the thought processes of hominids
had articulated into consciousness-of-self.
This is particularly evident in the images these hominids
seem to have produced of their contemporaries. There are a
large number of such images; but they do not move beyond
what could be achieved through a simple, proportional
116
transference of features: basically, these images could have
been very easily copied directly from immediate perception,
onto stone. Such an occurrence would be little different
than copying a way to make stone flakes directly from the
experience of seeing a falling stone strike another; or of
copying the paradigmatic template form of a stone hand axe
to produce another. This basic mechanism of copying seems
to have gone on for millions of years without innovation; and
this is to say, however highly motivated such productive acts
were, they do not appear to have been subject to the kinds of
modification which characterizes consciousness-of-self:
Page 116
But thought, although we could express
ourselves about it without keeping account of
the images in which it reveals itself, is never
directly accessible to us, if we have once taken
the imaging attitude in forming it. We will
always go from image to image. Comprehension
is a movement which is never ending, it is the
reaction of the mind to an image by another
image, to this one by another image and so on,
in principle to infinity. To substitute for this
infinite regression the simple intuition of a naked
thought requires a radical change of attitude, a
veritable revolution, which is to say passing from
the unreflective plane to the reflective plane. On
this plane, in fact, thought is given as thought
at the same time as it appears; so it is entirely
transparent for itself. But one can never find
any passageway that allows a progressive climb
from unreflective to reflective thought, which is
to say from the idea as image to the idea as idea.
The simple act of intellection on the reflective
plane has as a correlate the infinite idea of
approximations by symbols on the unreflective
plane. As a result of this equivalence, the two
processes, on the two planes, are equivalents for
the progress of knowledge (connaissance).
It is totally otherwise when the schema absorbs
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
the thought and is presented as being itself the
essence or the relation that is to be determined.
Unreflective thought is a possession. To think an
essence or a relation on this plane is to produce
them in flesh and blood, to constitute them
in their living reality (and of course under the
category of absence that I have defined in the
first chapter of Part I) and it is at the same time
to see them, to possess them. But at the same
time it is to constitute them in a certain form and
to consider this form as exactly expressing their
nature, as being their nature.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
We must remember that Sartre was proceeding in his
investigation within a phenomenological context: he
was concerned with describing the conditions in which
consciousness is aware of itself through its constructs. By
inquiring into the conscious states of hominids, however, we
cannot assume that consciousness-of-self will be encountered:
and indeed it appears that the lower limit that Sartre
describes for conscious thought roughly corresponds to the
upper threshold of what can be demonstrated for hominids.
We see that the same forms were repeated to infinity (or at
least, for a million years or more); we see that what we would
like to consider as an idea is in fact a physical possession,
not a thought: where we would like to see knowledge leading
toward thought, there we can find only experience grasping
at the physical possession of a form.
In both the unchanging production by hominids of the
same stone tools, and in the amazingly accurate proliferation
of images which were produced upon The Hominid Stone,
there doesnt seem to be any outstanding evidence of
cognitive processes which reach beyond a combination of the
foresight and anticipation required in scaling cliff faces, and
the proportional scaling of the hands grasp. After factoring
in the commonality of a shared understanding which
appears to have attended the initial instances of a postulated
hominid division-of-labour, there doesnt seem to be any
117
particularly obvious behaviour attributable to thinking that
isnt accounted for.
As a philosopher, though, I must confess that I find all of
this absolutely fascinating: here is thought, compelled toward
knowledge, pushed as far as it can go in an unreflective state:
truly, here we have evidence of hominids compelled to think
of their relation to the earth upon which they walked; but,
not quite achieving self-reflective thought, not becoming
demonstrably aware of ideas as being something distinctly
of thought. What Sartre here outlines as our own path of
least resistance or our minimal ability in thinking seems
to be approximately the best that hominids were capable of
producing for themselves.
This, then, would be precisely where our respective forms of
consciousness are divergent; and it is a divergence of a hairs
breadth that has separated us from hominids by a world of
difference.
Still, it is a difference which is not so far removed from us
that we shouldnt be able to grasp it with a bit of effort; and
with this in mind, let us consider further the curious case
of The Hominid Stone, and see if we can discern something
more of what this artifact would have been for the hominids
who produced it.
>>>
It was proposed earlier that the stone hand axes of
ancient hominids were produced by way of paradigmatic
forms, which had been used as physical examples during
the production of more hand axes. This is in contrast to
another possibility, that early hominids were producing such
identically formed tools using mental templates. We might
ask, then, what is a paradigmatic form, used as a template?
What are the characteristics of this?
In his text The Signature of All Things: On Method,
Giorgio Agamben devotes the entire first section to the in-
depth analysis of What Is A Paradigm?; and his conclusions,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
although directed in part toward the works of Michel
Foucault, are certainly applicable to our current inquiry:
Page 19
That is to say, while induction proceeds from
the particular to the universal and deduction
from the universal to the particular, the paradigm
is defined by a third and paradoxical type of
movement, which goes from the particular to the
particular. The example constitutes a peculiar
form of knowledge that does not proceed by
articulating together the universal and the
particular, but seems to dwell on the plane of the
latter.
The epistemological status of the paradigm
becomes clear only if we understand - making
Aristotles thesis more radical - that it calls into
question the dichotomous opposition between
the particular and the universal which we are
use to seeing as inseparable from procedures
of knowing, and presents instead a singularity
irreducible to any of the dichotomys two
terms.
Giorgio Agamben, What Is A Paradigm?; in
The Signature of All Things: On Method.
Translated by Luca DIsanto and Kevin Attell
Copyright 2009 by Urzone Inc.
Published by Zone Books, Brooklyn, NY USA.
Two things become immediately apparent here: the use
of paradigms corresponds exactly with the kinds of image
chains which Sartre describes as being characteristic of
the progression of knowledge on an unreflective plane;
and, in that we are not dealing here with an articulation
of the universal and the particular, we may avail ourselves
of Bergsons insights regarding the nature of multiplicities
(which he developed, after all, with due consideration given
toward, and without forcing recourse to, concepts such as
the One and the Many). When dealing with paradigmatic
118
forms, we can expect to find ourselves thinking in terms of
singularities, and of events as differences-in-kind.
From a linguistic point of view, it should be noted that we
are diverging from the kind of universalistic approaches
employed by scholars such as Chomsky or Pinker; and we
do not yet seem even close to approaching the origin of
writing in this analysis. However, it appears we already have
grounds to suspect that the shape our conclusions might take
will be demonstrably different from theirs: because we are
starting to see that a major role in the origin of writing could
well be played by external, material considerations rather
than simply by some underlying principle of neurological
consistency.
Which is not to say that such consistencies in neural
function do not define writing, or any other human
action: because that is necessarily so. But as Deleuze and
Guattari point out, thinking is compelled by the experience
of a surrounding earth; and writing will necessarily
be determined through relationships forming of such
encounters. In the end, whatever can be said to exist will
have been determined by our species ongoing engagement
with this earth we find ourselves upon; and it would seem
nonsensical to suggest that whatever we make of this has not
being conditioned by the fact of our physical existence.
Indeed, if there are any underlying consistencies in all of
this, they are simply those which define the basic physical
laws governing the thermodynamics of energy transfer: that
a certain amount of energy is radiated from our sun; that the
position of this earth relative to our sun determines the range
of ambient temperatures at which chemical reactions occur
around and within us; that a portion of the suns radiant
energy is captured by terrestrial plants and converted into
potentials of chemical energy; that animals avail themselves
of such energy by ingesting plants or other animals, and
digesting the organic material so obtained; that the chemical
energy obtained in this way dissipates within the organisms
which have ingested it, and in doing so animates their
various molecular processes. Everything that we experience,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
produce, think, imagine, and do necessarily unfolds within
this energy gradient which dissipates from greater to lesser
concentrations; and nothing that we are, or that is around
us, occurs outside of this gradated dynamic. So if we find
any such principles of universality in the course of any form
of linguistic analysis, we would be well advised to consider
the possibility that we are simply encountering an aspect
of something which is necessarily in evidence everywhere;
and to then remember that we will accomplish nothing if we
cannot establish the specifics of the situations which we are
attempting to describe and explain.
Georges Bataille went so far as to propose that all cultural
artifacts are but a way of expending energy which exceeds
the immediate needs of societies:
Page 21
I will begin with a basic fact: The living
organism, in a situation determined by the play
of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily
receives more energy than is necessary for
maintaining life; this excess energy (wealth)
can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an
organism); if the system can no longer grow, or if
the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its
growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit;
it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or
catastrophically.
Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, Volume I.
Translated by Robert Hurley
Copyright 1989 by Urzone Inc.
Published by Zone Books New York, NY
Originally published as La Part Maudite,
Copyright 1967 by Les Editions de Minuit.
This point of view certainly helps to explain what is
happening in that ever-increasing delay between hand and
mouth, where stones were first territorialized upon by grip
and then grasp; and we can see the gradual establishment
of conscious states in this, in that these states depend upon
119
those articulations which characterize energy transferences
within our neural substrates. Since such advances in the
earliest of technologies were demonstrably motivated
by strategies for obtaining an ever increasing supply of
higher quality food, a corresponding complexity in social
organization and cultural expression would naturally be the
expected result.
But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we
should consider the actual events determining the use of
paradigmatic forms in the production of stone tools.
>>>
To begin, we can say that consciousness must have
articulated the productive relationships that formed between
paradigmatic templates and the raw source stones used for
producing tools. The tools didnt shape themselves (at least,
not after simple found stone flakes had been abandoned in
favor of produced stone flakes) and they were not produced
at random, because they have very consistent, determinate
shapes which do not exhibit any randomly sweeping
variations.
So it makes sense to say that consciousness provided the
connectivity through which a paradigmatic form was copied
in the production of a new tool. In a sense, we are saying
that the paradigmatic form and the tool being produced
are co-extensive; but that the articulations which form are
of consciousness, in being the application of motor reflex
activities to the stone as guided by sensory perception.
In other words, we again have a space of delay being
established, in which a distinctive conscious state is forming:
a tool consciousness which is motivated toward a distinct
form of material production.
>>>
As such an articulation, consciousness is localized to and
grounded in the material substrates utilized for production;
but it is not dependent upon voluntary memory: rather, it
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
is immersed in the immediate perceptions of the material
with which it is working. Already, we can see that something
very different than consciousness-of-self is being established
here: instead of consciousness being aware of itself within the
delay of its own memory, we seem to have a situation where
a specific and distinct conscious state is being formed based
upon the physical properties of external objects.
And in this, we are beginning to see how the possession of
objects might ground an unreflective consciousness in the
progress of knowledge. Let us examine this more closely.
Here, we can clearly see that such productive activity
constitutes a unified multiplicity of actions; which is to say,
there is thus a distinctly temporal aspect to consciousness as
it forms of the articulations of material production; so much
so that, even if we cannot here define such consciousness
within that context called consciousness-of-self, we can
still expect to understand something of the associated
temporalities characteristic of such production. The events
of production are the events of the consciousness producing
them.
>>>
Every step of paradigmatic production is characterized
by the transference of perceived differentials between the
template and the stone being worked upon.
These are differentials of proportion formed as an in
between held of the paradigmatic template and the
implement being created. At every point during production,
a difference between the two objects is perceived; and each
of these differences motivates productive acts, as the shape
being formed progresses incrementally toward that of the
paradigmatic template guiding its production.
A sense of each difference is retained in the immediacy
of production; and the transference of these differences
into a motivated motor reflex act can be characterized as a
protention of that difference.
120
Thus, the articulation of sensed difference with a
corresponding motor reflex act is also the articulation of
retention and protention; which, as Husserl meticulously
demonstrated, would have constituted an existential now
for the toolmaker. We cannot say here that voluntary
memory is necessarily involved, because both objects were
simultaneously present within the direct perception of an
ongoing now.
We must instead say that each such articulation is
singular, and is defined by a proportionality which is always
differential in that the object being worked upon never
corresponds exactly with the object being worked from. The
differential aspects are thus continuously motivational,
and as such define those articulations of sensory perception
and motor reflex activity of which the conscious state of
production is constituted.
Such motivation produces a conscious state which is in fact
a delay, in that the object started from (the paradigmatic
template) is also the object ended with (the produced
implement): a situation which can be described as the delay
of the origin.
As such, the object produced might itself be called a non-
event; and this certainly provides us with a sense of how
such productive activity could remain established for over
a million years without any basic change occurring in the
standardized form of the hand axes being produced by those
hominids who used them.
However, such hand axes must have originated somewhere:
and that point of origin, within the context of our analysis,
would indeed constitute an event.
We know both the before involved (the use of stone flakes
as tools) and the after (the production of hand axes).
We know that, as the in between of an event, this is the
singularity of a difference-in-kind. Here was a different kind
of productive act, an activity which produced a specific form
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
of conscious state in articulating paradigmatic template
production.
How might such an event have come about, and what were
the characteristics of its occurrence? Could this had been an
idea, an act which consciousness produced of itself?
The basic starting point for such a paradigmatic template
seems to have been a stone which was worked and shaped to
be a fully functional version of a stone tool or weapon; but for
whatever reason, was retained instead as an example of such
an object. We must then ask, why would such an object be so
retained, instead of being put to direct use? As with any tool,
its value is a use-value, derived from its utility. And originally,
such a stone would have been retained while out on the
savanna, where it would have been used as a source for stone
flake tools. However, with that use having been served to the
point of exhaustion, any heavily used source stone would
have been discarded upon a return to the cliffs.
In the beginning, then, such stones would have been
retained only to the extent that they were of immediate use.
At some point, though, we know that an acquired shape
randomly imparted to such source stones proved useful in
and of itself: at which point, such a shaped stone would have
been retained for a practical, functional application other
than that of simply serving as a portable source for stone
flakes. As Sartre would say, that certain form had become the
nature of the object and thus determined it in possession.
This is a very important point, because here we can see
something which is as close to the formation of independent
thought as we may ever get with early hominids: this is an
idea that is retained; but in the form of an object that is
possessed.
It must stressed how decisive this is: because, this opens up
an entirely new horizon for consciousness: the commonality
of shared objects. Where once we had cause to refer to
an encompassing earth of experience which provided a
121
referential plane of consistency; where Husserl sought to
institute a shared commonality of reason; where a sense
of agreement predicated upon cooperation in the division
of labour formed: here, as a mechanism for generating a
collective sense of the intersubjective, we find produced
objects stabilizing a consistency of conscious states which can
be characterized as a progression of knowledge.
Such a commonality of shared objects is in effect an
intersubjectivity; but, it is one in which no subjectivities
and no objectivities are formed: instead, such objects
simply establish the dynamics of hominid territoriality as
it was occurring on the earth, specific to where said objects
were produced and used. If we can say the event of such
territorial activities is precisely such thought as we call
consciousness, then we must agree with Deleuze and Guattari
in seeing the singularity of such paradigmatic templates as
being characteristic to, as being derived from, the lives which
produced and used such implements.
This is, in essence, the moment at which history comes into
being. If writing can be said to have any distinct roots in its
most distant origins, this is the primary one which all of what
writing will become taps into.
Thus it appears that hominids did in fact have an
identifiable historicity; but it is one which is characterized by
produced objects, not by those forms of writing which define
historicity for we humans.
>>>
The question which now faces us is again one of
articulation: specifically, when did source stones carried onto
the savanna shift into being formed tools that were copied;
and where in this did the use of paradigmatic form as a
template emerge?
In that the cliff ape scenario for early hominid
development suggests an early familiarity with the killing
potential of ballistic speeds imparted to objects such as
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
rocks; and given that hominids who ventured onto the open
savanna most probably had already acquired a taste for
animal protein from the cliff base kills through which they
had discovered the utility of sharp stone flakes: it seems that
it would have been just a matter of time before scavenging
hominids, who were making brief forays onto the savanna in
order to pick over the remains of kills left by other predators,
ended up killing a competing scavenger at a kill site using a
partially sharpened, ready-at-hand source stone. Emboldened
by such an incident, any group of hominids would have
realized that obtaining fresh meat by making their own
kills was an option, even on the open savanna far from the
convenience and safety of their cliff face home.
The knowledge of such an event would have been
inseparable from the object which had facilitated that first
kill: and retention of the weapon responsible would have
became the possession of that unreflected thought.
What would have happened next is something we all
instinctively understand; and yet, do not really grasp at all.
Sartre mentions something of this, in relation to images, as a
residual trace of our own prehistory:
Page 24
The first bond posited between image and
model is a bond of emanation. The subject has
ontological primacy. But he incarnates himself,
he descends into the image. This explains the
attitudes of the primitive people toward their
portraits and certain practices of black magic (the
effigy of wax pierced with a pin, the wounded
bison painted on the walls to make the hunt
more fruitful). It is not a question, moreover, of
a way of thinking that has disappeared today.
The structure of the image remained, with us,
irrational and, here as almost everywhere, we
are restricted to making rational constructions
on pre-logical bases.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
122
Sartres comments concerning the nature of images are
directly applicable to the objects we are examining here.
But Sartres observations cannot even begin to approach
what must have been the immediacy of an experience
retained mainly in an emotional state induced by the motor
reflex activity of that desperate act; an experience which
persisted for all precisely in the object that had made such a
singular result come to pass: that partially sharpened stone
became the safe passage through which the savanna was
territorialized, grasped as surely in hand as any cliff face had
been gripped by the hominids who first climbed up toward
the still intact highland forests.
And so, such early hand axes would have been copied, and
put into use as early hominids began to spread out from their
cliff bases onto the open savanna with an ever increasing
frequency.
>>>
On might reasonably expect this scenario to have either
unfolded innumerable times, with many different groups
of early hominids involved; or, to have been a unique if
inevitable first upon which other such encounters were
modelled. The first scenario seems most likely; but in that
case, we still need to explain why hand axes were always of
remarkably similar form, without the divergent structural
variations one would expect from multiple sources. Were
early hominids so precariously balanced at the edge of
existence, and so few in number, that a single incident
with a single stone could come to define the technological
accomplishments of all subsequent generations, for over a
million years?
That is entirely possible; but it doesnt seem decidedly
likely: so we should consider further what mechanisms
might have been responsible for the establishment of a single
paradigmatic form for the hand axe.
Whatever the actual events were that shifted stones from
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
being tools into being weapons, this new use was determined
through the intensive vector of speed.
As Deleuze and Guattari note:
Page 395
As a first approximation, weapons have a
privileged relation with projection. Anything
that throws or is thrown is fundamentally a
weapon, and propulsion is its essential moment...
It is true that missile weapons, in the strict sense,
whether projected or projecting, are only one
kind among others; but even handheld weapons
require a usage of the hand and arm different
from that required by tools, a projective usage
exemplified in the martial arts.
Second, weapons and tools do not
tendentially (approximately) have the same
relation to movement, to speed. It is yet another
essential contribution of Paul Virilio to have
stressed this weapon-speed complementarity: the
weapon invents speed, or the discovery of speed
invents the weapon (the projective character of
weapons is the result).
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
A Thousand Plateaus.
Translated by Brian Massumi. Copyright 1987 by
the University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis MN
Originally published in 1980 by
Les Editions de Minuit, Paris.
The shift from weapon to paradigmatic form is an
altogether different matter. There, the stone weapon would
need to have a greater utility in being retained than in being
put to use. Now, the difference between being retained and
being used is very simple: in use, weapons wear, break, and
are lost; but in being retained, this does not occur. It thus
follows that the utility of a weapon being retained is in its
persistence as an undamaged form.
123
In other words, the value of a weapon that was retained
unused resided in maintaining the form of its final
production. Such a use value could only be that of an
example, as a template that other such objects could
be produced with reference to. The only use for a stone
retained as a paradigmatic template is precisely its use as
a paradigmatic template; and although this sounds to be
a circular argument, it is to be expected that, were any
other uses readily apparent, they would appear during such
circumspection.
There are numerous considerations which might have led
to such a paradigmatic use for any such weapon. Stone is
inherently variable, with internal properties hidden below the
surface. After having been produced, it might be apparent
that an unusually appropriate piece of stone had been
chosen, resulting in a rare outcome for the final tool.
The person working the stone might be particularly adept,
having produced a work of particular quality.
A particular example might have proven instrumental in
some momentous event, and was perhaps retained as a living
(object) memory of what had happened.
Such considerations are apparent in many outstanding
examples that have survived from Paleolithic eras in virtually
pristine condition. It stands to reason that at least a few of
these were retained in their finished form as paradigmatic
templates, to be used in the production of new weapons;
and this would probably always have been the case for tools
retained in an unused form by hominids: for we have every
reason to suspect that invention and innovation was not a
characteristic of the conscious states which early hominids
produced.
We can still say this today, because the cognitive processes
which characterize the use of paradigmatic templates were
known, examined, and employed in Platos time:
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
Page 22-23
We can therefore say, joining Aristotles
observations with those of Kant, that a paradigm
entails a movement that goes from singularity to
singularity and, without ever leaving singularity,
transforms every singular case into an exemplar
of a general rule that can never be stated a
priori.
Commenting on this definition, Goldschmidt
shows that here there seems to be a paradoxical
structure, at once sensible and mental, which
he calls the element-form. [Note 21] In other
words, even though it is a singular sensible
phenomenon, the paradigm somehow contains
the eidos, the very form that is to be defined. It
is not a simple sensible element that is present
in two different places, but something like a
relation between the sensible and the mental,
and the element and the form (the paradigmatic
element is itself a relationship). Just as in the
case of recollection - which Plato often uses as
a paradigm for knowledge - where a sensible
phenomenon is placed into a nonsensible
relation with itself, and thus re-cognized in the
other, so in the paradigm it is a matter not of
collaborating a certain sensible likeness but of
producing it by means of an operation. For this
reason, the paradigm is never already given,
but is generated and produced by placing
alongside, conjoining together and above all
by showing and exposing. [Note 23] The
paradigmatic relation does not merely occur
between sensible objects or between these objects
and a general rule; it appears instead between
a singularity (which thus becomes a paradigm)
and its exposition (its intelligibility).
Giorgio Agamben, What Is A Paradigm? in,
The Signature of All Things: On Method.
124
Thus we must suspect that, for the hominids who first
produced them, hand axes modeled after the paradigmatic
template of whichever source stones had proven the worth of
their form in the event of a violent encounter upon the open
savanna were the experience of such defining moments; they
were the safe transition from a before of peril, into an after
of safety; the were the production yet again of a successful
hunt: these objects existed as a way of thinking which created
hominid territory out of the encompassing earth of an open
savanna. This is the singular nature of the paradigmatic
template: it defines a specific horizon of event which can be
produced repeatedly.
Suddenly, things are getting very interesting: for we
encountered the concept of the singular in our earlier
analysis: this is one of the terms which Deleuze used to
describe a life in terms of the events which constitute
it; which is to say, the events which compel thought, in
any existential encounter with the earth. So while we are
describing the use of a paradigmatic form for the production
of stone tools and weapons, we are doing so in terms which
define the nature of being for hominids as being conscious.
It would seem then, that in examining the use of
paradigmatic forms, we are also examining at least in
part the way of being in this world which characterized
hominids. We are effecting, as it were, a hominid ontology.
Perhaps then, through comparing this with our more
immediate project of a human ontology, we might actually
discover something in those parameters of consciousness
which distinguish the hominid from the human.
With this in mind, lets see what we can find.
>>>
Returning to an examination of the use of paradigmatic
form, we notice in Agambens reference to Kant and Aristotle
that paradigms function as examples; and as such, they
embody general rules which cannot be stated in advance.
In our context, this is simply to say: a paradigm will show
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
the proper form to be produced, in a way which words would
never be capable of; and if something goes amiss in the
process, nothing which can be said will ever indicate this in
the way in that the intact paradigm can.
This being said, it becomes apparent that the paradigm
functions in the space between the before and the after
of the event, of production. The paradigm functions as an
in between which, Deleuze notes, is always of a change in
those experienced intensities which constitute a life.
Deleuze also notes:
Page 29-30
The singularities and the events that
constitute a life coexist with the accidents of the
life that corresponds to it, but they are neither
grouped nor divided in the same way. They
connect with one another in a manner entirely
different from how individuals connect. It even
seems that a singular life might do without any
individuality, without any other concomitant
that individualizes it.
Pages 32
There is a big difference between the
virtuals that defined the immanence of the
transcendental field and the possible forms
that actualize them and transform them into
something transcendent.
Gilles Deleuze, Immanence: A Life;
in Pure Immanence.
So while we noted earlier that the stone tools produced by
way of paradigmatic templates were an ongoing non-event
that persisted, unchanged, for millions of years; we must
also remember that each productive act did constitute an
event in a life. Here, we can say that the endoconsistencies of
production will remain constant within the context of the use
of paradigmatic forms; although the exoconsistency of the
125
use for the tool produced will vary: and that these two forms
of consistency will be articulated together by the nature of a
life, the life of a hominid.
In this sense of productive event, there is of course a
sequence to such intensities; and this was noted by Sartre
for non-reflective consciousness, and by Agamben of the
singularities strung together in paradigm-guided production.
This in turn defines such events of production as ordinate
intensities; and these are integral to the definition which
Deleuze and Guattari give for concepts. Thus we would have
to say that, hominids produced concepts; but, that such
production was materially based: to paraphrase Sartre,
hominids did not produce concepts that they were consciously
aware of as such; rather, they seem to have produced a
strange, materially-based form of conceptual composition,
which they lived directly, in an articulation of their motor
reflex activities and sensory perceptions determined through
paradigmatic production.
This is a point to which we will return: that paradigms can
function in a way which is exempt from linguistic description
through speech; yet, they can also functionally constitute the
compositional formation of concepts.
Such considerations bring us much closer to seeing how
the unreflective image sequences which Sartre described
can be considered as an equivalent to what he called the
progression of knowledge: here, precisely, in that concepts
can be formed of perception on the basis of material
considerations; yet, not as ideas which can be reflected
upon, or considered transcendent of the experiential event
through which they are formed. This must be very close to the
nonthetic consciousness which Sartre postulates as occurring
in partial formations of conscious spontaneity; the partiality
of such formations in this case being that which holds
between paradigm and tool/weapon during production.
The direct implication here is that paradigmatic templates
motivate the production of tools at least in part through non-
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
conscious processes: if a tool consciousness can be said to
result of paradigmatically determined production, it is one
which forms of articulation with non-conscious processes.
This is particularly interesting, because here we see the
production of a kind of materially-based concept proceeding
within the kind of articulated consciousness which we
had reason to examine earlier: in our consideration of the
functional nature of proto-linguistic formations.
As knowledge, then, it can be said of the paradigm:
Page 24-25
In Plato, the paradigm has its place in
dialectics, which, by articulating the relation
between the intelligible and sensible order,
makes knowledge possible.
The relation between these two orders
may be conceived in two ways: as a relation
of likeness (between copy and model) or as a
relation of proportion. [Note 24] To each of
these conceptions there corresponds, according
to Goldschmidt, a specific dialectical procedure:
to the first, recollection (defined by Plato in the
Meno and in the Theatetus); to the second, the
paradigm, which is discussed above all in the
Sophist and in the Statesman.
Giorgio Agamben, What Is A Paradigm? in,
The Signature of All Things: On Method.
It would seem that, for hominids, knowledge of how to
produce hand axes was limited to the actual occurrence of
paradigmatic hand axe templates, which were used for the
production of said implements.
That this was so also tells us we are not dealing with
recollection, with voluntary memory, which as far as
we can tell is a definite prerequisite for the formation of
consciousness-of-self. Instead, we are dealing with an in
between of delay, of events determined by a deferral for eyes
126
seeking food, and of hands placing food in the mouth. This
is where conscious states form, of a co-extension between
sensory perception and motor reflex activity; but here we
see such conscious states being articulated through a delay
by way of material intermediaries (of stone): and the result
is a knowledge which can be experienced, and understood
- but only in relation to the material object seen here as the
paradigmatic template.
We already know that relationships of proportionality
can be traced back to a derivational base in the scaling
grip functions of visuomotor neurology. We know that such
non-conscious processes are functionally defined by an
active dynamic of forgetting. So we must suspect, when
we see that paradigmatic templates function productively
through proportionality, that some form of forgetting
is going to be integral to this process. In producing hand
axes through paradigmatic templates, in a process which
depends on proportionality, hominids would probably not
produce conscious states in which voluntary memory would
play a role. Of such non-conscious processes, there would
simply be nothing conscious to remember. Nothing, that is,
except the persistent emotional context through which the
events of living in hand axe territory asserted themselves.
Hominids would have retained movement related memories
of physically doing things; and possibly, to a lesser extent
feeling things emotionally: but they would not remember
thinking things.
>>>
The production of stone implements is an event which
simultaneously creates attendant conscious states. We can
also say that paradigmatic production proceeds through a
physical transference of differentials: from those noted of the
paradigmatic template, through sensory perception; to those
imparted onto the stone being worked, through motor reflex
activity.
Such a proportionate transfer of differentials would be
articulated as a multiplicity: in ordinate intensities, localized
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
upon features in the material substrate and articulating such
productive differentials of proportion there.
Again, we see conditions which prefigure what we know as
the conceptual are formational here.
We can see in this slow, incremental assemblage through
the infinitesimal differentials of event an alterity to the
forgetting of non-conscious processes: although all such
transferences are still characterized by the discontinuity
which functionally determines the nature of non-conscious
processes, we nonetheless see a steady accumulation of
differentials articulated in the production of objects: and
this is something which occurs as much in the connectivity
of singularities throughout production (Agamben) as in
the serial continuity of images in consciousness (Sartre).
Hominids did not need to remember what they had done
in making something: the outcome of their actions was
physically present for them.
This is the constitution of knowledge, as an other of
forgetting, in the composition of conscious states determined
by relationships with physical objects. As such, and indeed as
we have seen is characteristic of non-subjective consciousness,
it occurs as indistinguishable between modalities of
production: the knowledge object which motivates conscious
states, and the conscious state which is motivated to produce
knowledge objects. Similar to what we noted with Sartre,
whereby perception and nonthetic consciousness are
indistinguishable in the context of memory, we must note
here that knowledge objects and their associated knowledge
states-of-consciousness (as found with tool consciousness,
for instance) are indistinguishable; but, precisely, through
a material form of memory rather than in memory: as
a functional alterity to the forgetting which attains non-
conscious processes.
This is not the memory of consciousness, such as grounds
the formation of consciousness-of-self (voluntary memory):
it is instead a material form of memory, actualized as the
object being produced. This is the basis of the possession
127
of knowledge Sartre refers to: the formation of that which
characterizes the articulations of consciousness, in the
production of an object. Here, the delay of consciousness
is the event of production, which is constituted by the
incremental accumulation of transferential articulations
through the working of the stone-becoming-implement.
Clearly, the functional forgetting which characterizes non-
conscious processes is being superseded by a persistence of
differentials accumulating in the production of the stone
implement.
>>>
This is for us a strange world view, in which voluntary
memory is instead replaced by objects, the possession of
which constitutes a form of direct knowledge. It would
seem here as if these objects were directly motivational of
consciousness, defining relationships of territoriality for
anyone in their possession; and that such relations with a
correspondent territory did not exist for anyone who was not
in the possession of these objects.
In this, we again see an aspect of what we can call
forgetting: and we might say here, along with Bergson, that
such objects actualized a specific difference-in-kind through
which a divergence in behavioral patterns is established
between conscious states produced through a possession of
such objects, and, such conscious states as could be achieved
without such possessions.
This isnt a difficult concept for us to grasp in our present
material age of self-conscious actualization; but the
situation being described here is somewhat different than
that which we know. Probably the closest approximation to
this experience can be found in Sartres phenomenological
description of dream imagery:
Page 172
A dream can be personal from the start. It is
simply necessary that the imagery of the dreamer
produces an unspecified object that the dreamer
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
can believe, whether it immediately or after some
time, is themselves, whatever else that object may
be. This is in fact the only way that the sleeper
can enter into this world that does not exist: the
sleeper must be identified with one of the objects
of that world; in other words, the sleeper needs
a material substrate for the impression of being-
in-the-irreal-world. As we have noted, sleepers
themselves cannot be found there but can be
taken by the belief that such imaginary objects,
which already possess their being-in-the-irreal-
world, are themselves; and they can produce
these objects and the belief that they are these
objects at the same time. From this results
that curious characteristic of the dream where
everything is seen from a superior point of view,
which is that of the sleeper representing a world,
and at the same time from a relative and limited
point of view, which is that of the imaginary-me
plunged into the world. Actually, the imaginary-
me does not see this world and sleepers do not
put themselves in the place of that particular
being in order to see things from its point of view:
sleepers always see things from their own point
of view, from the point of view of the creator.
Only, in the very moment when they see things,
they see things oriented in relation to this object-
me that lives them and suffers them...
This space is full of vectors of tensions, lines
of force, is what Lewin called hodological space.
Only, instead of surrounding me, it surrounds
and urges a certain object that I imagine among
others and that is the object-me. The result is
that a dream could in no way be represented in
the world of perception.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
As Sartre noted earlier, it isnt difficult to find examples
in our modern world which correspond to this scenario: as
128
sports cars purchased during mid-life crises; or indeed, in
any kind of lifestyle advertisement for innumerable luxury
items.
And although we are again seeing Sartre base his
conclusions within the phenomenological context that
typifies consciousness-of-self, Sartre had earlier placed an
interesting reference to this section concerning dreams as an
appended note to a passage that concludes:
Page 158
To tell the truth, we are very far from the
distinction between subjective and objective.
These two worlds have collapsed: we are dealing
here with a third type of existence that we lack
the words to characterize. The simplest can
perhaps be named lateral irreal apparitions,
correlates of an impersonal consciousness.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
In effect, Sartre is describing the nature of non-subjective
conscious states as they relate to objects of possession. This
description does correspond precisely to that of territoriality
given by Deleuze and Guattari: the relationships which
constitute thought within the context of those aspects of this
earth which motivate thinking.
Thus there is a high degree of probability that objects
produced by hominids through the use of paradigmatic
forms did in fact embody the conceptualization of their
world. This suggests that we need not concern ourselves with
the impossibility of making determinations regarding the
subjectivity of hominids: we have no grounds for assuming
consciousness-of-self as we now know it existed as an aspect
of mental life for hominids; and indeed, there is strong
evidence to the contrary.
The direct implication of this observation is that we can
in fact hope to reconstruct the conceptual being of early
hominids through the objects that they produced. As Derrida
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
notes with regard to Husserl:
Page 82
Undoubtedly misunderstanding is always a
factual horizon and the finite index of the infinite
pole of a sound intelligence. But although the
latter is always announced so that language can
begin, is not finitude the essential which we can
never radically go beyond?
The above seems all the more true, especially
since absolute translatability would be suspended
starting the moment the signified could no
longer be led back, either directly or indirectly, to
the model of an objective and sensible existent.
Every linguistic dimension that would escape this
absolute translatability would remain marked
by the empirical subjectivity of an individual or
society. For Husserl, the model of language is the
objective language of science. A poetic language,
whose significations would not be objects, will
never have any transcendental value for him.
That fact would have no consequence within
Husserlian thought, if his thoughts were not
also the thorough investigation of subjectivity.
Now subjectivity in general, as much empirical
as transcendental, appeared very early to
Husserl as inaccessible to a direct, univocal, and
rigorous language. Subjectivity is fundamentally
ineffable... Therefore, language, tradition, and
history exist only in so far as objects break the
surface.
[Note 85: In the same sense, cf. all the subtle
analyses in LI devoted to expressions lack{ing}
an objective sense, such as personal pronouns
which indicate mediately but can never give
anything to be seen. The word I has not
itself directly the power to arouse the specific
I-presentation; this becomes fixed in the actual
piece of talk. It does not work like the word lion
129
which can arouse the idea of a lion in and by
itself. In its case, rather, an indicative function
mediates, crying as it were, to the hearer your
vis--vis intends himself.]
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
>>>
In the context of out present analysis, two points emerge
here which are of particular interest. First, we note that
Husserl describes the specific case of personal pronouns as
being relational in nature, in a purely indicative fashion.
Second, we note that Husserl considers subjectivity to be
indeterminate; and that only the stable reference provided by
objects provides sure access to the historical. Thus, in a case
where conscious states can be defined by territorial relations
determined through the possession of produced objects,
we must conclude that we do in fact have some degree of
demonstrable access to the historical dimensions of lives so
lived.
All of which is contingent, of course, upon the
presupposition that hominids did not form an intentional
consciousness-of-self; which is to say, that the conscious states
which they did form were simply motivated, rather than
produced of conscious intention. And this is what we really
mean to say here when we describe hominids as not having
volitional memory: in that the events of the world in which
they were immersed were responded to as perceptions; in that
such perceptions were indistinguishable from nonthetic, non-
conscious processes in being motivational of the formation
of conscious states, we must say that such shifts in conscious
states constitute another aspect of the forgetting which
attends non-conscious processes.
In that the possession of such produced objects can be
correlated to a stabilization of conscious states in hominids,
it would seem that paradigmatic production was a definite
step toward what we know as subjectivity, and consciousness-
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
of-self. But this is not completely accurate, because while we
must readily admit that we could never have access to the
subjectively conscious states of long past hominid species,
had such states formed; and while it seems reasonably certain
we can expect to understand something of those conscious
states of hominids which were motivated by the possession of
produced objects, what we will instead never have access to in
our analysis are those wild swings in conscious states which
must have occurred in hominid minds as one aspect of their
perception, then another, then another nonthetic component
of their non-conscious processes sequentially motivated
new cognitive configurations in which previous states were
immediately forgotten: a way-of-being which Sartre contends
is impossible within consciousness-of-self.
>>>
What we might succeed in establishing through these
considerations is an ontology of being hominid, as
determined through their use of paradigmatic templates.
Page 32
Nevertheless, the arche they reach - and this
perhaps holds for all historical inquiry - is not an
origin presupposed in time. Rather, locating itself
at the crossing of diachrony and synchrony, it
makes the inquirers present intelligible as much
as the past of his or her object. Archaeology,
then, is always a paradigmatology, and the
capacity to recognize and articulate paradigms
defines the rank of the inquirer no less than does
his or her ability to examine the documents of
an archive.
If one asks whether the paradigmatic
character lies in things themselves or in the mind
of the inquirer, my response must be that the
question itself makes no sense. The intelligibility
in question in the paradigm has an ontological
character. It refers not to the cognitive relation
between subject and object but to being. There
130
is, then, a paradigmatic ontology.
Giorgio Agamben, What Is A Paradigm? in,
The Signature of All Things: On Method.
And although our present context of inquiry is not that of
which Agamben writes, the very singular relationship holding
between hominids and the objects they produced through
the use of paradigms establishes the viability of such an
ontological approach. Indeed, we do have the opportunity
here to recompose something of the hominid mind; and in
doing so, perhaps come to see what has made we humans so
distinctly different from those species which preceded us in
evolutionary time. Rather than simply contenting ourselves
with general references to the world in which hominids lived,
we can at least partially reconstruct some aspects of their
cognitive processes; in the form of conceptual personae:
Page 67-68
It seems to us that a social field comprises
structures and functions, but this does not tell us
very much directly about particular movements
that affect the Socius. We already know the
importance in animals of those activities that
consist in forming territories, in abandoning or
leaving them, and even in re-creating territory
on something of a different nature (ethologists
say that an animals partner or friend is the
equivalent of a home or that the family is
a mobile territory). All the more so for the
hominid: from its act of birth, it deterritorializes
its front paw, wrests it from the earth to turn it
into a hand, and reterritorializes it on branches
and tools. A stick is, in turn, a deterritorialized
branch. We need to see how everyone, at every
age, in the smallest things as in the greatest
challenges, seeks a territory, tolerates or carries
out deterritorialization, and is reterritorialized
on almost anything - memory, fetish, or dream...
We cannot even say what comes first, and
perhaps every territory presupposes a prior
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
deterritorialization, or everything happens at
the same time. Social fields are inextricable
knots in which the three movements are mixed
up so that, in order to disentangle them, we have
to diagnose real types or personae... We believe
that psychosocial types have this meaning: to
make perceptible, in the most insignificant or
most important circumstances, the formation
of territories, the vectors of deterritorialization,
and the process of reterritorialization.
Page 69
The role of conceptual personae is to
show thoughts territories, its absolute
deterritorializations and deterritorializations.
Conceptual persona are thinkers, solely thinkers,
and their personalized features are closely linked
to the diagrammatic features of thought and
the intensive features of concepts. A particular
conceptual persona, who perhaps did not exist
before us, thinks in us.
Page 69-70
Even if the word absolute turns out to be exact,
we must not think that deterritorializations
and reterritorializations of thought transcend
psychosocial ones, anymore than they are
reducible to them, or to an abstraction or
ideological expression of them. Rather, there is
a conjunction, a system of referrals or perpetual
relays. The features of conceptual personae have
relationships with the epoch or historical milieu
in which they appear that only psychosocial types
enable us to assess. But, conversely, the physical
and mental movements of psychosocial types,
their pathological symptoms, their relational
attitudes, their existential modes, and their legal
status, become susceptible to a determination
purely of thinking and of thoughts that wrests
them from both the historical state of affairs of a
society and the lived experience of individuals, in
131
order to turn them into the features of conceptual
persona, or thought-events on the plane laid
out by thought or under the concepts it creates.
Conceptual personae and psychosocial types
refer to each other and combine without ever
merging.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
What is Philosophy?
Since the objects produced by hominids using paradigmatic
templates were created through ordered sequences of
differential transference, we can view these objects as being
physically composed by way of intensive ordinates. This gives
us an endoconsistency for these objects.
Since the objects so produced had definite uses in a
territorial context, we can postulate their relational
exoconsistency.
This allows us to view these weapons and tools as concepts;
but, with the stipulation that their endoconsistency and
exoconsistency was articulated through the conscious states
of those who produced and used them.
We know that we must consider such articulation to have
occurred without any distinctions, such as we know them,
forming between subject and object; in this, we are left
to consider how hominids were compelled to think their
territorial relations in terms of the objects they created.
Hominid territoriality was their possession of the objects they
produced: to the extent that they conceived their territorial
relationships, we must suspect that they did so in terms of
these objects. It is by tracing these relations of territoriality,
as conceptualized in terms of the artifacts that have persisted
to this present day, that we outline the nature of thought as
experienced by hominids; and so, re-create these relations in
the form of conceptual personae.
>>>
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 132

Now we can be a little more specific concerning the

conceptual nature of the tools hominids produced: such
objects were an alterity to forgetting in that they served
to motivate consciousness; and this means, to orchestrate
the ordinal intensities which are compositional for the event
of consciousness: this is exactly how such objects can be
formational of conceptual structures.

Even though we are not yet dealing here with subjectivities

such as form in consciousness-of-self, we are looking at a
specific kind of formation that is consistent with conscious
states territorially engaged with this earth upon which
they occur; the corollary of consciousness for Deleuze and
Guattaris geophilosophy: conceptual personae.

So now, in addition to localizing our discussion within terms

descriptive of the ontological nature of this or that species,
we can also singularize our inquiry as referential to the
specificity of events in a life; through the construction of
conceptual persona.

>>>
What, then, can we construct of a conceptual persona such
as might form of an encounter with The Hominid Stone for
one who originally possessed it?

This particular example differs from that of the

paradigmatic forms used in the production of hand axes in
one quite significant way: while a paradigmatic hand axe
could always be used as a hand axe, and would have been
saved as a paradigmatic example by choice, the sliding/
locking notch assemblage presented upon The Hominid
Stone would never have been put to that use which it served
as a paradigm for; and this means that it was produced
exclusively for use as a paradigm.

Consider: it is readily apparent that this object was never

used in a mechanical way, because there is absolutely
no wear on it of any kind. The structural dynamics of
the protrusion in question are readily apparent, and the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
functionality of such a physical configuration clearly
indicates its intended use. Obviously, this particular structure
was designed to be used under tension; and just as obviously,
the object itself was not created for such a use. The inevitable
conclusion, then, is that the structure of this protrusion was
created to be used as an example, as a master template of
paradigmatic form.
Oddly, although images abound on this object, there do
not seem to be any visual instructions about HOW it is to
be used - just the example of WHAT it is. Indeed, the images
found thereupon, as exacting as they are in their accuracy,
do not seem to constitute anything beyond the simple,
proportionate copying of actual perceptions onto a material
substrate of stone.
And so, we are left to infer the possible functions for which
materials shaped in such a way could be used. Clearly, from
the mechanical dynamics of such a shape, this form was used
for material that could be positioned under tension; and this
suggests wood being used to perhaps construct some form of
shelter which could be easily erected, and also taken apart
and transported to a new location. The other possibility
would seem to be the construction of a simple, tension-
framed watercraft which could be taken apart after being
used and transported across land should that need arise.
The two possible uses might well have been at least
somewhat coincident: if portable, tensioned structures
had been developed (perhaps originally modelled upon
scraped hides draped over bushes); and if some form of
waterproofing, in the form of animal fat or tallow, had also
been applied, then, it would take little more than a sudden,
violent gust of wind while camped beside a body of water for
the first hominid watercraft to come into existence. And since
The Hominid Stone was found on an island, the prospect of
hominids using watercraft is not at all unlikely.
Clearly, whatever species left this object hidden on a Gulf
Island off the Pacific Northwest coast of British Columbia, it
had come a long way from the days when it had first strode
133
onto the open African savanna: much farther, it would seem,
than anyone cares to admit.
>>>
It is very strange, though, that while it was necessary
to preserve a paradigmatic template for such sliding/
locking notch technology, it was not apparently considered
necessary to include visual instructions as to what it was,
or how it could be used. So it would seem that, while the
use was considered self-apparent, the form of its production
was not. That is very strange for us today: that the use
would be apparent for the form, but, the form could not be
reconstituted from the intended use.
This is a major disjunction which really demands an
attempt be made to understand it: that the physical form of
the object gives its intended use, but the intended use will not
suggest the physical form needed.
This tells us: the production of the object, its perception
as form and the motor reflex activity through which it is
produced, actually co-extend as the articulation that it is:
which is to say, that the productive activity determined
by this paradigmatic form constitutes the knowledge of its
physical use, or, recomposes the conscious state which is the
possession of this knowledge. The intensive ordinates formed
through the productive use of this paradigmatic template are
the concept of its use.
But the conditions under which it would be useful do not
present themselves as this very same articulation: there is
nothing of these conditions which would articulate that
physical solution in consciousness; so, being in a situation
were such technology was needed was not sufficient
motivation to cause a hominid to modify the materials at
hand to produce such a solution.
Whatever might motivate a hominid mind to produce
conscious states, it does not appear that such states were
capable in themselves of modifying themselves. The processes
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
of modification, innovation, invention, and imaginative
thought which we as humans take for granted were
apparently so alien to these hominids that, beyond a certain
threshold of productive complexity, they needed external
references in the form of paradigmatic templates to enable
them to modify the naturally existing structures around
them for specific purposes.
In short: there is nothing of voluntary memory about the
conditions under which this physical, paradigmatic form
was put to use. Being conscious of the conditions which
would have required the use of such technology was not to
be conscious of this technology as a solution to the dilemma
such conditions produced.
The productive endoconsistencies which were determined
by this paradigmatic template were sufficient to articulate
a conscious state through which the use of this form was
apparent; but the exoconsistencies of that use were not
sufficient to articulate conscious states capable of producing
that form. In the case of these endoconsistencies, we have
movement-based memories of motor reflex activity; but in
the case of the exoconsistencies, we could only ever have
had the intended use, since the object form had not yet been
produced. In other words, while we have clear evidence
of memories formed of motor reflex activity, at the same
time we can see that the intentionality which forms from
consciousness-of-self was not in evidence.
The memory of this solution to such situations resided
solely in the paradigmatic form of the object, and not at
all in the consciousness confronted by the situations which
demanded such a solution. The direct implication here is
clear: this template served as a form of material memory,
designed and produced in order to persist with an insistence
which allowed it to be found in pristine condition uncounted
tens of thousands of years after it had been very, very safely
hidden away.
This of course can mean only one thing: that whomever
made this, and those intended to use it as a paradigmatic
134
template, were aware enough of their own conscious
processes that they understood the reality of forgetting; and
they could produce mechanisms to counter that apparent
inevitability.
This was the purpose of the strange coating of blood and/or
ocher on both The Hominids Stone and The Firelight Horse
Stone: as well as these objects were hidden, at the very back
of a lightless cave, they could always be found again by
hominids; not to by memory, or by sight, but the smell of
that coating. And this, as we shall see, is exactly where the
difference between human and hominid cognition resided.
And after all, the issue here isnt memory as such: what is
really at work in this is the process of forgetting. Since we
have already considered that aspect of consciousness, in the
context of the articulation of non-conscious processes with
conscious states, we should be able to make a few additional
observations at this point.
>>>
In our earlier analysis of the nature of forgetting, we found
that this phenomenon is in fact a functional characteristic
of the articulations which form between non-conscious
processes and conscious states. That is, insofar as non-
conscious processes depend upon a functional dynamic
of forgetting that they may constantly and consistently
be attuned to the immediacy of ongoing experience, such
forgetting is an absolutely essential aspect of the functional
nature of these processes.
We also noted that, in being co-extensive with and
becoming articulate to conscious states, non-conscious
processes derivationally introduce something of such
functional forgetting into conscious states. Thus, it would
appear that what we are encountering through this decidedly
curious situation of paradigmatic forms that provide solutions
to problem sets which cannot motivate suitable solutions
in and of themselves, is, precisely a form of conscious state
which is produced in articulation with non-conscious
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 135

processes.

Apparently, the cognitive processes of these hominids, as

conscious states, cannot remember the simplest solutions to
problem sets which require some form of external, material
response. This is because the non-conscious processes
through which such solutions are produced function as,
for instance, the ratio based proportionality which is
characteristic of grip configuration scaling; and as such, even
in a directly derivative conscious state, some form of external
reference is required to sustain the productive response, such
as is facilitated by the use of paradigmatic forms.

Again, to reference Sartre:

Page 8
In perception I observe objects. It should be
understood by this that the object, though it
enters whole into my perception, is never given to
me but one side at the time. Consider the example
of the cube: I do not know it is a cube unless I
have seen its six faces; I can possibly see three
together, but never more. It is necessary therefore
that I apprehend them successively All this has
been said a hundred times: it is characteristic of
perception that the object never appears except
in a series of profiles, of projections. The cube is
indeed present to me, I can touch it, see it; but I
can never see it except in a certain way, which
calls for and excludes at the same time an infinity
of other points of view. One must learn objects,
which is to say, multiply the possible points of
view on them. The object itself is the synthesis
of all these appearances. The perception of an
object is therefore a phenomenon of an infinity
of aspects. What does this signify for us? The
necessity of making a tour of objects, of waiting,
as Bergson said, until the sugar dissolves.

When, on the other hand, I think of the cube

by a concrete concept I do not need to recover
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
images, I have no apprenticeship to serve. Such
is without doubt the clearest difference between
thought and perception. That is why we can
never perceive a thought nor think a perception.
They are radically distinct phenomenon: one is
knowledge conscious of itself, which places itself
at once in the center of the object; the other is a
synthetic unity of a multiplicity of appearances,
which slowly serves its apprenticeship.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
By definition: the nonthetic consciousness which appears
to have characterized the conscious states of hominids was
simply not capable of affecting the synthetic production of
a mental image, such as would then be accessible through
volitional memory.
Without an ability to imagine or to produce conscious
images of objects, it would appear that hominids were
constrained to working from external, material, physical
examples of whatever they wished to produce: that is,
hominids had no other option but to use paradigmatic
templates as a way of retaining the knowledge they needed
to produce objects they used to enhance their survival
capabilities.
This is not to say that hominids did not have a memory;
rather, it is to point out that the kind of conscious states
which they produced appear to have been characterized
by a direct and almost immediate forgetting, such that
direct perceptions never transcended their immediacy to
become established as images within what Sartre identifies
as an imaging consciousness contingent upon an already
established consciousness-of-self.
What is utterly amazing here is that hominids managed
to advance so very far without the kind of imaging
consciousness which we so take for granted that, we rarely
even think of what our cognitive processes are doing in
using such a capability. Incredible as it seems, hominids
136
even appear to have advanced to the point where they were
forming conceptual composites; although, in doing so they
had to rely upon their paradigmatic forms as an external
motivation facilitating such formulations.
All of which leads us to one inescapable conclusion:
although hominids do not appear to have developed a
reflective consciousness-of-self, they most certainly did evolve
something intermediary between that human characteristic,
and their demonstrable achievement of conscious states.
Hominids must have developed a consciousness-of-
consciousness: because this is the only explanation for their
having created paradigmatic forms solely as templates for
production. Hominids were aware that they could, would,
and did forget: they were aware of the nature of their own
consciousness, and actually developed mechanisms which
had no other purpose than to induce the formation of
conscious states!
Even if hominids were unable to modify their conscious
states on what Husserl refers to as an egological basis, they
were nonetheless capable of motivating the formation of their
conscious states using external, materially based mechanisms
identifiable as paradigmatic forms. Very much as we might
employ a technique such as the Golden Flower Meditation
to produce a specific form of conscious state through the
articulation of co-extensive sensory perceptions and motor
reflex activity, so would hominids employ the external,
material placing alongside or conjoining together of
paradigmatic production; and this, as between a singularity
(which thus becomes a paradigm) and its exposition (its
intelligibility).
This was the nature of being a hominid upon this earth;
this was the essence of the territorializations which hominids
effected:
Page 29
A life is everywhere, in all the moments that
a given living subject goes through and that are
measured by given lived objects: an immanent
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 137

life carrying with it the events or singularities

that are merely actualized in subjects and
objects. This indefinite life does not itself have
moments, close as they may be one to another,
but only between-times, between-moments; it
doesnt just come about or come after but offers
the immensity of an empty time where one sees
the event yet to come and already happened, in
the absolute of an immediate consciousness.
Gilles Deleuze, Immanence: A Life;
in Pure Immanence.
The disjunctive difference between hominids and humans,
then, can be found in the fact that hominids literally carried
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
their given lived objects around with them, from place
to place, in the form of physical paradigmatic templates;
whereas humans for the most part carried mental templates
formed of the distinction, based in our conscious-of-self,
between subjects and objects.
Hominids lived in singularities, as the events of their lives;
and they produced their tools and weapons through the
singularities of paradigmatic templates, as living events. In
this way they lived the territorializations which defined their
relationships with an earth existing as undivided by either
subjectivity, or objects.
We can only begin to guess at the wide range of
paradigmatic templates our hominid ancestors might have
used to produce the conscious states they needed to survive
within the various territorializations which they effected on
this earth; but there can be no doubt that they did indeed
employ such external forms of physical memory.
We will encounter many such external forms when we
begin to examine the archaeological record of the transition
which occurred between the unreflective consciousness which
typified hominids, and the reflective consciousness-of-self
which humans developed.
>>>
For the moment, though, there is one particular aspect of
The Hominid Stone which demands further examination; and
this is the nature of that strange little protuberance which
appears to be the master template for a sliding/locking notch
technology.
Because no matter what difficulties these hominids faced
in forming conscious images of their thoughts, the very
existence of such a technology tells us something of utmost
importance concerning the evolutionary development of such
hominids: they had acquired the ability to shape different
things in such a way as to make them fit together; and as far
as I know, that is something which no other animal had done
138
before.
And again, although this is a momentous event, it does
not deviate from the evolutionary progression which we
have seen developing throughout the apparent history of
hominids. Mapping this sequence of deterritorializations
and reterritorializations, we have seen how the hominid
hand had to leave its grasp of tree branches in order to begin
grasping stone; and this, so that it might again grasp those
tree branches in the highland forests sitting, still intact,
atop precipitous cliffs. Yet as Bergson notes, that which any
organism has the capacity to become necessarily deviates
from what it is: and so, this early hominid divergence from
tree to stone set in motion a suite of adaptations which would
forever remove hominids from an arboreal environment.
As a consequence, hominids not only developed an
upright stature: they also began grasping stones through a
proportioned grip scaled into ratios which forever defined
their way of being upon this earth.
In all of this, we can see an ever increasing delay, as
that space in which consciousness comes to establish itself:
between the hand and the face, from the immediacy of
placing food in the mouth; and on through behaviors of ever
increasing complexity motivated toward one end: putting
food in the mouth.
At some point, though, these complexities took on a
productive dynamic all their own: and it was a material
dynamic, through which a previously produced tool or
weapon became the paradigmatic template for further
production.
At that point, a material dynamic diverged from the
primary motivation of the hand putting food into the mouth.
Instead, objects were being created that other such objects
might be produced. Productive activity was feeding itself
instead of directly feeding hominids.
The delay between hand and mouth which motivated the
conscious states of hominids became the delay of productive
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
activity, which was self-motivating and in itself motivational
of conscious states. Things such as paradigmatic templates
started being produced for what they were in themselves,
rather than simply what they did in physical instances of use.
Such objects were no longer employed in direct transferences
of kinetic force at ballistic speeds; instead, they modulated
much more rarefied transferences of energy: the articulations
of motor reflex activity and sensory perception which
compose the conscious states of hominids engage in acts of
production.
This was an evolutionary adaptation; because it did not
proceed as a case of like producing like but, rather, could
only have occurred as a divergent transfer of differential
relations. For between the paradigm and the stone it would
be used to shape, there would be no correspondence, and no
shared identity: there could only be the differences of form;
and it would necessarily be these differences which were
incrementally transferred from the paradigm to the slowly
forming singularization of what was in the process of being
produced.
Amazingly, we would have to say: hominids had managed
to grasp the in between of paradigmatic templates and
the objects they were used to produce; and they found a way
to hold onto the essential nature of this event-relation, by
physically incorporating its conceptual essence in stone.
This is what we see in the sliding / locking notch template of
The Hominid Stone.
It is such differentials of proportion, and of ratio, which
are transferred between paradigm and product: this is true
in stone tool or weapon production, and it is true in the
production of any images which depict other contemporary
hominids.
Here, we see a tenuous step toward consciousness as we
know it: in that such differential proportions must necessarily
underlie the process of shaping different things to fit each
other; and that the space defined by that fitting process, the
139
differential relationship holding between the two shaped
objects, does not exist.
This space of fitting is a nothingness, a not-there, yet it
co-determines both objects brought together in this fitting
process. This is what the sliding/locking notch technology of
hominids tells us: that despite their lack of a consciousness-of-
self, or the ability to form conscious images, these hominids
were nonetheless capable of externalizing conceptuality.
What we are looking at here is nothing short of an
externalization of articulation itself: and this is to say, an
externalization of the most basic aspect of what constitutes
a conscious state. So when we say that hominids did the
best they could with what they had to work with, it really is
difficult to imagine (from a human perspective) how they
might have done better, given the cognitive constraints
within which they lived.
>>>
Truly, it is the nature of this little bit of externalized
consciousness which is so utterly astounding; and so much so
that in this, we would have to recognize the very beginning of
our modern world.
In order to shape two different objects to fit each other,
it is necessary to be able to conceive that abstract concept,
fitting.
Even though a paradigmatic template was used to retain
the form of this sliding / locking notch, no two instances of
its use would ever have been the same: the original shape of
the materials used would always be different, and the actual
shaping which occurred would be unique in each case.
In addition, the initial relationships between the materials
being used would always differ; and this signals an entirely
new kind of thinking than that which can be demonstrated in
the production of stone tools using paradigmatic templates.
We are no longer dealing with the non-event of a never-
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
ending now which forever produces the same thing
endlessly.
In a sense, every instance in which a sliding / locking
notch was produced and put into use was a little innovation
in itself. So while over a million years passed without the
basic shape of the hand axe being changed, every use of a
sliding / locking notch required changing this basic form in
its application to the materials used; and more importantly,
each use would have been adapted to the way in which
the materials used were related to each other. It was not a
simple thing which was being produced here: it was instead
a sustained dynamic of force, as incorporated into tensioned
structures. One would almost have to say that, conceptually,
it was a way of giving an emotional memory to things; and, it
was a way to make things motivate themselves. For hominids,
it was the happy comfort of a portable shelter; and it was a
complex thing which stayed in that way of its own accord. It
was not something which could be eaten.
This particular form of paradigmatic template functions
through an abstract ideal; which not only causes one to
wonder how close these hominids were to us, but, also just
how far the philosopher Plato (with his doctrine of Ideal
Forms) was from them.
It is difficult to think of many things we count among our
greatest advances which are not ultimately traceable back to
this simple shaping of different things to fit with each other.
None of our current technologies could exist without that
concept; none of the devices or material goods in our modern
world could be produced if that concept were removed from
use. All of the aspects of our advanced cognitive processes
employ it: the syntax of speech, the grammar of writing, the
logic of reason: all are in essence the shaping of thoughts in
ways they can be made to fit with each other.
The process of naming things - and particularly, of doing
so as a form of communicating between people - is a fitting of
thing to thing: of signifier to signified.
140
The very nature of conscious subjectivity, of the self-
consciousness that has been one focus of this inquiry, is
precisely a fitting of one thing to another; it is simply the
fitting of consciousness to itself, in a production which shapes
itself as that very singularity of the temporal which Bergson
defined in terms of continuous multiplicity: it is the self
becoming different without becoming other.
As Homo sapiens, we define the fundamental nature of
our being human through a shaping of thoughts, that they
may fit together well. What is so interesting thing here is that
hominids had managed to advance to the point where they
were at least doing exactly that with physical things; and
in turn were using physical things to motivate the way they
thought.
Clearly, although we are very close to where human and
hominid cognitive patterns diverged from each other, we are
still dealing with a commonality of thought shared by both
species.
This time, though, we are not looking at a lower limit for
human cognition which defines an upper edge for hominid
thought: instead, we seem to be examining something which
is completely integral to both species cognitive processes.
This is something which we definitely need to examine very
closely; because as it turns out, this is precisely where we are
going to find the origin of writing taking shape.
>>>
Jacques Derrida identifies the essential nature of writing in
a way which corresponds to that nonexistent space between
shaped, fitted objects; which he calls:
The Trace
Page 62-63
The (pure) trace is differance. It does not
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates
depend on any sensible plenitude, audible or
visible, phonic or graphic. It is, on the contrary, the
condition of such plenitude. Although it does not
exist, although it is never a being-present outside
of all plenitude, its possibility is by rights anterior
to all that one calls sign (signified/signifier,
content/expression etc.), concept or opeartion,
motor or sensory. This differance is therefore
not more sensible than intelligible and it permits
the articulation of signs among themselves
within the same abstract order - a phonetic or
graphic text for example - or between two orders
of expression. It permits the articulation of
speech and writing - in the colloquial sense - as
it founds the metaphysical opposition between
the sensible and the intelligible, then between
signifier and signified, expression and content,
etc. If language were not already, in that sense, a
writing, no derived notation would be possible;
and the classic problem of relationships between
speech and writing would not arise.
Differance is therefore the formation of the
form. But it is on the other hand the being-
imprinted of the imprint.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology,
No, those are not spelling mistakes: Derrida does spell
difference as differance, to draw attention to the graphic
nature of writing; and to distinguish that which he is
referring to - the concept of differance that he has taken great
care to define in just a certain way, through book after book
- from what people automatically think of when they see the
word difference. I guess you could say that his differance is,
well, differant. So I am pretty sure he would spell operation
as opeartion: that distinguishes the word from concept in
a certain way; that being the way we think the in between
of operation and opeartion (with the differance being,
well, one of those).
141
The point being made here is that, although we dont
normally or consciously think about it, here we all sit
reading Derrida, momentarily possessed by spelling:
mentally arranging within our minds little letters, shifting
them around and substituting one for another until the
proper assemblage, the appropriate arrangement for the
sense we mean to convey falls into place; which is in a
sense the nature of the trace of which he speaks. Just for
a moment, our consciousness is that act of shaping things
(letters in a word arrangement) to fit with other things
(what we know that word to be); just for a moment our
minds are sweeping through the immanence that holds a
word together, surveying the intensive ordinates that are
the way the letters go together (with a different feeling of
intensity in recognition for wrongly spelled words) before
a corresponding thought of that concept forms for us. This
phenomenological experience of ordinate intensities, briefly
experienced through considerations of such proper ordering
of letters, is very similar to the experience of waveform
signatures experienced during the practice of Taijiquan at
extreme speeds (except in that case, of course, there is a very
significant motor reflex component to the consciousness being
formed).
I suppose if ones mind were to be that kind of in between
experience constantly, non-stop, then one would have
a really good idea what it would have been like to be a
hominid. I have to confess, though, that if the experience of
consciousness was continuously characterized by a shifting
and rearranging of the ordinate intensities which impressions
(perceptual and nonthetic) produce within a context of the
minds emotional states, then I vastly prefer the Golden
Flower Meditation of Turning The Light Around.
That being said; it has been made very clear in Derridas
observations concerning the nature of The Trace: we must
consider this occurrence of the concept shaping things to
fit together, as demonstrated by The Hominid Stone, to be
an absolutely necessary (although not necessarily sufficient)
precursor concept which has to be established before the
development of writing can occur.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 08.0) Considering Paradigmatic Templates 142

which it came out of; even if that something else is just

We have here a compelling demonstration that hominids
were capable of externalizing the articulations which
composed their conscious states, and stabilizing such
externalizations in a persistent physical form.
We also know that the articulations we are seeing, as
having formed through the use of paradigmatic templates,
were being materially stabilized in those objects produced
as something consistent with the way in which concepts are
formed.
So even if we cannot attribute volitional memory to
hominids (because they do not appear to have developed a
consciousness-of-self), it is nonetheless apparent that what
we know of The Trace is sufficient to have allowed for the
formation of an externalized memory whereby knowledge
was retained through produced objects:
Page 70
If the trace, arche-phenomenon of memory,
which must be thought before the opposition of
nature and culture, animality and humanity etc.,
belongs to the very movement of signification,
then signification is a priori written, whether
inscribed or not, in one form or another, in a
sensible and spatial element that is called
exterior.
another moment, an after which distinguishes a difference-
in-kind.
And this, claims Derrida, establishes the primacy of writing
in the nature of The Trace through which difference is
retained as such.
The considerations we have been entertaining certainly
suggest an interesting possibility.
At this point in our inquiry, we must say: hominids appear
to have acquired the basic conceptual prerequisites necessary
for the development of writing.
Since objects produced of paradigmatic templates come into
being through the articulations of consciousness, and can be
demonstrably shown to have existed for hominids as a form
of material concept; and, since we have evidence here of
a paradigmatic form which embodied an abstract concept
that is fundamental to grammatological structure: can any
evidence be found which would indicate that hominids might
have developed a prototypical or precursor form of writing?

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology.

This is something which we noted and commented

upon earlier: that if any product of human consciousness
is considered to be transcendent and to rise above or
otherwise distinguish itself from consciousness, then, it still
has to go somewhere; it still has to be localized in a specific
place and it cant just occur in a nothingness located
nowhere.

Derrida makes the point that such an occurrence, as other

to its origin, is thus necessarily of something else than that
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology 143

09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic To determine if this might have happened, we would

have to know exactly what we would be looking for when
Grammatology seeking such a precursor form of writing; and the first step
in determining what such a hominid origin of writing might
Given what we have been able to reconstruct of the
entail would be to examine the components in Derridas
conscious states hominids appear to have effected through
concept of The Trace.
their use of tools, and the paradigmatic templates they used
to produce their tools, a tantalizing possibility suggests
Concepts do not arise out of nothing; and Derrida appears
itself: having advanced to the point where they were in
to have developed this concept from his meticulous analysis
possession of the necessary precursor elements required for
of Husserls Origin Of Geometry. One of the most obvious
the formation of writing, hominids may in fact have gone one
hints of this occurs in a footnote by Derrida on page 89 of
step further and begun using some form of proto-writing.
that text:

Page 89
The possibility or necessity of being incarnated
in a graphic sign is no longer simply extrinsic and
factual in comparison with ideal Objectivity:
it is the sine qua non condition of Objectivitys
internal completion. As long as ideal Objectivity
is not, or rather, can not be engraved in the world
- as long as ideal Objectivity is not in a position to
be party to an incarnation (which, in the purity
of its sense, is more than a system of signals or
an outer garment) - then ideal Objectivity is not
fully constituted. Therefore, the act of writing is
the highest possibility of all constitution, a fact
against which the transcendental depth of ideal
Objectivitys historicity is measured.

What Fink writes about speech in his excellent

transcript of the Origin is a fortiori true for
writing: In sensible embodiment occurs the
localization and the temporalization of what is,
by its being-sense, unlocated and untemporal.

[Note 92: This sensible embodiment has the

peculiar qualities of both senses inhabitation of
the word (mot) and the here and now use of the
words ideality. In the first case, embodiment is
at its limit the inscription of an absolutely free
and objective ideality (that of geometrical truth,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
for example) within the bound ideality of the
word, or in general of a more free ideality within a
less free ideality. In the second case, embodiment
is that of a necessarily bound ideality, that of the
words identity within language, in a real-sensible
event. But this last embodiment is still done
through another step of mediate ideality which
Husserl does not directly describe, but which
we think can be located on the basis of strictly
Husserlian concepts. It is a question of ideal forms
or vague morphological types (a notion that we
will have occasion to specify further on), which
are proper to the corporeality of graphic and
vocal signs. The forms of graphic and vocal signs
must have a certain identity which is imposed
and recognized each time in the empirical fact
of language. Without this always intended and
approximate ideal identity (that of letters and
phonemes, for example), no sensible language
would be possible or intelligible as language,
nor could it intend higher idealities. Naturally,
this morphological ideality is still more bound
than the words ideality. The precise place of
the properly termed realizing embodiment is
ultimately therefore the union of the sensible
form with sensible material, a union traversed
by the linguistic intention which always intends,
explicitly or not, the highest ideality. Linguistic
incarnation and the constitution of written or
scriptural space suppose, then, a closer and
closer interconnection of ideality and reality
through a series of less and less ideal mediations
and in the synthetic unity of an intention. This
intentional synthesis is an unceasing movement
of going and returning that works to bind the
ideality of sense and to free the reality of the sign.
Each of the two operations is always haunted by
the sense of the other: each operation is already
announced in the other or still retained in it.
Language frees the ideality of sense, then, in the
very work of its binding (interconnecting)]
144
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
>>>
Derridas encounter with phenomenology through Husserl
very much hinges upon how Husserl conceives objects.
Throughout Husserls writings, Derrida finds that the self
certainty of Ren Descartes fundamental pronouncement
I think therefore I am is grounded in the stability of
objects, and the referential acts that consciousness makes
toward objects. Husserl wants to see the nature of being
human as being rational, and to find in this the same solid
assurance to be found in our experience of objects. However,
in single-mindedly holding to this approach, Husserl ends up
devaluing within his concept of being human much of what
Derrida considers to be some of the most important aspects of
human existence: poetry and literature, to name just a few.
Derrida found this approach to be a dominant
characteristic of Western philosophy, from (at least) the time
of Plato onward; and in a direct critique of that approach,
Derrida set about deconstructing philosophy to show how
the ideas of the present and presence (as defined by
objects, as an objectivity which structures how the world
is thought about) determines what was thought under the
name of philosophy. As we have seen with other post-
structural philosophers who have sought out ways to think of
the world without resorting to subjectivity and objectivity,
Derrida was not alone in this; and he pushed his philosophic
analyses to the point where those structural preconceptions
concerning the nature of thought became apparent.
In that we are dealing here in a large part with artifacts
from human prehistory, Husserls in-depth investigations
into the way that objects and human thought interact are
certainly of considerable use. In that we need to think
through these interactions in ways that concepts such as
subjectivity and objectivity would not allow us, the post-
structural philosophers provide us with approaches for
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
creating concepts which are much more responsive to the
situations we are investigating (rather than forcing us to
rely on recycling tired old ideas that arose of demands far
removed from our current concerns).
In the above quote, Derrida details how Husserl
demonstrates the way in which what he considers to
be ultimate achievement of human rationality, Ideal
Objectivity, can only come to be through writing. In a
sense, this end product of the rational human subject can
only become truly objective by being given the kind of
presentation which is characteristic of objects: and for the
products of our rationality, that means being objectified as
writing.
As we have seen, hominids appear to have managed to
objectify concepts in their own unique way; so it does seem
entirely possible that they might have managed to create
their own strangely material form of writing. Certainly, this
matter demands further investigation.
Derridas contention is that writing, and reading, are
processes; and that writing can only becomes a thing within
the flow of time, which is always simply our experience of
difference (or if you prefer, differance). For us, though, in
the course of this ongoing analysis, our concerns lie with
the concept of articulation; and so it is possible for us to look
through these writings to find little bits of that which might
be of use to us, provided we pay attention to just exactly what
it is we are thinking of putting to our own use. That is the
process of philosophy: finding useful concepts, taking them
apart to see what they are made from, and then putting
them back together in a way which will be of the most use
in current circumstances. This is why Derrida uses the term
differance: to let people know that he isnt using a concept
which he just found, but is instead using one which he
remade from the idea difference (which has been around in
philosophy for so long, and has been used in the same way
by so many people, that it was probably a little too worn for
Derrida to make fine enough distinctions with).
145
Im mentioning this because we are about to start making
some fine distinctions ourselves.
So: in the above quote, we see that Husserl would have the
reasonableness of reason rise out of the human mind that
it might find a proper place in the world around us. It is not
our concern what Husserl might have thought that place
should be; but we must note that the internal completion,
the endoconsistency of the concept ideal Objectivity
demands the components place and time, which it can
find in writing. We too will need to consider the concepts of
location and temporality as we begin to examine more closely
the origin of writing. Derrida suggests that there are wider
choices which can be made here than location as presence
and time as present (the now); and that the extent of
these choices exceeds those presently incorporated into the
way in which writing is currently defined. This will be a
very important consideration when we begin to reconstruct
writings origin: and it is the kind of choice which we will
have to make carefully: how are we to define the sense of
location we need before writing can be said to specifically
happen anywhere? And how will we determine the temporal
nature of writing, its existence in time as a process?
Since Derridas own investigations have indicated that the
concept he calls The Trace is more fundamental to writing
than that of presence which Husserl finds therein; and since
Derridas trace appears remarkably close to what we have
found in the process of shaping things to fit together, it
would seem that we already have access to something ready-
at-hand which will be much more useful to us than Husserls
rational choice to define writing through presence. Indeed,
we have already been using a concept of temporality as the
difference-in-kind of event; and that has served us well
as a conceptual tool. So although we do not need to use the
concept of presence which Husserl used in fusing writing
with ideal Objectivity, we might eventually consider having
a look at where Husserl found the time he used for writing,
to see if he might have overlooked something of event that
could prove useful to us.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
The first thing that seems of interest in Footnote 92 above
is that Husserl places ideal Objectivity within writing as
a placing of the freely constructed concept within the
determined word. At this point in our own analysis, we have
yet to see anything which resembles a word: we have seen
only artifacts. We havent seen any ideals placed into these
artifacts; in fact, we have seen quite the contrary: we have
seen the paradigmatic production of implements persisting
in a unchanged form for over a million years. But lets not be
too hasty here; for Derrida specifies that the embodiment
in words Husserl draws upon is that of a more free ideality
occurring in a less free ideality.
Certainly, paradigmatic template forms seem to be pretty
much the least free ideality ever conceived in the history of
this planet. Can we find any aspect of freedom embodied in
them?
We definitely wont find the freedom of innovation. But
we do find what Deleuze and Guattari call a vector of
deterritorialization: hand axe technology appears to have
greatly freed hominids from their cliff side origins, and
to have allowed them to reterritorialize ever more widely
diversified environments. So while we havent encountered
ideals placed in words, we have seen tool use embodied in
stone.
The second thing we note is the temporal aspect of any
words use in a here and now. This is the words identity
within language, which is determined through the event of
its use. In contrast, we have noted the way in which tools
were retained for use; and that the use of tools was never a
present but always occurred as a before which differed
from an after. This is consistent with the nature of a tool, as
the difference-in-kind for which tools are produced.
With Husserl, we see the sense of ideal Objectivity
becoming embodied through the repetition of the word.
In our ongoing analysis, we have seen tool use spreading
in an ever widening territorialization; and instead of an
146
embodiment in this, we have seen the events of tool use
articulating the before and the after of that dynamic
vector through which territory extended.
We seem to be staying quite far away from Husserl, and
from writing: we have yet to encounter anything which
would appear to be the corporeality of graphic and vocal
signs, which are reached through ideal forms or vague
morphological types.
A case could be made that the space of fitting conceptually
established through the sliding / locking notch template
would constitute an ideal form; in which case we would
be back with Derridas trace. But, what are these vague
morphological types?
Of Husserls analysis of these, Derrida remarks:
Page 123
By itself alone, then, a static analysis could
a priori and rigorously recall for us that the
protogeometer always already had at his disposal
anexact spatiotemporal shapes and essentially
vague morphological types, which can always
give rise to a pregeometrical descriptive science.
This could be called geography.
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
We may not be seeing here what writing is (not yet,
anyway); but we are seeing exactly how it is going to occur,
and what form it will take when it does occur: what Deleuze
and Guattari call geophilosophy.
We will probably find evidence of maps before we find
evidence of writing; well have to watch for that, because you
never know where a good map might lead.
And actually, I do believe that I have spotted one already;
sitting right in front of everyone, in the form of a very famous
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
piece of incised red ocher dated to 75,000 years ago, from the
Blombos Cave in South Africa. A cursory visual comparison
between this artifact and a photograph of the cliff in which
that cave is located suggests to me that the incisions on the
ocher were a proportional transference of the differential
features of that cliff. Of course, the actual contours of the cliff
would have changed greatly over that long of a time; but, the
relative distances between what appear to be at least three
(and possibly more) cave sites marked on the ocher would
still be the same.
It seems quite possible that the territorial relationships of
which Deleuze and Guattari speak come to be embodied
very early in human prehistory, through the form of material
objects, as a very rudimentary form geography.
>>>
To continue, then: the next point of interest we find is the
stipulation that the form which signs take must be recognized
each time; otherwise, language is unintelligible.
We do have an each and every time being repeated in
the form of paradigmatic templates; so, that is a good sign. It
would appear that one of the most basic characteristics which
Husserl defines for writing is readily evident in the use of
paradigmatic templates by hominids. However, we also cant
help but notice that this particular aspect of temporality is
in fact that of the present or the now, infinitely repeated.
This is the formulation of time that Husserl chose to use in his
concept of writing; however, we have already decided that
we will be using a different concept of the nature of time: the
event.
Instead of concerning ourselves with the identity of signs
as the same occurring each time, we will need to be
looking for difference (or differance, should any turn up).
As for where to look for this, Derrida has already told us:
anterior to all that one calls sign.
If we employ the temporality of difference-in-kind as
147
event in our concept of writing, we wont be seeing language
which is intelligible: we will instead be seeing intelligibility as
language. THAT is the sensible embodiment which we can
expect to find; and it already sounds as if it might be quite a
bit more useful to us than the option Husserl offers.
Now, the exact nature of this realizing embodiment is
given here as the union of the sensible form with sensible
material, a union traversed by the linguistic intention...
always haunted by the sense of the other
What might this be? A union of form and material, haunted
by a transverse sense.
Sounds like the possession of knowledge to me; or at least,
knowledge as possession.
This is something which we encountered earlier, with
reference to Sartres description of image chains that
establish an unreflective progress of knowledge; a process
which we found to be entirely consistent with Agambens
description of the singular usage of paradigmatic templates.
There, we found that the possession of objects which had
been produced for specific territorial purposes constituted
a form of knowledge in situations occurring long before
consciousness-of-self seems to appear in the evolutionary
record.
In that analysis, we found that the process of paradigmatic
production was defined by the concept of singularity; so,
instead of using the temporality of presence / the present
as Husserl did, and looking at any sign as something the
same occurring each time, we can instead look at signs
as singularities, as forming of the singular: as somehow
being unique occurrences each time, despite maintaining a
consistency which determines such occurrences collectively as
writing.
That is the sense of seeing intelligibility as language which
we are looking for: language, writing and knowledge as
something being actively produced through direct territorial
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
encounters with anything whatever of this earth that compels
thinking.
>>>
It thus appears that by following Derridas trace, we might
find our way to intelligibility as language. This seems like
a good way to start, because we are looking for the origin
of writing; and it looks as if this approach could take us to
a point before intelligibility becomes language. That would
let us examine the sensible embodiment which Husserl
employed: but we would be doing so where writing comes
into being from intelligibility; and that is exactly the position
we are trying to find.
Lets have a closer look in the vicinity of Derridas
trace, in a way which keeps us close to the approach of
sensible embodiment which Husserl utilized. We have
already established from this analysis a way of looking at
the temporal which we can use to construct our concept
of writing; so now, lets try and get a better concept of
localization; because although the one we just came up with
will no doubt prove very useful, it seemed to lead us closer to
geography than to writing.
Returning to Derridas trace by way of that space of
fitting implied by the sliding / locking notch of The Hominid
Stone, lets see if we can find a concept of localization which
might be more closely related to writing. This should indicate
to us precisely where intelligibility will come to be embodied
as writing.
The essential nature of graphic inscription can be
established by the way in which the trace can be closed back
in on itself within the phenomenology of visual space, as
demonstrated by Robert French:
Page 118
Consider the following example given by Sir
William Hamilton (1877, Vol. II, p. 165), of how
the contrast between two colors constitutes a
148
line, which may come back on itself and thus
constitute a figure:
It is admitted by all that we have by sight
a perception of colours, consequently a
perception of the difference of colours. But
a perception of the distinction of colours
necessarily involves the perception of a
discriminating line; for if one colour be
laid beside or upon another, we can only
distinguish them as different by perceiving
that they limit each other, which limitation
necessarily affords a breadth-less line - a
line of demarcation. One colour laid upon
another, in fact, gives a line returning upon
itself, that is a figure.
I will now show that it is plausible to hold that
such a division of visual space into two regions
where one region possesses a homogeneous
color which is sharply contrasted with the color
of a surrounding region, is sufficient to define
a boundary in the topological sense of the
word. In topology, a boundary is defined as
the set of points contained in both the closure of
the set being bounded and in the closure of the
complement of that set. It is true that since closure
is defined in terms of properties of neighborhoods
in the space, and since these neighborhoods are
defined in terms of the containment of open sets,
as Blank points out there is no way to rigorously
test whether visual space possesses boundaries
in this sense. However, inasmuch as the border
between color regions in Hamiltons example
is defined as the demarcation between the
regions, it would seem to share the essence of
the topological property of not being contained
within either region, although being contained
within the analogue of the closures of both. It
should also be emphasized that this boundary
is not a border possessing a third color, and thus
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
as Hamilton points out is a breadthless line, and
therefore truly one-dimensional. It follows then
that an expanse of a given color in visual space
can be bounded by a one-dimensional space, the
line constituted by the boundary between the
given color and its background color, and thus
by Poincares analysis of dimensionality, visual
space must be two-dimensional.
Robert French, The Geometry of Visual Space.
Source: Nos, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1987),
Published by: Blackwell Publishing Stable
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2214910
Accessed: 18/07/2009 20:19
>>>
{In the above quoted paper, the author continues on
to demonstrate that our mental (phenomenological)
experience of visual space is in fact curved, although this
is not something of which we tend to be consciously aware.
After having read this paper, that is one further principle
which I have made use of in my analysis of The Hominid
Stone: having now the capability to produce fairly large color
laser prints (11X17) of photographs I have taken of this
artifact, I now make a point of curving or bending those
printouts around in front of me when I look at them; and this
actually makes the images in these printouts surprisingly
easier to notice. Such images, when so noticed, also have a
sense of seeming somehow more natural to sight, as if a
closer correspondence between my perceptions and those
of whomever originally produced these images were being
established.}
Of particular interest here is the fact that such a
breadthless line, which corresponds to both the space of
fitting from The Hominid Stone and to Derridas trace,
defines a figure when it is closed back in on itself. Such
a figure is identified as bounded; and Derrida notes of
Husserls sensible embodiment that Language frees the
ideality of sense, then, in the very work of its binding
149
(interconnecting).
Here we have a sense in which the non-presence of
the trace can define a binding, through the formation
of the figural. This appears to provide us with a sense
of localization which is not determined by presence; and
through which we can find exactly where the freedom of the
conceptual comes to be embodied in bringing intelligibility
to that specific form of language into which we are inquiring:
writing.
Of course, a lot has happened since Sir William Hamilton
made the above quoted observations in 1877; and as it
turns out, the perception of two distinct colors does NOT
necessarily involve the perception of a discriminating
line:
Page 72-73
Opponency is ubiquitous in physiology. For
example, to bend your arm, you relax your
triceps while contracting your biceps; biceps and
triceps are opponents muscles, in that they act in
direct opposition to each other. In 1872 German
physiologist Ewald Hering suggested that color
vision was based on opponency between red and
green and between yellow and blue; at each spot
in the visual field, the redness and greenness
muscles, so to speak, opposed each other.
Page 73
The observation that people never see
mixtures of opponent colors has been one of the
most secure in cognitive science.
In 1983, however, Hewitt D. Crane and Thomas
P. Piantanida of SRI International in Menlo Park,
Calif., reported a way to dodge the perceptual
rules that forbid such colors as reddish green
and yellowish blue. They had their subjects look
at side-by-side fields of red and green or yellow
and blue. Their apparatus tracked their subjects
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
eye positions and moved mirrors to keep the
color fields stabilized - that is, frozen in place on
each subjects retina despite all the continual
little movements of the eye. Image stabilization
can lead to many interesting effects, such as an
image seeming to break into pieces that wax and
wane in visibility. Of particular interest to Crane
and Piantanida was the propensity for borders
to fade in stabilized images.
Page 74
When subjects stare at two adjacent fields with
equiluminant colors, they see the border between
the colors weaken and disappear, allowing the
colors to flow into each other - except in the case
of red-green or yellow-blue pairs. We knew that
this border-collapse effect is strongest when the
observer minimizes eye movements. Perhaps
the effects of equiluminance and stabilization
would combine synergistically, leading to border
collapse and color mixing powerful enough to
happen consistently even with opponent colors.
Page 75
The combination of equiluminance and
image stabilization was remarkably effective.
For the equiluminant images, six out of our seven
observers saw forbidden colors (the seventh
observers vision grayed out immediately every
time). The border between the two colors would
vanish, and the colors would flow across the
border and mix.
Vincent A. Billock and Brian H. Tsou,
Seeing Forbidden Colors;
Scientific American, February 2010.
If there were one particular principle of interest to us
which these experimental findings clearly indicate, it is
that what we know as our conscious states are very much
composed of an integration of motor reflex activity and
150
sensory perception. Removing one aspect of motor reflex
activity (the minute movements of our eyes) from a co-
extended relationship with our sensory perceptions results
in the articulation of a conscious state which clearly lacks
a fundamental aspect: the distinct division between two
adjacent colors.
Here is a radical demonstration of the co-extensive
integration of non-conscious processes with conscious states:
sensory perception can functionally forget that two adjacent
colors are distinct and separated from each other; and
without the constant motor reflex cues from eye movement
when such a distinction is being viewed, such forgetting
becomes articulated within conscious states.
The same phenomenon is seen, in a much less radical
form, in relation to the images within the First Nations
writing system which we have been directing ourselves
toward considering; and I mentioned an example of this
much earlier: that of the canyon and mesa landscape
which is sometimes, and sometimes not, visible on the front
of The Firelight Horse Stone. It is through the principle of
equiluminance that the features which define that vista
can shift in and out of consciousness, depending upon the
lighting. As I mentioned earlier, this is a strong indication
that there are non-conscious processes determining how such
images are perceived; and we will consider that matter very
soon, after a few other issues of equal importance.
{I would also like to mention here in passing that the role
of eye movement in distinguishing The Trace of edge
separation can be externalize to enhance our ability to
become consciously aware of the figural. Just rolling a small
stone with examples of the First Nations image writing upon
it in the palm of the hand while watching it will often greatly
increase the apparent clarity of distinction for those images
at that point when the stone stops rocking.}
>>>
It would seem that even the most stable perception of a
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
breadthless line between two very distinct colors can
only exist in our consciousness by way of the minute eye
movements which allow us to continuously refresh our
perception of the position which distinguishes such borders.
Derridas concept of the trace suddenly takes a new
connotation here: that of tracing, of something which does
not exist without the act of going over it in copying, or of
following it along; and this also seems to lead us back to the
concept of the paradigm.
Except, of course, we have already been there; and instead
of folding our analysis back on itself, we want to extend our
inquiry by examining the nature of that which occurs when
the trace is folded back upon itself: we want to examine
the concept of the figural. It is very important here that
we avoid the temptation to simply once again resort to the
concept of paradigmatic forms as an explanation of what
we are considering (in this case, the trace); after all, we
dont want to end up simply repeating ourselves for the next
million years, as hominids ended up doing!
This is exactly what Derrida contends occurred with
Western philosophy, through its reliance on the concept
presence. In his deconstruction of this structural tendency
within metaphysical though, Derrida noted that this closure
of philosophic thought was directly due to a reliance upon the
conceptual paradigm of presence and its associated concept,
the present. It is a point which is very hard to see from
inside such philosophic thought, precisely because the very
way in which such thought is necessarily structured through
this prevents any outside of different ways of thinking to
occur within it, where it could in effect be noticed by itself.
One might say that this has been the unreflective limit of
Western philosophy, where thought proved to be incapable of
lifting itself out of the endless sequence of what it had already
been.
We have noticed this effect before in our analysis: this is
in fact the root cause of the exclusion which has prevented
the form of writing invented by the First Nations from being
151
recognized as such within essentially Western academic
traditions.
Derrida directly documents this process of structural
exclusion within Husserls philosophy, and the traces he
found of this metaphysical closure are quite revealing.
Speaking of Husserls assessment of other cultural traditions,
Derrida notes finding the assumption that:
Page 115
Their stagnation would not be the mere
absence of historicity but a kind of finitude in the
project and recollection of sense. Therefore, and
only in comparison with the infinite and pure
historicity of the European eidos, do archaic
societies seem without history. In the Crisis,
moreover, Husserl only recognizes an empirical
type in those societies which do not participate
in the European Idea. Nonhistoricity, then,
would only be the lower limit-mode of empirical
historicity. The ambiguity of an example which
is at once an undistinguished sample and a
teleological model is still found here. In the first
sense, in fact, we could say with Husserl that
every community is in history, that historicity
is the essential horizon of humanity, insofar
as there is no humanity without sociality and
culture. From this perspective, any society at
all, European, archaic, or some other, can serve
as an example in an eidetic recognition. But
on the other hand, Europe has the privilege of
being the good example, for it incarnates in its
purity the Telos of all historicity: universality,
omnitemporality, infinite traditionality, and
so forth; by investigating the sense of the pure
and infinite possibility of historicity, Europe has
awakened history to its own proper end.
Thus Husserl is led to distinguish the originality
of various levels within the most universal eidos
of historicity. In a very brief fragment, whose
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
inspiration is very similar to that of the Origin,
Husserl determines three stages or steps of
historicity. In proportion to the advancement
in that hierarchy or to the progression in that
development, historicity assumes greater
possession of its own essence. First, there would
be historicity in the most general sense, as the
essence of all human existence, inasmuch as
human existence necessarily moves in the
spiritual space of a culture or tradition. The
immediately higher level would be that of
European culture, the theoretical project, and
philosophy. The third level, finally, would be
characterized by the conversion of philosophy
into phenomenology.
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserls
Origin of Geometry: An Introduction.
Of course, we have from the onset of this inquiry been
concerned with empirical considerations directly derived
from those encounters of this earth which compel thinking.
Husserls focus upon an idealism which defines thought as
something existing in itself, as found with Descartes I think
therefore I am, is ultimately a form of mind/body dualism
which for the most part was determined by religious doctrines
concerning the nature of a postulated soul. This is the core
of what Derrida notes is an onto-theological determination of
the nature of being implicit within Western metaphysics.
Criticized in many embodiments: as Eurocentricism,
(European society as the culmination of human
development), ethnocentricism, (any particular society
taken as the model to which all others are compared),
logocentricism, (logic as the ultimate achievement of human
thought), and in places phonocentricism (speech taken as
the form which defines all language, including writing); such
an approach toward establishing the validity of knowledge
and the ultimate determination of what constitutes truth is
structurally inherent all the way back to the very roots of
all Western thought, and by structural implication all of the
152
sciences.
We have been very careful here in avoiding the conceptual
pitfalls previously excavated by those looking for truth within
established Western conceptual traditions. Instead of relying
upon concepts of dubious and unknown provenance, we
have focussed our inquiry through non-excluding concepts
such as co-extension, articulation, and the in between;
and through considering time in terms of event, and of
difference-in-kind: an approach which appears to have
worked quite well.
We even managed to replace the concept of ontology,
which we initially employed, with that of conceptual
personae; and we did this in process, in much the same
way which Derrida demonstrated through his conversion of
difference into differance.
As Derrida noted in his deconstructions of Western
philosophy, it is always necessary to start with something,
even if the intention is to produce something quite differant:
as Deleuze and Guattari noted; concepts, being constructed,
do not come out of nothing. This is why we began this section
of our inquiry by basing our analysis within that of Husserl,
knowing full well that we had no intention of staying there.
And in this, we should perhaps pause for a moment
to consider: when we began to position and localize our
inquiry by way of the concept of ontology, we noted that
this approach was already quite outside those commonly
employed within the field of anthropology. Having taken a
further step, we can expect that wherever we end up going, it
will be somewhere quite different than where anthropology
has led; since that at best has only managed to come up
with such new fields as cultural geography (a field we have
already moved far beyond through our use of concepts that
have been established in geophilosophy).
>>>
Now that we have determined what it is of the trace
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
which we can use to localize the physical embodiment of
knowledge, and of the intelligibility which occurs at the
origin of writing, we can proceed toward better defining what
it is of the figural that we might expect to see coming into
use at the origin of writing.
In his methodically thorough phenomenological inquiry
into images and their relationship to the imagination, Sartre
describes the characteristics of the figural through an
examination of schema or schematics:
Page 29
It is characteristic of the schema that it is
intermediate between the image and the sign.
Its matter demands to be deciphered. It aims
only to present relations. By itself it is nothing.
Page 30
Through these black lines we aim not just
at a silhouette, we aim at a complete man, we
concentrate in them all his qualities without
differentiation: the schema is full to bursting. To
tell the truth, these qualities are not represented;
in the proper sense, the black features do
not represent anything but some relations of
structure and attitude. But it is enough of a
rudiment of representation for all the knowledge
to be weighted down there, thus giving a kind of
depth to this flat figure.
The majority of schematic drawings are read
in a definite sense. Eye movements organize the
perception, carve out the spatial environment,
determine the fields of force, transform the lines
into vectors.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary
I do not think that anyone could have put us closer to where
we need to be than Sartre has.
153
First, he identifies schema (which are of the figural)
as midway between image and sign. We have already seen
image production and use on The Hominid Stone; and, lots
of it. So, if there is in fact a use of signs there, in any kind of
prototypical form of writing, we now know that it will in all
probability appear as a form of schemata, as something of
the figural. This tells us at least tentatively what it is that we
will be looking for. In addition, Sartre notes that the matter
of a schema demands to be deciphered: in other words, it
compels thought, and motivates consciousness. Then he tells
us that schema function in such a way as to only present
relations; and this is quite insightful, for we had considered
earlier something else which was defined primarily through
the relations which it defined: irreal dream-object pronouns,
which substitute for a sleeper within a dream, allowing
the sleeper to be a part of the dream. This, we saw, was
a cognitive state which seemed to be characteristic of
consciousness as territoriality; or, of the object possession of
knowledge.
Next, he tells us that these schematic figures are not
representational; and this is very important, because
we could only ever expect to find representational
characterization within consciousness-of-self; and that is not
an aspect of consciousness which we have seen demonstrated
in reference to the cognitive processes of hominids. And
indeed, this is something which we were expecting to see:
since we had previously determined that we need to find
some form of sign production which can be characterized
by the process of singularization, we already know that we
are looking for something which is not defined by a certain
identity which is imposed and recognized each time.
It will be of great interest to see how such singular schema
as are produced of the figural can embody knowledge;
and this is a matter to which Sartre immediately addresses
himself. It turns out, according to Sartre (and we have no
reason to doubt him on this point), that it is eye movement
which is responsible for embodying a knowledge component
within schema defined through the figural. This certainly
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
shouldnt come as a surprise to us now, since we have just
seen conclusive evident that, without minute eye movements,
everything that is constituted within consciousness from the
figural doesnt just cease to exist: it ceases to even function
as an aspect of consciousness.
The figural isnt a thing: it is a process of consciousness.
The figural doesnt cease being: it ceases to function. It
isnt a thing which can be present or not present: it is a
process which is producing a difference-in-kind, a divergence
between the conscious states formed when it is functioning,
and when it is not. And since the figural so defined is
necessarily of a temporal aspect, we can immediately see
that this form of localization will be particularly well suited
for embodying the singularizations of difference-in-kind:
the figural has a natural affinity for the events of which
concepts are formed.
So, now we know that we have a sense of localization
which is a process, rather than a thing: instead of looking
for writing as something we have seen before, we can look
for where writing begins to form; and that is exactly what
we have been looking for all along. Further, we can also
now suspect that we might find this formation occurring
with respect to such non-conscious processes as determine
the nature of the figural; and if this is so, then we will
immediately find ourselves working with an aspect of
intersubjective commonality which will abrogate any
concerns regarding intelligibility: we will indeed have found
where intelligibility becomes writing. Instead of words being
repeated and recognized through memory as the same every
time, we will probably find writing being produced anew
through each instance of its occurrence; and we should also
find that non-conscious processes are directly implicated in
such production, establishing an intersubjective commonality
for all people: writing as a truly subjectless transcendental
field, as suggested by Jean Hyppolite .
As if this wasnt enough, Sartre also describes how eye
movements - in tracing the form of schema, of the figural
- are transformed by consciousness into vectors, and fields of
154
force; and this tells us how intelligibility becomes embodied
in writing as knowledge: through intensive ordinates, and as
the conceptual. And since, as we noted earlier, the relational
nature of the schema shows such strong affinities with the
dream object pronouns we encountered earlier, we are in an
excellent position from which to proceed to the next step in
that part of our analysis: conceptual personae.
In other words, we can expect to see intelligibility embodied
in writing through the formation of conceptual personae.
These will be formed of the relations between conscious
states and that sense of territoriality through which the
earth compelled thought; with such thoughts embodied as
concepts, as composed of intensive ordinates derived from
events; with these intensive ordinates traced as differences
within the figural, the sense of which is produced by vectors
and fields of force as traced by eye movements.
It seems, then, that we can expect to see intelligibility
embodied in writing through symbolic schema which place
us in the relational context of territorializations effected by
the conceptual personae through whom such writing was
produced.
We wont even need to know any words, of any language,
in order to understand what we will be able to read where
intelligibility becomes writing. All we will need to be able to
do is to correlate the vectors formed of the figural through
our eye movements tracing outlines, with, visual impressions
retained from our experience of things within the world: and
as Bergson demonstrated for us much earlier, such movement-
based memory functions quite separately from the voluntary
memory we find associated with consciousness-of-self.
>>>
Having already seen that non-conscious processes are
directly implicated in our conscious perceptions of the
figural, we might pause to consider whether there are other
such non-conscious visual processes which might be of
importance to our inquiry.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
As it turns out, there are; and, they are VERY important
to our inquiry. In addition to the Dorsal Stream neurons
which process visual information non-consciously, and which
continuously direct motor reflex activities, there is another
area of visual processing sites called the Ventral Stream;
and this collection of neural processes directly shapes the
conscious nature of our visual experience by allowing use to
distinguish faces, places, and things:
Page 60
Similar functional imaging studies have
confirmed the existence of separate areas
dedicated respectively to the perception of faces
and places. For example, Nancy Kanwisher
at MIT has identified a face area which she
named FFA (fusiform face area), which is
activated much more by pictures of faces than
by other pictures such as everyday objects,
buildings, or even scrambled pictures of faces.
This area is quite separate from another area
(PPA - parahippocampal place area) which is
activated by pictures of buildings and scenes, but
much less by faces. Yet another area has been
identified which relates to everyday objects (like
fruit, cups, TV sets and vases).
Page 62
The critical areas for colors, faces, and places
are located close together on the underside of
the brain near the junction of the occipital and
temporal lobes, combining to form a region, along
with area LO, more on the lateral surface, that
constitutes most of the human equivalent of the
monkeys ventral stream. Although the degree
of overlap among the different areas remains
controversial, there is no doubting their separate
existence. The brain imaging experiments and
the clinical studies both point to one undeniable
conclusion: our perceptual experience is not the
product of a general purpose object recognition
155
system but is instead the creation of a set of
quasi-independent visual modules.
This cluster of visual areas on the underside
of the temporal lobes seems to house most of
the machinery that underlies our perceptual
experience.
David Milner and Melvin Goodale, Sight Unseen.
Here we find exactly the kind of neural commonality we
need in order to establish a form of shared knowledge
which is independent of experience, and so could provide a
basis for the intelligibility which becomes embodied through
writing. We still have to work out the actual process of this
embodiment; but we have every reason to suspect that it can
proceed within the parameters we have been outlining.
We already know that there are images on The Hominid
Stone: lots of images. However, there is no clear indication
that these images were produced through anything but
proportional transferences within the immediacy of
direct perception; and without any evidence indicating a
consciousness-of-self, we cannot even establish the basis here
for an imaging consciousness from this.
As it turns out, we dont need to establish that: because we
now know that there are very basic neural processes which
are dedicated toward determining when we are looking at
places, faces, and things.
Further: if we have a common capacity for determining
when we are looking at places, then, perhaps this might
provide some ground for conceptualizing the maps we
inadvertently happened upon, and tentatively identified
the potential existence of, in our earlier analysis above of
Derridas Note 92 regarding Husserls Origin Of Geometry.
Similarly, if we have a common capacity for determining
when we are looking at things, then this would no doubt be
a further way in which to discern the schematic functions
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
which are associated with the figural: for, we had previously
determined that some mechanism would be needed through
which the intensive vectors and fields of force associated
with the eye movements compelled by the figural could be
contextualized within some form of knowledge. Thus, even
if we do not here have the grounds of any kind of common
knowledge, we certainly have the grounds for a common
intelligibility; and that is exactly what we are looking for: a
way in which intelligibility becomes embodied in writing.
And after all, what would be the point of any kind of
writing if we did have some form of common knowledge
here? Writing needs to convey intelligibility; and it needs
to be formational of knowledge: but it can only do so as
difference, because if it functioned through a commonality
of the known, there would be no need for it to even exist;
because, there would be no function it could fulfill which
wasnt already being met by what is in reality an impossible
commonality of knowledge.
Above all, were there nothing else of interest upon The
Hominid Stone, there are images of faces: hominid faces. And
while we have maintained all along that these faces could
easily have been produced by a paradigmatic transference
of proportional differentials, proceeding directly from
perception into production upon the stones surface, there is
an important aspect of this that we have not yet considered.
We have every reason to suspect that such paradigmatic
objects very much were in a sense the person who possessed
them, in that these possessions were used to motivate the
formation of conscious states in those who held them. So in
a very real sense (much more real to them then than to us
now, of course), to produce images of fellow hominids upon
such a stone was to define oneself through them, too: and
this implies that, even without a consciousness-of-self, these
hominids had a socially constructed identity through which
they were part of a collective group, and so were defined
within that collective through their relationships with the
other members of the group.
It thus seems probably that the Ventral Stream neurology
156
responsible for facial recognition is, in the context of the
schema which compose the figural, likely to be somehow
associated with the intersubjective social context within
which writing necessarily forms.
Here, we are again encountering the subjectless
transcendental field which Jean Hyppolite postulated as
characterizing writing. And we are seeing this precisely
where relational characteristics are being singularized,
through intensive ordinates which compositionally constitute
concepts: in short, at the point where conceptual personae
form through the objects individuals produced, possessed,
and used.
>>>
Having now a better idea of how writing will at its origin be
localized, lets turn again to Derrida and his analysis of The
Trace: perhaps we will be able to gain further insights into
the nature of what we will be looking for at writings origin.
Since The Trace is directly implicated in the formation
of the figural; and since we have established that the
figural does in fact provide the localization we need, where
a singularization of the elements of writing proceeds, any
additional information we can gather concerning the
nature of The Trace will be directly applicable to our
understanding of what writing is, and, how and where it
came into being.
Page 46-47
Now we must think that writing is at the
same time more exterior to speech, not being
its image or its symbol, and more interior
to speech, which is already in itself a writing.
Even before it is linked to incision, engraving,
drawing, or the letter, to a signifier referring in
general to a signifier signified by it, the concept
of the graphie [unit of a possible graphic system]
implies the framework of the instituted trace,
as the possibility common to all systems of
signification. My efforts will now be directed
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
toward slowly detaching these two concepts from
the classical discourse from which I necessarily
borrow them. The effort will be laborious and we
know a priori that its effectiveness will never be
pure and absolute.
The instituted trace is unmotivated but not
capricious. Like the word arbitrary according
to Saussure, it should not imply that the choice
of the signifier is left entirely to the speaker
(p101) [pp. 68-69]. Simply, it has no natural
attachment to the signified within reality. For
us, the rupture of that natural attachment puts
in question the idea of naturalness rather than
that of the attachment. That is why the word
institution should not be too quickly interpreted
within the classical system of oppositions.
The instituted trace cannot be thought
without thinking of the retention of difference
within a structure of reference where difference
appears as such and thus permits a certain
liberty of variations among the full terms. The
absence of another here-and-now, of another
transcendental present, of another origin of the
world appearing as such, presenting itself as
irreducible absence within the presence of the
trace, is not a metaphysical formula substituted
for a scientific concept of writing. This formula,
beside the fact that it is the questioning of
metaphysics itself, describes the structure
implied by the arbitrariness of the sign, from
the moment that one thinks of its possibility
short of the derived opposition between nature
and convention, symbol and sign, etc. These
oppositions have meaning only after the
possibility of the trace. The unmotivatedness
of the sign requires a synthesis in which the
completely other is announced as such - without
any simplicity, any identity, any resemblance or
continuity - within what is not it.
157
That is why the movement of
unmotivatedness passes from one structure to
the other when the sign crosses the stage of the
symbol. It is in a certain sense and according
to a certain determined structure of the as
such that one is authorized to say that there
is yet no immotivation in what Saussure calls
symbol and which, according to him, does
not - at least provisionally - interest semiology.
The general structure of the unmotivated trace
connects within the same possibility, and they
cannot be separated except by abstraction, the
structure of the relationship with the other, the
movement of temporalization, and language as
writing. Without referring back to a nature, the
immotivation of the trace has always become. In
fact, there is no unmotivated trace: the trace is
indefinitely its own becoming-unmotivated. In
Saussurian language, what Saussure does not
say would have to be said: there is neither symbol
nor sign but the becoming-sign of the symbol.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology.
The Trace, then, must be instituted that it might provide
the framework for any sign to function within. In this, we
have a sense of the embodiment which we can expect to
see intelligibility acquiring in becoming writing. From our
paradigmatic example of the sliding / locking notch, we can
further qualify this sense of institution as meaning, within
our context, put into use; which is simply to say, acquiring a
linguistic function.
In other words, The Trace must be put into use for
intelligibility to become embodied as writing; and this
means, the figural must be put to some form of use. We have
already seen that the figural, through schema, always has
the function of defining relations; and this must occur in a
distinct and definable way, as the tracing of the figure by
the eye.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
In our initial survey of Derridas Note 92 above, we
first found that the most obvious embodiment we could
find relative to paradigmatic templates was the vector
of territorialization imparted into stone by tool use. This
suggests that the figural might be found to function
through relational vectors which perform functions of
territorialization, that in doing so it might produce writing as
knowledge.
This, however, seems difficult to reconcile with Derridas
statement that the instituted trace is unmotivational;
because, everything we have been looking at so far has
occurred in contexts which compel thought, which demand
to be deciphered. What does Derrida mean by this?
Let us review the analytic progression which first brought
us to the occurrence of a paradigm for shaping things to fit
together in the form of the sliding / locking notch template
on The Hominid Stone: perhaps we can find some indication
of where the sense of motivation, which has to this point
characterized the production of conscious states, becomes
something else.
Throughout those events in which hominids evolved
as tool users who walked upright, we found territorial
processes at work: deterritorializations which shifted the
hand away from branches, and reterritorializations which
placed the hand onto stone; deterritorializations which
shifted the attention of those hominids out onto the open
savanna, and reterritorializations which made that open
expanse their home. As this transpired, we noted an ever
extending range of conscious states; and we found that
these could be characterized by an ever increasing degree
of delay between the hand and the face. We found that the
complexity of the activities whereby food was placed by hand
into mouth steadily grew; and that the stable extension of
those conscious states which formed of such delay would
necessarily have persisted in articulating such complexities of
productive activity.
158
We saw how the objects produced through the use of
paradigmatic templates defined a new sense of territoriality
for the hominids; but also how this expanding territoriality
was in effect an increase in the range of conscious states.
This appeared to have been stabilized by the actual objects
being produced; and we observed how such object-relations
of territorial use came to define the relationships between
hominids and their territory. We saw how, even today,
vestigial traces of this kind of relationship still persist in
dream states, where objects can serve as a kind of positional
pronoun grounding the relations of the sleeper with the
surrounding dream environment.
We examined how such relationships, as ordinate
intensities, provided the means through which conceptual
personae might be constructed; and that this gave us ways
to specify the interpretive nature of our inquiry which the
generalities of an ontological approach could not.
We then began to investigate how such ordinate intensities
might come to be embodied within what we could consider to
be writing; and to determine what we would be looking for in
seeking how writing came to be formed.
But in all of this, we have from the very beginning
neglected one important aspect of our inquiry: we havent
considered what happens when the hand finally does put
something in the mouth.
It would seem that this simple act, which is the ultimate
motivation for all of the productive acts which define the
delays involved in seeking this final resolution, is somewhat
anti-climatic in the context of all the advances which have
come to pass in enabling its occurrence. Yet in this, we cant
help but see that distinctive characteristic which Derrida
gives in defining the nature of the sign as instituted trace. If
we are to see the sign as unmotivated, then we will not see it
coming into being through the delays in which consciousness
forms: we will instead see it occurring through the resolution
of these productive delays.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
The sign is characteristically of an end state in which the
delays of productive activities are resolved. The production
of signs is not directly involved in the activities that occur
in procuring food: signs are produced after these activities
have achieved their end goal. The production of signs is not
directly motivated by the need to obtain food.
Derrida tells us a little more about this process which
determines the institution of the trace as sign. He says that
the trace is indefinitely becoming unmotivated; and that
this occurs through the symbol becoming sign. To better
understand this, we can refer again to Sartres text The
Imaginary, where we can find passages related to both
symbols and signs:
Page 98
I could not accept a conception according to
which the symbolic function would be added to
the image from outside. It appears to me, and
I hope to have made it somewhat obvious, that
the image is symbolic in essence and in its very
structure, that one cannot remove the symbolic
function of an image without making the image
itself vanish.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
>>>
Throughout the text of The Imaginary, Sartre has
maintained that aspects of consciousness necessarily
motivate each other; and that this is because consciousness
must necessarily be transparent to itself. Because of this,
Sartre contends that any symbolic function is always
already incorporated within images.
If the image is symbolic in essence (Sartre); and the
trace is indefinitely its own becoming-unmotivated through
the becoming-sign of the symbol (Derrida): then it must be
that the sign comes into being as the image loses its symbolic
essence. In ceasing to intend the objects to which it points, the
159
image can become sign.
This would correspond to Derridas observation that signs
have no natural attachment to anything; an observation
with which Sartre concurs:
Page 53
The purely psychic content of the mental
image cannot escape this law: a consciousness
that faces the thing that it aims at is a perceptual
consciousness; a consciousness that aims emptily
at the thing is a pure sign consciousness.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
To aim emptily, then, is to be unmotivated; with
motivation thus appearing to be constituted by a
relationship to the real: this would be the natural
attachment to which Derrida was referring. So somewhere,
the direct relationship between perceptual consciousness and
the world becomes an empty relationship. Since we have been
considering such relationships as territorial, and as being of
that which compels thought, we must now determine what
exactly is becoming this empty relationship: is it territoriality?
Is it thought? Is it simply the compulsion to think? Again,
we turn to Sartre for a further elaboration of the nature of
symbolic thought:
Page 103
But it is very evident that the comprehension
is realized in and by the construction. The
structure of the concept to be comprehended
serves as a rule for the elaboration of the schema
and one becomes conscious of this rule by the
very fact of applying it. So that, once the schema
is constructed, there remains nothing more to
comprehend.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
This seems to tell us what we need to know. It is the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
construction of the symbol, of the schematic, which compels
thought and which motivates a distinct conscious formation
into being. This construction, or reconstruction through
an elaboration, follows the structure of the concept being
elaborated. This process ceases once the symbol or schema
is constructed: at that point, something we could call a sign
consciousness must instead be evident; and thus signs come
into being as definitionally unmotivated.
Interestingly, this process is entirely consistent with an
observation which Agamben made regarding the use of
paradigms: that paradigms entail a movement from
singularity to singularity which transforms every single
case into an exemplar of a general rule. This tells us: the
temporal singularizations effected by the figural will
establish those rules which define concepts, through
processes which produce signs.
If this is the process whereby the symbolic becomes the
sign, there are a few things of which we should take note.
First, it appears that this entire process is determined by
the conceptual. Now, we know that the conceptual is
defined in terms of intensive ordinates; and we know that
the figural produces intensive ordinates in being traced
by eye movement. It would seem, then, that the end state
of this process is where signs are formed; and not simply
as a cessation of motivation but rather, as a resolution.
When that which the figural is as a composite of intensive
ordinates has been surveyed, a concept is produced of this
endoconsistency; and the sign is formed precisely in the
process of continuing on to another composite structure,
another sign.
The sign articulates the endoconsistency of the concept,
as formed from the intensive ordinates of symbolic schema,
with its exoconsistency. This determines grammatological
relationships when consciousness-of-self is in evidence; and
when it is not, we can still expect to establish relationships of
territorialization, since these will always be in evidence with
any form of consciousness.
160
This, then, is the essential nature of grammatology: the
unmotivation which occurs at the moment when a sign
is singularized in its formation, and, so frees cognition to
proceed in its conceptual composition of another, then
another sign. This is the dynamic which underwrites
narrative structure, the syntactic articulation of meaning
within any grammatic composition. It is a process which is
inherently and essentially conceptual in nature.
The sign isnt characterized simply by not being necessarily
attached to anything, but rather in allowing consciousness to
continue on to something else. This is the dynamic of the sign
which we call grammatology, and it is why signs necessarily
seem to be found together, as occurring one after the other:
simply because it is of the nature of signs that they constantly
release attention and free it to continue on to something else;
and they do this through articulations in the exoconsistency
of conceptual structures.
To resolve a sign is to be unmotivated by it, to no longer be
compelled to trace the order of those intensities which the
signs differential elements produce: it is to have had ones
fill of the process whereby any particular sign comes into
being.
Page 105
Next, and especially, it is enough to produce
in oneself one of these schemas and as observer
to note that they do not at all have this role
of sign and representative. Without doubt,
there is in the schema a representative: it is
the affective-motor analogon through which
we apprehend the shape and its color. But the
schema itself is an analogon no more: it is itself
an object having a sense... We reach here the
true sense of the symbolic schema: this schema
is the object of our thought giving itself to our
consciousness. Thus the function of the schema
as such is not at all to aid comprehension; it
functions neither as expression nor as support
nor as exemplification. I willingly say, using
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
an indispensable neologism, that the role of the
schema and is as presentifier.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
{I will note in passing that here again, even with Sartre,
we see the concept of the present, of presence being
employed at a very critical point in this analysis. For our
purposes here, we would need to say: the schema functions
by producing a different kind of conscious state; and
we would need to recognize that we will be dealing with
singularities, rather than presentifications.}
This is a particularly interesting point that Sartre is
making, for here we see the symbolic schema which precede
the formation of signs occurring as objects composed of
affective-motor attributes. Now, we have been dealing with
such affective-motor composites throughout our inquiry:
they are the articulations of motor reflex activity and sensory
perception which we have defined as compositional of
conscious states. We have also encountered conscious states
occurring as objects, in the form of those artifacts which
define the territoriality of what we now consider conceptual
personae.
161
Implicitly, when schema become such sign-objects, they do
so in such a way as to result in the formation of conceptual
relationships characteristic of territoriality: signs function
as articulations embodying those relationships which are
compelled by the earth of thought.
We now reach a point where we have decisions to make.
Sartre continues on to describe such formations as thought
giving itself to consciousness. At the end of this process, as its
resolution, we will presumably have a sign. However, that
sign has to go somewhere; and the problem for us here is this:
in considering the cognitive processes of hominids we are
going to have assume that, without consciousness-of-self, the
resolution of any process through which a symbol becomes a
sign is not going to be within consciousness per say. It is going
to have to be a motor reflex activity articulated with sensory
perception that is externally produced, with reference to a
discrete object.
The difference here, the sign difference, is that this
production is not going to lead to food being put in the
mouth.
This isnt a motivation anymore: it is a modification, a
modification of objects. This implies: conceptual personae,
such as we can demonstrate their occurrence, are motivated
to produce those articulations of territoriality which
constitute their conscious states as object-relations; and doing
so, in productive acts, they modify objects using symbolic
schema which embody the intensive ordinates of these
territorial relations.
Hominids could not think these relations as objects
for consciousness, in the imaging consciousness of a
consciousness-of-self: they produced them, traced them, as
a further form of production for objects which defined their
territorial nature.
This is how the sliding / locking notch of The Hominid Stone
came to be formed, as an externalized form of articulation
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
which is characteristic of consciousness: as the material form
of a concept.
Hominids modified these objects; which is exactly what
must have been happening with the locking / sliding notch
template of The Hominid Stone: materials were being
modified, creating assemblages which did not have the end of
putting food in the mouth. Pieces of wood were being shaped
to slide and lock together, and this can only mean that at the
very least temporary, portable structures were being made.
This is the exoconsistent nature of the material concept
which was externalized on The Hominid Stone in the form of
the sliding / locking notch.
In this we can see a suggestion that the images of
other hominids upon The Hominid Stone are not just the
proportional transference of differential visual relations
onto stone: in all probability, these images are themselves
symbolic schema and as such are patterned as intensive
ordinates. These images must have been produced as
modifications which articulated territorial relationships
relative to the object being so worked: the exoconsistency
of the relationships holding between The Hominid Stone
and whomever created it, and the group in which they were
integral parts.
All of which brings us back to that question we had raised
earlier: is there any evidence of signs on The Hominid Stone,
of the kind of writing which would indicate that ideas as such
were being produced by hominids; who would therefore have
been capable of producing consciousness-of-self?
>>>
To answer this, we will again look toward Sartre for
direction; because although we know how a sign comes into
being, and what it is before it becomes a sign, we could use
more information here concerning exactly what a sign is and,
how we might readily recognize one.
162
Page 23
These reflections bring us to pose the question
of the relation of the image and the sign to their
objects. For the sign, the object is clear: the sign
consciousness as such is not positional In every
image, even in the one that does not posit its object
as existent, there is a positional determination.
In the sign as such this determination is lacking.
From an object which functions as sign, a certain
something is aimed at; but, of that something,
one affirms nothing, one limits oneself to aiming
at it. Naturally, this something is not manifest
through the signifying matter: it is wholly beyond
it.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
We now know that a sign does not posit anything, and so
is not positional. This is not what we might have expected
from out analysis of Husserls insights from Note 92 above:
there, we found that a sense of localization was one of the
characteristics which Husserl was seeking of writing. We
must therefore say: signs produce a localization which is not
positional.
We have been working with a concept which fits this
description: that of singularity, which we encountered
with paradigmatic templates; and its temporal correlate
singularization, the process which defines events as
differences-in-kind.
Looking back to Bergson, we note that the process
of singularization is always a divergence, in that the
actualization of virtual states always proceeds through
differentiation: there is nothing except for the process itself,
there can be no intended end before the process is complete.
If this is the nature of a sign, then we will never see it
positionally oriented but only functionally localized.
{This is certainly consistent with our experience: and
when words are employed as signs (in the physical,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
not the linguistic, sense), they are usually supplemented
with symbols (schema) such as arrows or appropriately
positioned sign posts to compensate for exactly that lack of
any inherent positionality which Sartre mentions. Even with
an accompanying arrow to indicate direction, a sign removed
from its signpost tells us absolutely nothing.}
This appears to be the sense of localization which we have
been looking for. To say that modifying objects with the
addition of graphemic elements singularizes them makes
perfect sense: particularly in the context of paradigmatic
production, where each example created would otherwise
be the same as every other. To say that intelligibility
might become embodied in writing through the process of
singularization makes perfect sense: it is of the essence of the
intelligible that it be of distinctions and discernment; that is,
of differentiations. To conceive of the sign as unmotivated, in
being a resolution of productive activity, is again to invoke
singularization: this time, from the finality of that end-state
of eating to which all productive activity was for hominids
focused; and on into the discrete nature of the sign, as
something which has a consistency of immanence which
marks it as distinctly conceptual. The use of signs would
singularize the objects to which they were applied; but such
modifications would not have been motivated by the need to
procure food.
And we do find something in the sign which is not of a time
defined by the present, even in Sartre; specifically, in relation
to such signs as are employed in imitation (mime):
Page 26
the consciousness of imitation is a temporal
form, which is to say, it develops its structures
in time. It is consciousness of signification, but a
special sign consciousness that knows beforehand
that it is to become an image consciousness. It
then becomes imaging consciousness, but an
imaging consciousness that retains in itself
what was essential to the sign consciousness.
This synthetic unity of these consciousnesses is
163
an act of a certain duration, in which the sign
consciousness and the image consciousness are
in relation of means to end. The essential problem
is now, to describe these structures, to show how
the sign consciousness serves to motivate the
image consciousness, how the former includes
the latter in a new synthesis. How there is, at the
same time, a functional transformation of the
perceived object, which passes from the state of
signifying matter to the state of representative
matter.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
Oddly, in that we had earlier concluded that hominid
consciousness was probably best characterized in terms of
hominid see, hominid do, this section is probably the most
applicable description of any potential sign use by these
creatures which we once were.
Sartre clearly states that such imitation is motivated by
the sign; but, in the context of the sign becoming a specific
form of conscious state, that of an image consciousness. This
is consistent with the earlier considerations we examined,
wherein schema compelled thinking by demanding to be
deciphered. In being deciphered, though, we know that
these structures cease to be motivational; and thus we must
wonder, is a discrepancy being revealed here in our analysis?
>>>
We have previously considered conditions in which this
formation of consciousness occurred: imitation is in fact
entirely consistent with production based upon paradigmatic
templates. Sartre, of course, is describing a situation in which
one person mimes the characteristics of another, so as to
suggest the presence of that other person; and that is quite
a different case than the ones which we have examined: for
here, the effected production is entirely symbolic.
Nonetheless, we might well take this case in point as being
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
somehow transitional between paradigmatic production and
the becoming-sign of the symbolic. We must note again here,
though, that we are not considering the end point to be an
imaging consciousness, as does Sartre: rather, we will have
to look for a final resolution in the form of a produced object
which defines a relationship of possession with the producer,
such that something in the nature of territorial knowledge
results.
Sartre tells us that we are dealing here with structures
that develop in time. This is consistent with what we saw
happening through the use of paradigmatic form; but
here, we are concerned with a structure, a construct of
dynamic relations, rather than simply just production, and
a product. This is something which is put together, as the
time of duration, rather than something made in time. And
much earlier in our inquiry, we found that Henri Bergson
had defined the way in which many differences are brought
together and composed within time, as an event; through
continuous multiplicities which determine difference-in-kind:
through the conceptual.
Sartre confirms the nature of this insight:
Page 27
To decipher the signs is to produce the concept
By its central intention, the consciousness is
imaging, it acts to realize my knowledge in the
intuitive matter that is furnished for me.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
Here we see once again, the nature of a sign is resolved
for hominids through the production of an external form
of material concept: which is exactly what we see with The
Hominid Stone, and its stunning array of hominid images.
Thus we can summarize by saying: when we are dealing
with the production of an object through nonreflective
consciousness, we will be seeing the formation of conceptual
personae by way of modifications effected through signs;
164
and this will occur through symbolic schema that transition
into signs used to modify the object being produced. We
will say that signs are produced to the extent that the
symbolic schema have distinct intensive ordinates, as
established through their origin in the figural; and in that
the composition of these ordinate relations is conceptual
in nature, establishing a consistency of component survey
which distinguishes such formations as discrete. The
motivated production of such schema is symbolic; at which
point the finished composite can be considered a sign. At
this point, the sign in all probability articulates an event
of territorialization, as the exoconsistency of the concept the
sign articulates, and such as occurred to that conceptual
persona who used the object which was so signed in the
course of their life; with the elements of the schematic
symbolization being consistent with the intensities of affective
(sensory) perceptions and motor reflex activations which
localize (singularize) that event through the ordering of its
constituent components.
Signs used to modify produced objects do not mime the
image of a symbolized person; they do not imitate: they are
the articulations of territoriality which singularize specific
conceptual personae who lived the experiences of such
territorial events
>>>
All of which seems to be making sense within the context
of our ongoing inquiry; but then we come upon a somewhat
cryptic statement by Sartre. If we are looking at productive
activities effected by a nonreflective consciousness, then the
relationship of sign to object becomes that of means to end;
and this will require some degree of explanation.
To paraphrase Sartre for our own ends: The essential
problem is now, to describe these structures, to show how the
sign (consciousness) serves to motivate the [object], how the
former includes the latter in a new synthesis.
As much as we might philosophize what could be occurring
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology 165

here, perhaps the surest way to make sense of this approach

is to simply refer to The Hominid Stone. There, the profusion
of hominid images brings the above [modified] quote from
Sartre into sudden, focused clarity; and we can say in the
place of whomever produced The Hominid Stone: The
essential problem is how to get the rest of the hominids to
understand how this sliding / locking notch is made.

Certainly, this isnt a concern which is directly motivated

by a need to obtain food. It is instead a response to the
realization that forgetting is an essential aspect of
hominid consciousness. This is an end-state resolution of
what can only be a consciousness-of-consciousness. This
is characteristic, not of the use of an object to motivate
consciousness, but instead, of consciousness seeking to
modify itself as other to itself.

We are not looking at a consciousness-of-self here: we are

looking at a subjectless transcendental field, such as is found
with writing, that modifies consciousness by singularizing
its formation as an other to forgetting. This is the
personification of a concept.

I dont know if it would be possible to come any closer to

what writing is without having writing actually form. So we
must ask, again: are there any indications of sign use upon
The Hominid Stone?

>>>
In fact, I have found one composite structure on The
Hominid Stone which appears to constitute a sign.

It is a symbolic schema which occurs as localized within an

image.

The surrounding image is of a face; and as such, we can

take it to be a commonality of intersubjective reference:
because as Goodale / Milner have documented, facial
recognition is a non-conscious process that articulates
directly into conscious states and can be demonstrated as far
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology 166

back in evolution as primates.

This symbolic schema occurs in the place of one of the

faces features: it substitutes for the nose of that hominid
face, but, in such a way as to still present that image element
(positionally and schematically).

By the very nature of its localization, this symbolic schema

constitutes a sign, because: it refers to nothing, posits nothing
in that it assumes the position of something which is not
there - the nose of this hominid face. By being something
which is not there, it is not constituted by presence.

It is a trace of the figural, which is instituted (localized

within an image); it is a symbolic schema, and it does become
a sign: it is unmotivated, in that it is sufficient unto itself
and, having traced the ordinate intensities of this schema,
we do not continue to trace beyond the discrete formation of
this symbol. Here, the figural is closed in on itself: it has a
consistency of structure which does not vary from itself.

There is nothing further we can infer from this which would

not be eclipsed by a direct study of that actual sign formation;
so let us consider this apparent instance of sign usage, to see
what we might discern of it.

>>>
Having traced the schemas outline, we see the symbol as
portraying an event.

It is also a concept, in the context of its occurrence. This sign

shows, in outline, the figure of a hominid sitting with both
arms extended over either side of a crude watercraft - as if
paddling with its hands.

This is apparent from the dynamic of balance within the

image, which is distinctly constructed with a center (of
balance), a base plane (of flotation), and a proportionate
ratio which exactly matches each side to the other.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
It is a schema at once comical, compelling, and intriguing:
a hominid in a boat, depicted on a stone that is shaped as the
paradigmatic form for a sliding / locking notch such as would
be used for making tensioned structures, which was found on
an island.
It would seem, then, that hominids were capable of
constructing complex assemblages such as collapsible
watercraft; but that they were also prone to forgetting how
to do this. One must suspect that we are not looking at an
independent invention as such; and a more probable origin
immediately suggests itself.
Certainly, hominids were entirely capable of imitating and
adapting naturally occurring events in the production of their
artifacts. No doubt they had long sought protection from the
elements through naturally occurring shelter: in caves on cliff
faces; and then under trees upon the open savanna.
In the absence of trees, clumps of brush would offer a poor
substitute; however, an animal hide (retained perhaps to
cover individuals, as camouflage, when stalking prey) draped
167
over low bushes would provide more adequate shelter. More
animal hides would provide better shelter for larger groups
of hominids; but, the increased weight of additional hides
would compress the bushes. This problem would become
more pronounced if the hides had become soaked by rain.
Then, the addition of sticks to prop up these sadly sagging
structures would seem a readily apparent solution; with
such sticks being retained with the hides when the hominids
moved to new locations.
Eventually, after a long period of refinement toward the
concept of a portable shelter, just the sticks and hides would
be needed: at some point, the concept of a tensioned structure
would have become apparent. If a point were reached where
such a structure had been devised which was integral enough
to stand freely on its own; and if waterproofing, in the form of
animal fat or tallow had been applied to the hides (perhaps
initially to mask the scent of the hominids who also used
these hides for stalking prey): then it would take little more
than a strong wind while camped beside a body of water for
the first portable watercraft to come into existence, in the
form of an overturned tension structure.
(Ive had dome tents that I neglected to peg down come
very close to blowing into lakes I was camped beside: it is a
surprisingly easy thing to have happen.)
All of which is entirely opportunistic, with the exception
of one element: the sliding / locking notch which would
necessarily have served as the technological cornerstone for
the production of such complex assemblages. And that is the
one element which, it seems, needed to be retained in the
form of a paradigmatic template.
Innumerable questions now arise: How many hominids?
How many boats? How many islands? Did they simply float
to where they landed, or did they propel themselves to their
goal? Were they seeking food, or escaping predation? Were
they able to leave wherever they landed, or did their numbers
grow beyond their transport capacity?
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
All of which are circumstantially contingent, and entirely
historical, considerations.
>>>
Of more immediate concern: are there more of what appear
to be signs on The Hominid Stone?
Of this, I have to say: I do not know. I have not been able
to identify any, but that does not mean they are not there (or
that I have a lot of time to spare for doing that - I dont).
This particular sign was easily discerned once I had spotted
it: it is thematic to the paradigmatic template involved, and
it is consistent with the kinds of sign formations I am use to
working with in documenting the image writing of the First
Nations (which is what I have been putting the majority of
my time toward).
But while this sign is consistent with sign formations I
have seen elsewhere, there is at the same time something
strangely unique about it. No other similar instances of sign
usage appear as immediately evident upon The Hominid
Stone: and in that no other signs are easily discernible, one
must wonder if this particular instance of sign usage is in fact
unmotivated; or if, rather, it was an image upon which its
producer remained fixated.
The later option might be the correct choice here.
Sartre suggests a solution to this question, in analyzing the
nature of dreams, immediately before he proceeds to describe
dream objects which function as relational pronouns:
Page 170
Certainly, my consciousness, when awake,
is characterized by its being-in-the-world,
but precisely because this being-in-the-
world characterizes the relation between
consciousness and reality, it cannot be applied to
the consciousness that dreams. A consciousness
168
cannot be-in an imaginary world, unless it is
itself an imaginary consciousness. But what
is an imaginary consciousness if not a certain
object for a real consciousness? To tell the truth,
a consciousness that dreams is always nonthetic
consciousness of itself as being fascinated by the
dream, but it has lost its being-in-the-world and
recovers it only on awakening.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
As possessing a characteristically unreflective
consciousness, such hominids were immersed within
a subjectless world defined by their territoriality: their
consciousness thus tended to be strangely nonthetic in every
instance. Signs might be produced as unmotivated; but at
the same time, they would remain objects of fascination:
and a hominid who had produced a sign might simply
oscillate between a fascination with that sign and a nonthetic
engagement with the surrounding world, never producing
further instances of sign usage. This would not be so in the
case where consciousness-of-self had been established: there,
reality could always be posited in the form of objects set
before a subjective consciousness; and signs, as unmotivated,
would always release cognition toward further instances of
sign usage.
Within the examples of the image writing I have found
produced by the First Nations, the use of signs simply
abounds. There, intricately complex articulations of sign
formation is the norm. But there is another very important
difference between the single example of a sign found on The
Hominid Stone, and the metanarratives which are typical for
the image writing of the First Nations: the vast majority of
similar formations I have found in that image writing system
occur with symbolic schema replacing other primary facial
features than the nose, principally the eyes and the mouth.
Signs substituting for the facial feature of the nose are found;
but, not in isolation: the nose is never the first choice for
figural substitutions, and when it occurs it is never the only
substitution made.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 09.0) Toward a Paradigmatic Grammatology
It would thus appear that the single instance of sign usage
by hominids that can be found on The Hominid Stone occurs
within a contextualization which humans simply do not
preference.
As humans, we can easily conceptualize as strange a
thought as that of the eye acting as a finger:
Pages 493-494
The first aspect of the haptic, smooth space of
close vision is that its orientations, landmarks,
and linkages are in continuous variation; it
operates step by step. Examples are the desert,
steppe, ice, and sea, local spaces of pure
connection. Contrary to what is sometimes said,
one never sees from a distance in a space of this
kind, nor does one see it from a distance; one is
never in front of, any more than one is in
(one is on...). Orientations are not constant
but change according to temporary vegetation,
occupations, and precipitation. There is no
visual model for points of reference that would
make them interchangeable and unite them in
an inertial class assignable to an immediate
outside observer. On the contrary, they are
tied to any number of observers, who may be
qualified as monads but are instead nomads
entertaining tactile relations among themselves.
The interlinkages do not imply an ambient space
in which the multiplicity would be immersed
and which would make distances invariant;
rather, they are constituted according to ordered
differences that give rise to intrinsic variations in
the division of a single distance. These questions
of orientation, location, and linkage enter into
play in the most famous works of nomad art: the
twisted animals have no land beneath them;
the ground constantly changes direction, as in
aerial acrobatics; the paws point in the opposite
direction from the head. The hind part of the
169
body is turned upside down; the monadological
points of view can be interlinked only on a
nomad space; the whole and the parts give the
eye that beholds them a function that is haptic
rather than optical. This is an animality that can
be seen only by touching it with ones mind, but
without the mind becoming a finger, not even by
way of the eye.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
A Thousand Plateaus.
It seems completely unnatural to us to try and think of
the eye tracing as the nose smelling. This is a thought
which is pretty much unintelligible for me (although I am
sure perfumers and others who make a living through their
olfactory sense would beg to differ with this assessment).
As something I find unintelligible, I have no idea
whatsoever how that particular form of intelligibility would
come to be embodied as writing. I must admit that I just dont
know what would make sense within hominid writing.
And this leads me to wonder: is THIS the nature of the
difference between hominid and human? Is this how our
form of consciousness differs from theirs? Is there something
distinguishing our use of the olfactory from that of hominids,
which has made us subjectively self-conscious and cognitively
aware in the context of consciousness-of-self while hominid
consciousness remained unreflective and nonthetic?
If this is so, we should be able to find indications of this
within the archaeological record of artifacts left intact of our
own species prehistory.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
It isnt very difficult to pinpoint when and where our human
consciousness-of-self came into being. The archaeological
record is quite clear on this, with a general and widespread
agreement indicating at least one definite origin for
human consciousness-of-self, in Ice Age Europe. This
agreement, of course, is always subject to revision; but there
is a general consensus that, in Ice Age Europe, something
quite remarkable happened to the way in which human
consciousness is realized. And although there are somewhat
controversial findings of similar cognitive advances from
other areas and earlier times, these significant anomalies are
nonetheless contextualized with reference to the certainty
of what can be documented as having occurred in Europe
during a specific time frame:
Page 94
Known as the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, this
collective archaeological signal is unmistakable
evidence of the modern human mind at work.
Page 104
The period in question began 35,000 years
ago, and ended some 10,000 years ago, with
end of the Ice Age itself. This period, remember,
witnessed the first appearance in Western Europe
of sophisticated technology, which evolved
rapidly, as if following fashion.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
However, agreement as to what caused the revolutionary
shift in consciousness which occurred in Ice Age Europe is far
from being established. None of the standard evolutionary
forces usually cited as responsible for such advancements
seem to apply. There is no evidence for any kind of genetic
mutation having occurred: human physiology cannot be
shown to have changed remarkably between the start of the
Ice Age and its end. Instead, there is every indication that
humans had already achieved their modern form long before
170
the period in question.
There is no evidence of more developed humans moving
into Europe, apart from the displacement of Neanderthals by
modern humans. The humans who arrived in Europe are the
same people who emerged from the Ice Age as recognizably
who we are today. The development of our characteristically
modern consciousness appears to have been fundamentally
orchestrated by cultural advancement; but the mechanism
through which this occurred remains to be determined.
Current anthropological thought favors the development
of language as the motivating factor which provided the
impetus for all other cultural advances of this period:
Page 71
As weve seen, natural selection is not a
creative force and can propel nothing into
existence by itself. Rather it can only capitalize
on what is already there. In a sense, this makes
things easier for us since, as far as we can tell, in
the emergence of symbolic thought there is no
evidence of the kind of slow trend that would be
expected under Darwinian selection.
Page 72
What must have happened, instead, is that
after a long - and poorly understood - period
of erratic brain expansion and re-organization
in the human lineage, something occurred
that set the stage for language acquisition.
This innovation would have depended on the
phenomenon of emergence, whereby a chance
combination of pre-existing elements results in
something totally unexpected... Together with
exaptation, emergence provides a powerful
mechanism in the evolutionary process, and it
truly is a driving force, propelling innovation in
new directions.
In the case of linguistic potential, with its
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
innate presence among all humans today, we
have to suppose that initially a neural change
occurred in some population of the human
lineage. This change was presumably rather
minor in genetic terms and probably had nothing
whatever to do with adaptation in the classical
sense. Since during early childhood development
the brain rewires itself through the creation of
specific pathways from undifferentiated masses
of neuronal connections, it is even possible that
this event was an epigenetic rather than genetic
one, dependent on developmental stimuli.
Ian Tattersall, How we came to be HUMAN, in
Scientific American; Vol. 16, No. 2, 2006:
Special Edition, Becoming Human:
Evolution and the Rise of Intelligence.
>>>
And yet even this explanation remains somewhat
problematic. As we have seen, language becomes established
quite early in the evolutionary development of our lineage,
with proto-linguistic formations demonstrably being
employed by vervet monkeys. We also noted that such proto-
linguistic capabilities were associated with the co-extended
articulation of motor reflex activity and sensory perception,
as formational of conscious states; and that core faculties
associated with movement were sufficient to account for the
establishment of proto-linguistic abilities.
We must conclude, then, that language itself was not the
deciding factor here; rather, we would have to say that in
some way language itself became articulated during this
period into what we recognize as speech.
There is a great difference between being able to motivate
motor reflex responses in others through sounds, and being
able to communicate ideas through speech. Whatever it was
which induced this change in the way that consciousness
is articulated, it must be this which is seen as the cause
171
for the advancements noted of Ice Age Europe. It is this
undetermined factor which triggered the transition of
proto-linguistic abilities into grammatically patterned and
syntactically defined speech.
And although the developmental chronology through which
human consciousness-of-self comes to be established is fairly
straightforward, there are at the same time puzzling and
anomalous occurrences which have further complicated any
simple explanations that have been advanced to date.
Page 68
One complicating factor is that there appears
to be no correlation whatsoever between the
achievement in the human lineage of behavioral
modernity and anatomical modernity. We have
evidence of humans who looked exactly like us in
the Levant at close to 100 kyr ago. But at the same
time, in dramatic contrast to what happened in
Europe, the Levantine Neanderthals persisted in
the area for some 60 kyr after the anatomical
moderns appeared. Whats more, throughout
this long period of coexistence (whatever
form it took, and frankly we have no idea how
the different hominids contrived to share the
landscape for all those millennia), as far as
we can tell from the toolkits they had and the
sites they left behind, the two kinds of hominid
behaved in more or less identical ways.
Clearly, then, we can not attribute the
advent of modern cognitive capacities simply
to the culmination of a slow trend in brain
improvement over time. Something happened
other than a final physical buffing-up of the
cognitive mechanism. Of course, by the time
modern-looking humans came on the scene the
necessary groundwork must have been laid for
the adoption of modern cognitive processes, but
this is not necessarily the same as saying that
a specific neural mechanism had been acquired
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
for them.
Ian Tattersall, How we came to be HUMAN.
It thus seems apparent that, whatever compelled thinking
into its modern behavioral form, this unknown factor was
directly associated with a specific territorial localization
during the Ice Age: that of Europe.
Page 95
...in the Middle East, where both the fossil
and archaeological records are good, we see
something that is clear and yet paradoxical.
The application of new dating techniques
shows that Neanderthals and modern humans
essentially coexisted in the region for as long as
60,000 years... Throughout that time, the only
form of tool technology we see is that associated
with Neanderthals. The name given to their
technology is Mousterian, after the cave of Le
Moustier, in France, where it was first discovered.
The fact that the anatomically modern human
populations in the Middle East appear to have
manufactured Mousterianlike technology rather
than the innovation-rich tool assemblages so
characteristic of the Upper Paleolithic means
that they were modern in form only, and not in
their behavior. The link between anatomy and
behavior therefore seems to break.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
In short, humans did not begin to act in ways which
we would recognize as unequivocally our own until they
territorialized Europe during the last Ice Age. The inevitable
conclusion is that there must have been something about the
way in which human consciousness was compelled to think
in its encounter with that environment which caused it to
become conscious of itself.
172
>>>
In view of the observations made at the close of the last
section of our inquiry into the origin of writing, I would like
to propose at this point a simple solution to the problem of
how our modern form of consciousness came into being;
starting from a simple question:
Is there anything about Ice Age Europe which would
differentiate the way in which humans use their olfactory
sense, from the way that hominids would have been using
theirs?
And the answer would probably be: it would depend on
where the hominids were.
Because one thing is certain: in the depths of an Ice Age
winter within Europe, humans would not have been using
their olfactory sense very much at all.
They could not have been; because, smell is a chemically
determined sense: and when everything around is frozen
solid, there are no chemical reactions occurring in the
environment that can produce odors.
When a sense becomes dormant, its absence is soon
compensated for by enhancements in the other senses. This
is a fact most people had heard of in reference to a context of
blindness; but it is equally true for smell:
Page 3/15:
Cross-Activation
In adults, each sensory cortical area is
specialized for the processing of information
from one sensory modality: Neurons in the
visual cortex respond to input from the eyes;
neurons in the auditory cortex respond to input
from the ears, etc. The crossactivation theory
is based on evidence that, across a number of
species, sensory cortical areas are initially not
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
as specialized as they become. Instead, there are
transient connections between sensory cortical
areas that are pruned during childhood in an
experience-dependent manner. For example,
in the kitten there are transient connections
between the visual, auditory, tactile, and motor
cortices (Dehay, Bullier, & Kennedy, 1984;
Dehay, Kennedy, & Bullier, 1988); although such
ubiquitous over-wiring does not appear to occur
in the infant monkey brain, there are transient
connections from auditory cortex to visual area
V4 (Kennedy, Batardiere, Dehay, & Barone,
1997), the color area that is active when adult
synesthetes with colored hearing listen to an
inducing sound. There is indirect evidence that
the same phenomenon a superabundance
of connections between sensory cortical areas
followed by experience-dependent pruning
occurs in humans and that the extra connections
are functional during early childhood. For
example, in the newborn, tactile stimulation of
the wrist evokes activity over the somatosensory
cortex, as it does in adults, but unlike adults,
the response is enhanced if accompanied by
the sound of white noise (Wolff, Matsumiya,
Abrohms, van Velzer, & Lombroso, 1974). In
young infants, spoken language elicits activity
over the auditory cortex, as expected, but unlike
adults, it evokes just as much activity over the
visual cortex; with age, the activity over the
visual cortex diminishes, but it does not disappear
until about age 3 (Neville, 1995). Converging
evidence comes from a study that used positron
emission tomography as 2-month-olds watched
faces: The faces elicited more activity than the
control visual stimulus in the right inferior
temporal gyrus, near the classic fusiform face
area of adults, but unlike adults, they also elicited
more activity in the left auditory cortex and left
Brocas area that is later specialized exclusively
for language (Tzourio- Mazoyer et al., 2002; see
173
also Huttenlocher, 1984; Huttenlocher, 1994;
Huttenlocher & Dabholkar, 1997; Huttenlocher
& de Courten, 1987; Huttenlocher, de Courten,
Garey, & Van der Loos, 1982). Combined with the
animal data, these findings suggest that there
are functional connections between sensory
cortical areas during early childhood that are
later pruned. According to the cross-activation
account, synesthesia occurs when some of the
connections between sensory cortical areas
(usually ones that are contiguous) are not pruned
(Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001).
Page 4/15:
Disinhibited Feedback
Indirect evidence for connections between
sensory cortical areas in human adults comes
from studies of the visual cortex of typical
sighted adults after a period of visual deprivation
(blindfolding; Pascual-Leone & Hamilton, 2001).
Over the course of 5 days of blindfolding, sighted
individuals were taught to discriminate tactile
patterns. From Day 2 onward, the visual cortex
was increasingly active during these tactile tasks,
and the somatosensory cortex was increasingly
less active (Pascual-Leone & Hamilton, 2001).
TMS over the visual cortex disrupted the tactile
discrimination as much as it does in subjects
blind from an early age. A similar pattern of
activation over the visual cortex occurred when
the blindfolded adults discriminated between
auditory tones, a task unlikely to be mediated
by visual imagery. A half day after the blindfold
was removedafter normal visual input was
restoredauditory and tactile stimulation no
longer caused activation of the visual cortex, and
TMS over the visual cortex no longer interfered
with discrimination, even if the blindfold was
temporarily restored. In a more recent study,
adults were blindfolded only briefly while they
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
performed tactile discriminations in an fMRI
scanner (Merabet et al., 2007). The tactile stimuli
produced significant activation in the primary
visual cortex and significant deactivation in
higher levels of the visual pathway, as would be
expected if the activation of the primary visual
cortex by touch is evident only if higher level
responses are suppressed. Collectively, these
data suggest that the visual cortex of the typical
adult favors visual input because it is stronger,
faster, and/or more coherent and because neural
responses to other inputs are normally inhibited.
If the visual input is missing, the visual cortex
readily responds to those other inputs. The
evidence for short-term, reversible changes in
cortical activation patterns after blindfolding
suggests that functional connections between
primary sensory cortical areas that persist into
adulthood and are typically inhibited but can
be disinhibited in the case of sensory deprivation
and perhaps synesthesia. As would be expected,
chemicals likely to modulate the level of
inhibition (alcohol, caffeine) affect the reported
intensity of synesthetic percepts (e.g., Ward &
Simner, 2003).
Ferrinne Spector and Daphne Maurer,
McMaster University;
Synesthesia: A New Approach to Understanding
the Development of Perception.
>>>
{It is worth noting here in passing that, in infancy,
a demonstrable connectivity exists between the area
responsible for discerning faces and that which is responsible
for processing language. It is, then, perhaps not surprising
that the single instance of sign formation that we noted on
The Hominid Stone was localized within the context of a
face.}
174
We know that in the course of normal development,
human children have far more neural connections than are
employed in later life. The experiences of living determine
which of these multiple pathways persist into adulthood, and
which ones to lose their functionality through lack of use.
A certain connectivity between various areas of neural
processing dedicated to the different senses exists from birth;
but, the dedicated nature of neural processes in relation to
their attendant senses is progressively strengthened and
determined through a direct experience of the world.
There is, however, a certain plasticity of organization
demonstrated in the functional nature of the brains many
processes; and although expediency demands that some of
the neural connectivity we are born with necessarily withers
in favor of those connections which are consistently in use,
such connectivity is not so excessively superfluous that we
can afford to simply abandon those neural processes which
are not actively used. As many neurons as are packed into
the brain, there are still only a finite number; as abundant
a resource as these neural connections are, we still cannot
afford to waste them in a wholesale fashion.
Thus, it has been clearly demonstrated that the neural
organization of the human brain stabilizes in accordance
with input stimuli provided by the environment in which it
develops.
Underlying the developmental stabilization of sensory fields
induced through environmental stimuli, there is a plasticity
to neural organization which facilitates an ability for neural
processes normally dedicated toward one sense to shift
toward processing input from other senses, when input from
habituated sources is absent. What is very surprising, though,
is how quickly such shifts occur; suggesting that this is an
established tendency, rather than an acquired one.
And even beyond the extraneous connectivity of neurons
in the human child, a certain connectivity persists between
visual and olfactory processes in the adult human:
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
Page 1/12:
Summary
Human olfactory perception is notoriously
unreliable, but shows substantial benefits from
visual cues, suggesting important crossmodal
integration between these primary sensory
modalities.
How olfactory-visual integration, the focus
of the present study, is mediated in the human
brain is not understood. Animal studies indicate
that various anatomical sites receive converging
input from both sensory modalities. One
potential site is the hippocampus, a structure
that can be accessed directly or indirectly by
all sensory modalities (Deadwyler et al., 1987;
Small, 2002). Such an anatomical arrangement
potentially allows it to recruit multiple sensory
features in the service of mnemonic functions
(Wood et al., 1999; Save et al., 2000).
Another site that may participate in
multimodal integration is the orbitofrontal
cortex (OFC). In nonhuman primates, this
region has been shown to receive afferent input
from both primary olfactory (piriform) cortex
and visual association areas (Carmichael and
Price, 1995), and individual OFC neurons have
been identified in single-unit recordings that
respond to olfactory and visual stimulation
either separately or in combination (Rolls and
Baylis, 1994). It has been suggested that such
a confluence of sensory streams in OFC could
help subserve higher-order control of flavor
perception and feeding behavior (Carmichael
and Price, 1995). In human neuroimaging
experiments of olfaction, OFC is among the most
consistently activated structures (Zatorre et al.,
1992; Zald and Pardo, 1997; Sobel et al., 2000),
175
and a recent fMRI study of olfactory-visual
associative learning highlighted its participation
in the establishment of crossmodal associations
between these two stimulus modalities (Gottfried
et al., 2002b).
Jay A. Gottfried and Raymond J. Dolan;
Functional Imaging Laboratory,
Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience.
The Nose Smells What the Eye Sees: Crossmodal
Visual Facilitation of Human Olfactory Perception.
Neuron, Vol. 39, 375386, July 17, 2003.
Copyright 2003 by Cell Press.
This is particularly interesting, because the single
occurrence of what is definitionally recognizable as a sign
upon The Hominid Stone was formed through an apparent
relationship between the visual and the olfactory senses. We
must now suspect that this was not a random association, but
rather, is indicative of an underlying connectivity articulating
these sensory processes.
>>>
We noted earlier that the sense of unmotivation
which Derrida ascribes to the instituted trace could
be contextualized as an end state for the delays that
consciousness articulates between the hand and the mouth,
as determined by the various activities which lead to food
being acquired. It would now appear that there is in fact a
certain neural functionality which directly links our visual
sense with that of smell, and of taste. And although we do
not know the exact nature of this connectivity, we do know
that it is definite enough to establish articulations of co-
extension. It is reasonable then to suspect that a sense of
unmotivation can in some way attend vision, as it does
the senses of taste and smell. As Derrida so rightly notes, his
observations concerning the nature of The Trace are not a
case of metaphysical conjecture displacing a more scientific
methodology toward the study of linguistic phenomenon:
there is a certain and definite functionality at work which
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
he is attempting to describe and define to best of his
considerable abilities.
My experience is that when a philosopher of the caliber
of Derrida, or Husserl, or Sartre puts that much effort
into formulating precise and consistent descriptions, it is
a good idea to have a long hard look about for what they
are describing, even if such descriptions do not appear to
correspond at first to anything which is readily identifiable.
And although the exact nature of the connectivity between
visual and olfactory processes does not at first seem readily
apparent, there are processes in both streams of sensory
processing which do share a distinctly functional outcome:
that of an acquired ability to differentiate and discern ever
more subtle differences:
Page 8/12
The general idea that sensory experience
can induce perceptual expertise has been
extensively investigated in visual, auditory,
and somatosensory modalities (Goldstone,
1998; Schyns et al., 1998). This effect is even
observed in the absence of explicit training or
feedback: mere exposure to scribbled pictures
(doodles) results in subjects being better
able to differentiate among related pictures,
generating doodle expertise (Gibson and
Walk, 1956). Likewise, in the present study,
prolonged exposure to one odorant resulted in
improved differentiation among related odorants
(and even among novel related odorants). Thus,
with exposure to a floral-smelling alcohol (i.e.,
phenethyl alcohol), subjects effectively became
floral experts and simultaneously became
experts for the underlying molecular group.
Such learning did not generalize to odorants
outside of the experienced dimensions (that is,
floral experts did not become mint experts, and
alcohol experts did not become ketone experts),
highlighting a psychological specificity that is a
176
common characteristic of perceptual learning
(Gilbert et al., 2001; Fahle and Poggio, 2002).
Furthermore, these effects were obtained despite
the fact that subjects were completely unaware
of the purpose of the study and were engaged
in an ongoing intensity rating task. As such, it is
unlikely that procedural learning (performance
improvements due to task rehearsal and
training), which often confounds interpretations
of perceptual learning (Hawkey et al., 2004),
contributed to the effects seen here.
One important theoretical mechanism
of perceptual learning is known as stimulus
differentiation, in which features that were
psychologically fused become increasingly
differentiated (Schyns et al., 1998). This
experience-dependent process appears to figure
prominently in the acquisition of perceptual
expertise (Goldstone, 1998) and is consistent
with the current findings. In our study, subjects
were better able to differentiate among floral
(or mint) smells and among alcohol (or ketone)
groups, perhaps by developing more refined, or
differentiated, subcategories of these olfactory
features. We speculate that the process of odor
feature differentiation, via sensory exposure,
may underlie much of the way that humans
naturally learn to identify odors in the
environment, with progressive and ever more
refined differentiation, to the point where we are
able to recognize thousands, if not hundreds of
thousands, of different smells.
Wen Li [1], Erin Luxenberg [1], Todd Parrish [2],
and Jay A. Gottfried [1,3];
1] Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimers Disease
Center, 2] Department of Radiology,
3] Department of Neurology; Northwestern
University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago,
Illinois 60611.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
Learning to Smell the Roses:
Experience-Dependent Neural Plasticity in Human
Piriform and Orbitofrontal Cortices.
Neuron 52, 10971108, December 21, 20062006
Elsevier Inc. DOI 10.1016/j.neuron.2006.10.026
>>>
We thus have every reason to suspect that, even as vision
becomes unmotivated through resolving the intensive
ordinates of a symbolic schema, the very stabilization of a
signs formation tends to enhance the ability to discern the
compositional components of other symbolic schema, leading
to a progressively refined ability to resolve the conceptual
structure inherent in other sign formations.
We have a very interesting progression being established
here: that, within the senses, dormant neural processes are
functionally co-opted by still active senses; that there is a
demonstrable connectivity between the neurology which
underlies vision, and that which underlies olfactory processes;
and that both visual and olfactory processes function in such
a way as to increasingly better differentiate input stimuli
over the course of a prolonged exposure to different sensory
inputs.
It would seem reasonable to conclude that, over a prolonged
period of olfactory dormancy, the neural processing
associated with that sense would begin to acquire other
functions in conjunction with those senses which were still
actively functioning.
Specifically, this suggests that an enhanced ability to
process the intensive ordinates of visual stimuli might well
result from olfactory dormancy.
It must be noted, though, that our olfactory sense is not like
our other senses: it is very much older; and in fact, our entire
brain is structured in accordance with our most basic chemo-
olfactory neurology:
177
BrainMind.com: Olfactory Limbic System.
http://brainmind.com/OlfactoryLimbicSystem.html
(1 of 21)14/03/2010 7:48:16 AM
Emotionality serves a protective function,
either to promote survival of the individual
(e.g. feeding, and fight or flight) of that of the
species (e.g. sexual activity). Moreover, emotion
promotes memory. Events, places, and individuals
which are emotionally significant are likely to
be remembered. Broadly considered, emotion
and memory functioning are associated with
the olfactory limbic system, the core structures
of which include the hypothalamus, amygdala,
hippocampus, septal nuclei, cingulate gyrus,
and the olfactory bulbs and olfactory cortex.
Over the course of evolution much of the limbic
system was in fact derived from the olfactory
system--cortical structures which conferred
upon the evolving limbic lobe those concerns
traditionally referred to as the four Fs: feeding,
fighting, fleeing, and sexual activity.
The structures and nuclei of the limbic system
are exceedingly ancient, some of which, i.e, the
olfactory bulb, hypothalamus, amygdala, and
hippocampus, began to evolve over 450 million
years ago, whereas others, i.e. the septal nuclei
and cingulate gyrus, are of more recent vintage,
respectively emerging perhaps 400 million
and 200 million years ago (Graeber, 1980;
Haberly, 1990; MacLean, 1990; Smeets, 1990;
Ulinksi, 1990). Over the course of evolution,
these structures have expanded in size, some
becoming increasingly cortical in response to
increased environmental opportunities and
input demands, particularly those conveyed via
olfaction and the olfactory bulb.
Until as recently as 50 million years ago,
the cerebrum of the ancestral line that would
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
eventually give rise to humans, was dominated
by the olfactory-limbic system and the six layered
olfactory bulb (Haberly, 1990; Herrick, 1925;
Nieuwenhuys & Meek, 1990ab);. This olfactory
dominance, in part explains why much of the
forebrain is olfactory in organization (Haberly
1990), including the recently evolved six to seven
layered neocortex.
The six to seven layered neocortex may have
first begun to evolve 150 million to 100 million
years ago (chapter 5), whereas the four to five
layered transitional cortex, the mesocortex (also
referred to as paleocortex) may have begun to
evolve 200 million years ago (MacLean, 1990).
Hence, for the first 300 million or so years of
neurological evolution (that is, beginning with
the Cambrian Explosion), although the olfactory
bulb consisted of six layers, the forebrain initially
consisted of just three layers, the allocortex. It
was only hundreds of millions of years later that
the forebrain acquired the four to five layered
mesocortex and then still later, the six to seven
layered neocortex--much of which evolved in
order to serve limbic needs.
Much of the forebrain is a limbic derivative,
expanding over the course of evolution in
response to the emotional and motivational
demands of the olfactory-limbic system. More
recently the forebrain has evolved (i.e, in the last
100 million years), in response to the increased
importance of the visual and auditory modalities-
-a function of living on land and during the
daylight hours. However, once the forebrain
began increasingly representing and processing
auditory and visual input, these perceptions also
acquired olfactory-like functional-integrative-
motivational properties. That is, the emotional
attributes of olfactory stimuli could be applied to
non-olfactory input.
178
As will be detailed below, the impetus for
neocortical evolution was in part a direct
consequence of expansions in olfactory derived
limbic structures, some of which, such as the
amygdala, continue to maintain massive
interconnections with almost all regions of the
neocortex (Amaral et al., 1992; Krettek & Price,
1978). In fact, it could be argued that over the
course of evolution, the forebrain and much of
the neocortex (and the so called rational mind)
evolved in response to and so as to better serve
the limbic system and fulfill and satisfy limbic
needs including those originally associated
almost exclusively with the olfactory system.
The old limbic brain has not been replaced and
is not only predominant in regard to all aspects
of motivational and emotional functioning, but
is capable of completely overwhelming the
rational mind due in part to the massive axonal
projections of the amygdala upon the neocortex.
Moreover, although it is true that over the course
of primate and human evolution olfaction has
diminished in importance, the olfactory system
continues to exert profound effects on the human
limbic system, and upon human behavior.
Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D. The Olfactory Limbic System:
Sex, Emotion, Pheromones, Learning, Memory, and
Limbic System Evolution.
From: Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, Clinical
Neuroscience 3rd Edition, (Academic Press, 2000.
New York).
http://brainmind.com/OlfactoryLimbicSystem.html
(2 of 21)14/03/2010 7:48:16 AM
>>>
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
When the other senses co-opt any dormant neural
processing from the olfactory sense, they are in effect gaining
a redundant access to the brains entire neurophysiology;
or at least enough of it to explain why consciousness-of-
self could come into being specifically during an Ice Age,
and exactly where the cold temperatures which occurred
throughout the course of this period were at their most
extreme: in the northernmost range of documented human
habitation at that time, Europe.
In these circumstances, we could expect the articulations
of conscious states to in effect become co-extensive with
themselves: that is, for consciousness to be folded onto itself
and so become functionally articulated with, and conscious
of, itself.
It thus seems probable that modern human behavior arose
as a direct consequence of specific environmental factors:
those associated with Ice Age Europe.
The abilities enabled by this transition to behavioral
modernity were not due to any kind of genetic mutation or
evolutionary modification: they were instead dependent upon
a simple, functional repurposing of basic neural processes
that had already been established as characteristically
human long before the territorialization of Europe by our
species.
As such, these abilities were latent in all humans,
everywhere; but they would be actualized primarily
through two possible circumstances: exposure to conditions
of extreme cold sufficient to render olfactory processes at
least semi-dormant for extended periods of time, or, an
ongoing exposure to the cultural advances of other humans
who had undergone an extended exposure to such a frigid
environment.
We already know that even hominids produced cultural
artifacts with the specific function of motivating the
formation of distinct conscious states; and it therefore
stands to reason that externalized articulations produced of
179
conscious states which were characterized by a consciousness-
of-self would be sufficient to induce exactly the same form of
neural reorganization in people who had not been so exposed
to similarly extreme environmental conditions.
Although initially an environmental consequence,
consciousness-of-self would subsequently come to be a socio-
cultural innovation associated with: articulated speech;
articulated writing; and a vast, ever expanding array of
innovative cultural products and behavioral practices.
This, simply, is what is referred to within philosophy as
the transcendental nature of human consciousness-of-
thought; and as with any transferential configuration of
energy differentials, such articulations necessarily have to go
somewhere once produced. They either dissipate, and lose the
complexity of their organizational structure (their ordinate
intensities); or they are externalized in the production
of various artifacts, as demonstrated in the case of those
conscious states which characterize hominid cognition; or,
the functional nature of these articulations determines their
transference into the co-extended neurology of olfactory
processing, establishing and reinforcing a new connectivity
throughout the neural organization of the brain.
So with hominids, we see such transcendental aspects of
conscious structure being externalized in the production of
various artifacts.
But with humans, we see something beginning to happen
that is very different than was the case with hominids: such
conscious states as formed in an exposure to extreme cold
began to produce their articulations within the dormant
neurology of the brains olfactory processes. This is how our
consciousness-of-self originally developed.
This is what Deleuze refers to as the immanence of the
transcendental field. For hominids, it was a territorial
immanence characterized by thought which did not
differentiate between subject and object. For modern
humans, it is a consciousness-of-self wherein the self can be
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
different without being other.
And of course, such articulations were still being produced
externally as well, as cultural artifacts. Indeed, it is through
such externalized articulations that we have a record of what
appears to have been a steadily increasing sense of conscious
awareness among humans, from the beginning of the Ice Age
on; but, only in Europe, where humans were enduring the
coldest climactic conditions (and where the archaeological
record is much more extensive than it is for The Americas, or
for the mountainous regions of Central Asia).
In the Middle East, where climatic conditions were less
severe, the cultural innovations associated with modern
consciousness do not occur until such cultural practices
spread to this location, presumably from Europe.
And such innovations would certainly have spread; because
they are simply a matter of co-extensive articulation, of the
way in which neural components already firmly established
within the brain are functionally brought together: and as we
have seen throughout this inquiry, such articulations, when
externalized through and imparted into produced objects,
consistently serve to motivate the formation of conscious
states. In effect, consciousness-of-self would spread with, and
could be acquired through, the possession of cultural artifacts
produced by societies where consciousness-of-self had already
become established.
In short, all humans already had the capacity for a
consciousness-of-self by the time Europe was territorialized
during the Ice Age. This is certain, for seemingly anomalous
instances of advanced cultural expression turn up
sporadically throughout the archaeological record. We dont
know if this was due to transient climatic conditions in fringe
environments, such as the highlands of Ethiopia or the
extreme southern tip of Africa; or the genius of individuals;
or just the physical loss of an olfactory capability that
resulted every now and again in a few people putting their
thoughts together a little differently than others had before.
180
>>>
Page 79
The notion that our species peerless creativity
might have primeval roots is not new. For years,
scientists have known of a handful of objects
that, taken at face value, suggest that humans
were engaging in modern practices long before
H. Sapiens first painted a cave wall in France.
These include three 4000,000-year-old wooden
throwing spears from Schoningen in German;
a 223,000-year-old putative figurine from the
site of Berekhat Ram in Israel; a 60,000--year-
old piece of flint incised the concentric arcs
from Quneitra in Israel; two 1000,000-year-old
fragments of notched bone from South Africas
Klasies River Mouth Cave, and a polished plate
of mammoth tooth from Tata in Hungary, dated
to between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. Many
archaeologists looked askance at these remains,
however, noting that their age was uncertain or
that their significance was unclear. Any sign of
advanced intellect that did seem legitimately
ancient was explained away as a one-off
accomplishment, the work of a genius among
average Joes.
That position has become harder to defend in
the face of the growing body of evidence in Africa
that our forebears mental metamorphosis began
well before the start of the Later Stone Age.
Kate Wong, The Morning of the Modern Mind,
in Scientific American; Vol. 16, No. 2, 2006:
Special Edition, Becoming Human: Evolution and
the Rise of Intelligence.
The implications of such precursor instances of behavioral
modernity are still being debated; and indeed, this
debate is beginning to emerge into the mainstream of
current anthropological thought. But I think it more than
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
probable, given the parameters which most likely induced
the formation of human consciousness-of-self, that such
an occurrence could have and probably would have been
effected anywhere that the necessary conditions had been
sufficiently met.
For some reason, for Neanderthals, these conditions did
not seem sufficient to induce the formation of the behaviors
which characterize consciousness-of-self; and this is odd,
because Neanderthals had territorialized Europe for far
longer than humans, and were much better adapted to the
extreme cold of the Ice Age.
Indeed, it might well have been their very adaptations
to the cold that prevented Neanderthals from developing
consciousness-of-self: as R. Leakey notes, Neanderthals had
very pronounced olfactory adaptations, which may have kept
this aspect of their sensory neurology dedicated toward scent:
Page 133
As an apparent adaptation to cold climates,
the Neanderthal midface protrudes to an
extraordinary degree, resulting in large nasal
passages, in which frigid air can be warmed
and moisture in exhaled breath can condense.
This configuration may have affected the shape
of the basicranium without diminishing the
species language capacity in a significant way.
Anthropologists continue to debate this point.
Overall, then, the anatomical evidence
indicates an early evolution of language,
followed by gradual improvement of linguistic
skills. However, the archaeological evidence for
tool technology and artistic expression for the
most part tells a different story.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
The situation with reference to hominids is a little less
certain: the examples I have of hominid artifacts are from
181
North America, and presumably those who produced
them would have been exposed to Arctic and / or alpine
environments at some point in their long journey from an
ultimately African point of origin. What effect that might
have had on hominid cultural development, we can only
speculate.
>>>
As I mentioned, the archaeological record for Ice Age
Europe is well stocked with interesting objects that suggest
singular territorial relationships for the people who produced
them.
At the most distant beginnings of this era, about 250,000
years ago, we find the paradigmatic template used in hand
axe production being replaced by a new technology:
Page 134
...Oldowan tools, which date from 2.5 million
years ago to about 1.4 million years ago, are
opportunistic in nature. Toolmakers apparently
were concerned mostly with producing sharp
flakes without regard to shape. The so-called
core tools, such as scrapers, choppers, and
discoids, were by-products of this process. Even
the implements in Acheulean tool assemblages,
which followed the Oldowan and lasted until
250,000 years ago, display imposition of form
only minimally. The teardrop-shaped hand axe
was probably produced according to some form
of mental template, but most of the other items
in the assemblage were Oldowanlike in many
ways; moreover, only about a dozen tool forms
were in the Acheulean kit. From about 250,000
years ago, archaic sapiens individuals, including
Neanderthals, made tools from prepared flakes,
and these assemblages, including the Mousterian,
comprised perhaps sixty identifiable tool types.
But the types remain unchanged for more than
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
200,000 years - a technological stasis that seems
to deny the workings of the fully human mind.
Only when the upper Paleolithic cultures burst
onto the scene 35,000 years ago did innovation
and arbitrary order become pervasive.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
The production of tools by way of uniformly produced flakes
does correspond with something we noted with reference
to The Hominid Stone: that of a material dynamic which
diverges from the hand-to-mouth delay that had previously
characterized the formation of conscious states. Here, we
again see production feeding production, instead of being
directly motivated toward putting food in the mouth. But
again, this is not in itself indicative that a consciousness-of-
self had formed; and in fact, we may well be dealing with an
externalization of motor reflex-based articulation. Simply,
the consistency of the flakes produced from a shaped core of
stone might be attributable to an initial use of antler as the
striking tool (as opposed to the more traditional hammer
stone), with an association between the ability of an antlered
animal to leap being attributed to the antlers utility in
making flakes jump from the core stone of which they are
produced. Such a dramatic demonstration of technique would
of course be accompanied by demands to Do that again!
It is difficult to say if this would even indicate a
consciousness-of-consciousness; but it does suggest that
movement-determinate memory is being articulated within
conscious states in a way which was stable enough to be
externalized as a concept: therefore we would have to say
that cognitive processes had by this point become less
transient in nature.
It would almost seem as if the already established
ability to produce movement in others through sounds (as
demonstrated for vervet monkeys) had in some way stabilized
in the ascription of physical properties to objects within a
movement-based context. It is as if the rudiments of science
182
were emerging from the rudiments of language, without
consciousness-of-self having yet formed.
This is perhaps not surprising, though: in considering
Derridas Note 92 on page 89 of his introduction to Husserls
Origin of Geometry, we saw that linguistic intention occurs
in an embodiment which transversely unifies sensible form
and sensible material. Here, the transversal element would
be the concept of jumping which attends antlered animal,
and antler as tool; with the form of this quality as embodied
in the antler transversely unified with the material being
worked, the stone core from which flaked tools leap at the
press of an antlers tip. Thus, an externalized application of
technology is here being structured in accordance with what
will later come to be established as linguistic intention.
Eventually, we see further evidence of such cognitive
stability in behaviors which are beginning to become closer
to our own. This is most clearly demonstrated by a type of
artifact that begins to appear near the beginning of the Ice
Age: that of personal adornment.
>>>
Page 150
The first rudiments of representational
art occurred in the Chattelperonian (from
Chtelperron in Allier) and Aurignacian (from
the cave of Aurignac in Haute-Garone) periods,
associated with very varied flint and bone tools.
A lower level at Arcy-sur-Cure suggests 34,000
years ago for a Chattelperonian horizon which
yielded a curious pendant, one of the earliest
pieces of jewelry in the world. The typical
Aurignacian material of La Quina in Charente is
dated to 29,000 years ago, and the Aurignacian
at Willendorf in Austria, celebrated for the
discovery of a heavily formed Venus statuette
goes back 29,800 years.
L.-R. Nougier, Prehistoric Archeology.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
in Larousse Encyclopedia of Archeology
General editor: Gilbert Charles-Picard
Translated by Anne Ward; English translation
copyright 1972 by The Hamlyn Group
Fifth impression published in 1976 by The Hamlyn
Publishing Group Ltd. Copyright 1972 by
Librairie LAROUSSE and The Hamlyn Group
As noted of hominids and the paradigmatic tools they
produced, it appears that the nature of hominid territoriality
was such that these paradigmatic objects were in a very real
way the possession of knowledge relational to the world, and
to that very sense of territoriality.
As a functional alterity to the dynamic of forgetting which
attends non-conscious processes, these objects motivated
specific conscious states for those who used them: as a
thinking of the territoriality which they lived, and as a
response to that of their territory which compelled thought.
In its simplest form, this is really saying no more than that a
perceived threat would be responded to through motor reflex
activations which placed an axe in the hand.
As we have noted of The Hominid Stone and its
preponderance of hominid images, such objects also stood to
determine the social definition of an individual by the group,
by providing a stable relational point of reference for all
members of the group.
Certainly, it is a small step to take for any specific
individual to begin using personal adornment that they
might thus define themselves so within their social group.
And as we saw with Sartres description of dream object
pronouns, this form of stabilized object-relation is at the cusp
of personal identity. The use of personal adornment indicates
an awareness of the groups definition of the individual;
although, that is not the same thing as the individuals
consciousness of themselves as such.
And though the use of personal adornment does not
irrefutably indicate a formation of consciousness-of-self, it
183
does necessarily imply that consciousness-of-consciousness
was an established cognitive fact: at this point in history,
people were certainly aware that thinking happened, and
that it could be motivated to happen (even if there is not yet
any indication of an awareness that thought could modify
itself).
Indeed, as noted earlier in Jean Hyppolites comments
concerning intersubjectivity, the commonality of a shared
sense of social organization and interactivity seems to be a
necessary condition for the formation of subjectivity.
Yet, this does not make such social organization a
sufficient precondition for the formation of consciousness-
of-self, as demonstrated by several million years worth of
archaeological evidence from all periods preceding the
human territorialization of Ice Age Europe.
Still, in that (as Husserl has demonstrated) personal
pronouns are of a functionally indicative nature, we can
easily see how personal adornment would stabilize the
groups perception of an individual within the group: the
object worn referentially becomes the person, who is an
otherwise an empty abstraction:
Page 46
I look at myself in the mirror and wonder, Who
am I? What is it that constitutes my individual
self - my personal identity? In light of Hegels
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), I realize that I
am nothing without my social relationships:
I cannot be fully aware of myself unless I am
aware of how others see me, for I define myself
in relation to others. To the extent that Im not
being recognized by other people, I will be
nothing more than an empty abstraction or a
motionless tautology, to use Hegels phrases.
Thus I desire recognition by others so I can
substantiate and add meaning to this apparently
elusive I; and yet I find the need to struggle and
maintain my sense of independence from other
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
people in order to establish who I am.
Albert Filice, Considering the film Solaris,
in Philosophy Now magazine,
Issue 77, February/March 2010.
In that objects of personal adornment would occur in the
place of the empty abstraction of an individual lacking
personal identity, we might say that this would be a very
early example of sign usage: here, the endless motivation
of identification made through the referencing of personal
histories within situations of group interaction is replaced by
an unmotivated end state: that of the referential object; as,
personal adornment.
A quick gesture to indicate what adornment is
characteristically worn by the absent person being referred to
would now be sufficient to show that is the one to whom the
matter being discussed applies.
The question as to what might be the matter under
discussion remains undetermined; but not in every case: for
next we come to a very curious item in the archaeological
record of Ice Age Europe; broadly known as the Earth
Goddess-Venus Fertility Idol.
>>>
Page 394
Ice age portable (mobility) art comprises
thousands of engravings and carvings on small
objects of stone, bone, and ivory. The great
majority of identifiable figures are animals, but
perhaps the most famous pieces are the so-called
Venus figurines, such as the limestone Venus
of Willendorf, Austria. These depict females of
a wide span of ages and types, and are by no
means limited to the handful of obese specimens
that are often claimed to be characteristic.
Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn,
184
Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practices,
Third Edition. Copyright 1991, 1996, and 2000 by
Thames and Hudson Ltd, London.
Text copyright 1991, 1996, and 2000 by Colin
Renfrew and Paul Bohn.
Published by Thames and Hudson Inc.
New York NY.
The use of these female figurines appears to have been
remarkably widespread, although the reason for that use
remains a matter of much speculation:
Page 28
As the glacial weather caused the game herds
to disperse and it became essential to be able to
monitor their movement over wider and wider
areas, it would have also been natural to want to
rely on other groups for help or information, and
group alliances through marriage links would
cement those relationships. This may have been
the reason for another new artifact that first
appears about 20,000 years ago. Its a small,
carved, female figurine known as the Venus.
The figure appears increasingly throughout
Southern Europe, in an area stretching over
a thousand miles from western France to the
central Russian plain.
Page 29
Venus has a uniform shape and probably
acted as a kind of identification, carried either
by people who were likely to make contact with
other groups, or more likely by women given
in marriage alliance, to remind the adoptive
community of their origins and in this way to
ensure continuity of contact between groups.
As separation brought increasing language
problems, these identity-artifacts might have
helped to avoid miscommunication if long-
distance hunters or traders meeting others found
it difficult to explain who they were. The artifacts
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
would also have made possible the maintenance
of intratribal links at great distances, enabling
groups to scatter over very large areas.
James Burke and Robert Ornstein,
The Axemakers Gift. Copyright 1995
by James Burke and Robert Ornstein.
Published by G. P. Putnams Sons, New York NY.
There does seem to be somewhat of a tentative consensus
that these objects were somehow associated with sexuality,
and so with some form of mating ritual, and therefore with
reproduction. But before considering this further, I would like
to take particular note of something in the above quote.
As we have just seen, the use of personal adornment
might be construed as an early form of sign use. Knowing
what we do of the way in which such objects were related
to the conscious states of those using them, it would seem a
reasonable course to proceed in an analysis of the Venus
figurines within such a context: that of a sign for motivating
the formation of a specific conscious state.
I must at this point take exception to the suggestion that
such objects were primarily circulated through any form of
exchange. This is an idea that can be found defining the
classic view of the origin of writing: that writing is primarily
a by-product of economic activity, and was invented to
facilitate the inventory and exchange of goods.
We have absolutely no grounds for assuming that the
objectification and commoditization of women was in any
way a characteristic of prehistoric social organization. This
point of view is entirely an offshoot of a patriarchal form
of social organization; and there is every indication that
this form of absolute hierarchical order did not become
established in its dominance until the advent of early
agrarian societies: which Guattari refers to as despotic
empires.
There are clear indications that matriarchies were well
185
established in pre-agrarian societies; and while alliances
were certainly stabilized through coupling, there are no
grounds that I am aware of for automatically assuming the
commoditization of such relationships.
And in fact, the nature of postulated matrimonial
arrangements which may have existed that far in the past
is itself in doubt. As Wikipedia notes with reference to Fu Xi
(thought to have been born around 2852 B.C.), legendary
inventor of writing in China:
In the beginning there was as yet no moral
or social order. Men knew their mothers only,
not their fathers. When hungry, they searched
for food; when satisfied, they threw away the
remnants. They devoured their food hide and
hair, drank the blood, and clad themselves
in skins and rushes. Then came Fu Xi and
looked upward and contemplated the images
in the heavens, and looked downward and
contemplated the occurrences on earth. He
united man and wife, regulated the five stages
of change, and laid down the laws of humanity.
He devised the eight trigrams, in order to gain
mastery over the world.
Ban Gu, Baihu tongyi (2)
2) Wilhelm, Richard; Baines, Cary F. (1967).
I Ching.
(Traditionally, Fu Xi is considered the
originator of the I Ching (also known as the
Yi Jing or Zhou Yi), which work is attributed
to his reading of the He Map (or the Yellow
River Map). According to this tradition, Fu Xi
had the arrangement of the trigrams of the
I Ching revealed to him supernaturally. This
arrangement precedes the compilation of the
I Ching during the Zhou dynasty. He is said to
have discovered the arrangement in markings on
the back of a mythical dragon-horse (sometimes
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
said to be a turtle) that emerged from the river
Luo. This discovery is also said to have been the
origin of calligraphy.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Xi
It must also be noted that the use of vague exchange-related
notions in describing social phenomena invariably displaces
concrete descriptions of productive activities.
This is a very serious methodological error, because
acts of production always occur as the establishment of
historical fact; whereas the ideal of exchange always strips
away the realities of production and instead demands that
certain preferred organizational relations be accepted as
an interpretive norm. With the determinate certainties
of production worn away in a constantly changing sea of
outstretched hands, any historical fact can easily be replaced
by whatever story best suits the interests of those who
claim to oversee exchanges of goods: an exchange which
necessarily demands productive activity, yet at the same time
and for its own interests claims to supersede production in
importance.
This is something we constantly witness in our modern
world, where large multinationals have assumed a right
of bringing to market any resource they can extract, from
anywhere, regardless of any traditional land uses by
Indigenous Peoples which are thus displaced and destroyed
through these market-based activities. In such cases, the
productivity of traditional territory and its ability to support
the Indigenous Peoples who live upon it is completely
devalued through this same concept of economic exchange,
which forcibly imposes a system of monetary value defined
by an elsewhere always outside the areas to which it is so
applied.
As we shall see, the origin of writing as exemplified by
the image writing system of North Americas First Nations
can only be understood in terms of production, and of
function and use. Coincident with this, definitions of
186
phonetic writing which are predicated upon an equation of
translatability, realized through an exchange of meaning,
refuse to recognize the existence of such graphically defined
systemizations of productive meaning: simply, to actively
produce meaning is to remain outside the mechanisms of
translation which function by equating already determined
meanings with each other.
We will return to this matter later. For the moment, though,
I am certainly willing to grant that the use of figurines
did indeed eventually extend to the Middle East (in a
different form), where such use was widely and apparently
wholeheartedly embraced:
Page 165-166
The smallest of these effigies are figurines,
which have been found in almost all of the ancient
kingdoms, beginning with the first stationary
settlements of man. During the seventh and sixth
millennia B.C., they are extremely primitive,
small stones with incised features or grotesque
clay figures. Evidence of their importance in
cultures of about 5600 B.C. is provided by the
excavations at Hacilar in southwest Turkey. Flat
standing female effigies, made of baked clay or
stone with incised eyes, nose, hair, and chin were
found in each house, as if, I suggest, they were its
occupants hallucinatory controls.
Page 166
Figurines in huge numbers have been
unearthed in most of the Mesopotamian
cultures, at Lagash, Uruk, Nippur, and Susa. At
Ur, clay figures painted in black and red were
found in boxes of burnt brick placed under the
floor against the walls but with one end opened,
facing into the center of the room.
The function of all these figurines, however,
is as mysterious as anything in all archaeology.
The most popular view goes back to the uncritical
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
mania with which ethnology, following Frazer,
wished to find fertility cults at the drop of a
carved pebble. But if such figurines indicate
something about Frazerian fertility, we should
not find them where fertility was no problem.
But we do.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin Of Consciousness In The
Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind.
Copyright 1976 by Julian Jaynes.
Published in Canada 1978 by the University of
Toronto Press, Toronto Ontario.
Jaynes book is a strange one, and most who encounter
it find that the ideas it contains are oddly compelling,
despite appearing to contradict our most basic assumptions
concerning the rise of the worlds early civilizations.
Richard Dawkins calls The Origin Of Consciousness In The
Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind:
Page 392
... a book that is as strange as its title suggests.
It is one of those books that is either complete
rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing
in between! Probably the former, but Im hedging
my bets.
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Copyright 2006 by Richard Dawkins
Published by Bantam Books,
a division of Transworld Publishers;
located, presumably, around the world.
Jaynes advanced a hypothesis that human consciousness,
as we know it now, came into being during a period just a few
thousand years B.C.:
Page 42
Our minds work much faster than
consciousness can keep up with. We commonly
187
make general assertions based on our past
experiences in an automatic way, and only
as an afterthought are we sometimes able to
retrieve any of the past experiences on which an
assertion is based. How often we reach sound
conclusions and are quite unable to justify them!
Because reasoning is not conscious. And consider
the kind of reasoning that we do about others
feelings and character, or in reasoning out the
motives of others from their actions. These are
clearly the result of automatic inferences by our
nervous systems in which consciousness is not
only unnecessary, but, as we have seen in the
performance of motor skills, would probably
hinder the process.
Page 47
If our reasonings have been correct, it is
perfectly possible that there could have existed a
race of men who spoke, judged, reasoned, solved
problems, indeed did most of the things that we
do, but who were not conscious at all. This is the
important and in some ways upsetting notion
that we are forced to conclude at this point.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin Of Consciousness In The
Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind.
The strange thing about Jaynes hypotheses is that it is
based upon the idea that human consciousness originally
functioned in such a way that each hemisphere of the brain
operated in a semi-independent fashion; and that our modern
state of consciousness arose with a functional integration of
these two hemispheres.
Jaynes suggests this integration was triggered by the
invention of writing.
I do not agree with Jaynes central hypothesis: as should
be obvious at this point, I suspect other forms of neural
reorganization were responsible for the establishment of our
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
modern consciousness-of-self. I do, however, think that the
fairly extensive documentation which Jaynes assembled in
support of his bicameral hypotheses does in fact capture the
kind of transition in neural organization which one would
expect from the cultural introduction of conscious subjectivity
into areas where it had not developed in its own right. Jaynes
has perhaps managed to document the end phase of that
transition, when consciousness-of-self as a fact of neural
organization had spread from Europe at the end of the Ice
Age, into other areas which had not been subject to the kind
of sub-freezing temperatures which would have consistently
induced olfactory dormancy over tens of millennia.
In short, while I do not agree with Julian Jaynes intriguing
thesis of bicameralism (a state in which the brains two
hemispheres function semi-independently of each other)
as the origin of human consciousness-of-self; I am quite
willing to entertain the notion that the introduction of
cultural artifacts produced through consciousness-of-self, into
societies which had not been exposed to olfactory dormancy
in environments of extreme cold, may have had some rather
bizarre consequences directly associated with the neural
reorganization of the conscious states previously dominant in
those more temperate climes.
It would not seem unreasonable to assume that the
initial introduction of articulated speech to areas where
it had not previously been practiced might lead to certain
distinctive cognitive difficulties; and that similar cognitive
mis-organizations might also result from the introduction
of grammatically patterned writing systems. But it is
difficult to determine the cognitive implications of neural
reorganizations in which a newly forming consciousness-
of-self instead stabilizes as a speech which says nothing
but its language. Yet, this is certainly something we might
well expect to see in some instances: particularly when
consciousness-of-self was becoming established through an
exposure to cultural constructs which originated in other
areas, where consciousness-of-self had become established
much earlier and much more gradually, through a long-term
exposure to those environmental conditions within which it
188
necessarily precipitates.
However, this remains a matter of speculation: of degree
and partiality; and of time frames.
>>>
It very much seems to me, given the range of timescales
involved here, that we must assume this form of neural
reorganization has yet to achieve the kind of stability we
saw characterizing the conscious states entertained by our
hominid forbearers. Our modern consciousness-of-self seems
to have formed as suspended somewhere between a steady
state of conscious stupor, and the uncontrolled transferential
dissipations of utter madness which the subjectively self-
conscious ability to form articulated languages has enabled.
As Foucault notes of our modern age:
Page 546
Freuds work should be taken for what it is;
it does not discover that madness is caught
up in a network of meanings that it shares
with everyday language, thereby authorizing
us to speak of it with the everyday platitudes
of psychological vocabulary. It displaces the
European experience of madness to situate it
in the perilous, still transgressive region (and
therefore still forbidden, but in a particular
manner), which is that of languages that imply
themselves, i.e. which state in their statement
the language with which they state it. Freud did
not discover the lost identity of a meaning; he
identified the irruptive figure of a signifier that
is absolutely unlike the others.
Page 547
Since Freud, Western madness has become a
non-language because it has become a double
language (a language which only exists in
this speech, a speech that says nothing but its
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
language) - i.e. a matrix of the language which,
strictly speaking, says nothing. A fold of the
spoken which is an absence of work.
One day, it will have to be acknowledged
that Freud did not make speak a madness that
had genuinely been a language for centuries
(a language that was excluded, garrulous
inanity, speech which ran indefinitely outside
the reflective silence of reason); what he did was
silence the unreasonable Logos; he dried it out;
he forced its words back to their source, all the
way back to that blank region of auto-implication
where nothing is said.
Michel Foucault, Madness, The Absence of an
Oeuvre, Appendix I in History of Madness.
Indeed, it may well be that we never again see the kind
of stability which characterized hominid consciousness; but
that, in contrast, our modern sense of consciousness-of-self
is in effect characteristically transitional, and will always
be other than it ever is at any given moment in historical
time. This may well be the defining character of our present
age, and as such will always be something with which we
must contend:
Page 548-549
In the eyes of I know not which future culture
- and perhaps it is already very near - we shall
be the people who brought most closely together
two sentences that are never really uttered, two
sentences as contradictory and impossible as the
famous I am lying and which both designate
the same empty self reference: I write and I am
delirious. In this way we find ourselves beside a
thousand other cultures that grouped together
I am mad with I am an animal, or I am God
or I am a sign, or even I am truth, as was the
case with the nineteenth century up until Freud.
And if that culture has a taste for history, it will
189
recall that Nietzsche, going mad, proclaimed in
1887 that he was the truth (why I am so wise,
why I know so many things, why I write such
good books, why I am a fatality); and that less
than fifty years later Roussel, on the eve of his
suicide, wrote in Comment jai crit certains de mais
livres the story, systematically twinned, of his
madness and his writing techniques. And they
will no doubt be surprised that we were able to
recognize such a strange kinship between that
which, for so long, was feared as a cry, and that
which, for so long, was awaited like a song.
Michel Foucault, Madness, The Absence of an
Oeuvre, Appendix I in History of Madness.
It is undeniable that consciousness-of-self is a fact of
modern human existence. It also appears evident that this
form of neural organization is a fairly recent advancement,
given the millions of years in which our lineage has exhibited
an upright stature; and that consciousness-of-self is a form of
neural organization which humans have had some difficulty
in successfully adapting to, or adopting, as the case may be.
Such difficulties seem to be consistently identified as
linguistic; and, to be localized in the articulation of
consciousness with itself: specifically, to be of a nature
whereby the articulations of language are taken by
consciousness to be instead the articulation of consciousness
with itself. As we noted at the beginning of our inquiry,
language and consciousness are intimately entwined; or as
the philosopher Leibniz would say: the relationship between
language and consciousness is one of complication, with each
complicating the other; and, I might add, this is not always
seen as a complementary relationship.
There are of course innumerable examples of modern
humans pushing their own consciousness-of-self away from
what it insistently seeks to become in its own right, toward
more basic forms of conscious state which may in some
circumstances have a more utilitarian functionality which
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
is lost to consciousness-of-self. The most extreme example I
have heard came as a first-hand description of a traditional
ceremony practiced by an Indigenous group deep in the
Amazon. This story was recounted by the ethnobotanist
Wade Davis in the early 1990s, who spoke of participating
in a ritual whereby a powdered plant extract was blown up
his nose through a long tube. With the humbling shock of
the memory visible upon his face, he spoke of an experience
wherein all trace of personal identity was immediately
ripped away from my consciousness.
I did not have a chance to ask him further of this
experience, as I was in charge of the sound system at that
event and was thus otherwise occupied; but it would have
been very interesting to hear if any previously dormant
olfactory capabilities were thus enabled. Again, there is
in this story a further suggestion that our present state of
consciousness-of-self as we know it is indeed contingent
upon a certain repurposing of olfactory neurology: and
that this mode of neural organization is not necessarily as
intransigently stable as we might like to believe.
The tenuous stability for that form of neural organization
which supports consciousness-of-self may be at root the
very source of those transitional difficulties which seemed
to attend the initial attainment of self-conscious states by
humans; and more importantly, this situation may also
underlie an almost nonthetic craving for that simplicity
of neural organization which existed as the norm before
consciousness-of-self became established.
In this, one can easily point to the kind of object-relation
stability for personal identity which the written texts of
Middle Eastern religions brought to their followers; or as
a matter of equal fascination, the fervent passion which
attended the reawakening of a European engagement with
the chemo-olfactory senses in the modern establishment
of the spice trade. It is difficult to think of anything that
changed the world more than the lengths and distances
people were willing to go, that they might sate their resurgent
molecular craving to enable almost forgotten abilities of
190
taste and smell which the introduction of spices to European
society facilitated.
One almost has to wonder if some tendency toward a
simpler cognitive organization might underlie some of the
seductive allure which is indirectly effected by religion or,
more immediately, by strong and varied chemo-olfactory
stimulation: a simple tendency of consciousness to default
toward a more efficient, less demanding, less energy-intensive
form of thought. Or that we might, in our present era, be
witnessing a similar movement away from the demands
made by consciousness articulating with itself: in the
devolutionary tendencies established by way of the worldwide
traffic in drugs.
Certainly, such a view would go a long way toward
explaining the descent into brutality which has historically
attended the spread of religion, the expansion of the spice
trade, and the international growth of narco-trafficing.
But I digress here from the purpose of our inquiry.
>>>
Returning to the matter of the Venus figurine, I would
think that the function served by these objects during the Ice
Age would have been fairly straightforward, and, not so very
far removed from the use-function of personal adornment.
I think that these objects are best understood in the
context of relationships holding between production and
reproduction, rather than reproduction and exchange.
In the tropical climate of Africa, where hominids and
humans evolved, sexual receptivity would never have been
an issue. Airborne pheromones and the clear visibility of
genitalia would have continuously motivated mating.
The situation in the sub-freezing temperatures of Ice Age
Europe would have been entirely different. Early humans
would have been forced to remain as well-clothed as they
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
could manage. For a lot of the time, nobody would have been
able to smell much of anything. Under these conditions, one
would expect the reproductive rate of these groups to have
decreased significantly; and in a marginal environment,
with the attendant dangers of a primitive existence, the
ongoing survival of what were probably small groups of
humans might have in some instances been a questionable
proposition.
The use of Fertility Idols to visually signal sexual receptivity
in females might have come into use as a way to motivate
mating behaviors in males made somewhat clueless by the
harsh environmental conditions.
We know that produced objects had by that point a long
history of being used to motivate the formation of conscious
states. We have indications that personal adornments were
by this point being used as rudimentary signs that stabilized
individual reference within social groups. The use of Fertility
Idols by individuals to distinguish themselves within the
group as receptive to mating, although not a necessary
conclusion, would have been a practical adaptation that
would have helped to ensure the ongoing viability of the
group.
If such a practice had the desired effect, and the
reproductive rate of groups using such Fertility Idols rose
above that of the groups who did not, it would then have
been only a matter of time before the use of these figurines
spread throughout the groups of humans who lived in Ice Age
Europe.
In the end, this may well also be the underlying reason for
the extinction of the Neanderthals.
Forced from the best cave sites by encroaching humans;
and although able to fend for themselves through their
adaptations to the frigid conditions of the Ice Age,
Neanderthals might not have been able to sustain a high
enough reproductive rate to keep their numbers above a
critical survival threshold; not without at least the marginal
191
shelter of deep winter cave sites, in which to warn their noses.
The Neanderthals may have succumbed to a terminal form
of frigidity.
>>>
For humans, though, things were heating up even as the
world cooled.
Retreating far into the best caves during the deepest winter
freezes, we find humans creating amazing displays of art.
From this, it seems clear that volitional memory may have
been a cognitive aspect of human consciousness by this point
in time. The animals which were depicted upon cave walls
were certainly not present to serve as live models; and while
copies might have been made of depictions drawn from direct
perception at another time and place, there is no reason to
think that the general opportunity for an entire population
to co-opt dormant olfactory neurology toward other purposes
hadnt resulted in a vast array of new talents being actualized
by all peoples resident throughout Ice Age Europe. Clearly, by
this point, the ability to posit an imaging consciousness was
becoming firmly established.
We cannot, however, determine the exact mechanisms
through which such an imaging consciousness was beginning
to stabilize. Although some form of memory seems to be
implicated here, it could simply be the case that the flickering
light of torches or fires on the shadowed walls of caves
suggested such figures as were drawn there; in which case,
we would again be dealing with an effect derived directly
from eye movement, and of tracings made cognitive within a
motor reflex context.
What is undeniable, though, is that the development of an
imaging consciousness does seem to articulate the transition
from cognitive states where consciousness-of-self appears
to have remained as yet unobtainable, to those in which a
subjective realization of self had fully formed.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
For we also know that, even as this transition proceeded, an
abstract consciousness-of-self may have remained somewhat
elusive:
>>>
Page 60
These frescoes not only seemed to have been
painted yesterday; they were incomparably
captivating: a kind of savage and graceful life
emanated from their disordered composition.
Nothing could have rendered the presence of
this nascent humanity of long ago more tangible.
Yet this tangible aspect also amplifies the
paradox proper to all prehistoric art. The traces
of their distant humanity that these men left,
which reach us after tens of thousands of years,
are almost completely limited to representations
of animals. These men made tangible for us
the fact that they were becoming men, that
the limitations of animality no longer confined
them, but they made this tangible by leaving us
images of the very animality from which they
had escaped.
What must continue to astonish us is that the
effacement of man before the animal, at the very
moment when the animal within him became
human, is the greatest effacement that can be
conceived. In effect, prehistoric man depicted
animals in fascinating and naturalistic images,
but when he wanted to represent himself, he
awkwardly concealed his unique, distinguishing
features beneath those of the animal that he
was not.
Page 61
Breuil says simply: In this wall art of the
dark caverns in which hunting magic holds
the greatest place, the human figure is always
192
rare though not absent, but generally very
conventional. Most of these figures are masked,
or if one prefers, provided with nonhuman
attributes.
George Bataille, The Cradle of Humanity:
Prehistoric art and culture.
Translated by Michelle Kendall and Stuart Kendall.
Copyright 2005 by Urzone, Inc.
Published 2005 by Zone Books, New York NY
As inventive as the images painted upon the walls of
Ice Age caves were, for some reason those who produced
these ancient masterpieces chose not to portray themselves
with any consistent degree of frequency. Although we
unhesitatingly attribute modern behavior to these small
bands of Ice Age humans, a quick glance around in our
modern world is sufficient to reveal that this ascription of
modernity needs some qualification. Today, images of the
human face abound in all visual media. Some people even go
so far as to have the faces of celebrities tattooed on their skin.
Yet images of people are relatively rare in Ice Age cave art.
From this, we must conclude that, although consciousness-
of-consciousness was an established fact; and while a
sense of personal identity within the group was becoming
progressively more defined; still, the stable subjective
individuality which characterizes consciousness-of-self had
yet to fully form.
Yet form it did; and there is certainly archaeological
evidence of this. R. Leakey specifically references one
particular site at which a large number of portrait-like
depictions have been found:
Page 105-106
The final period of the Upper Paleolithic - the
Magdalenian, from 18,000 to 11,000 years ago -
was the era of deep-cave painting: 80 percent of
all painted caves date from this period. Lascaux
was painted during this time, as was Altamira,
a similarly spectacular cave in the Cantabrian
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self
region of northern Spain. The Magdalenians
were also talented sculptors and engravers of
stone, bone, and ivory objects - some utilitarian,
such a spear throwers, some not obviously so,
such as batons. Although it is often said that
the human form is a rarity in Ice Age art, in
the Magdalenian period this was not the case.
Magdalenian people at the cave of La Marche,
in southwestern France, engraved more than
a hundred profiles of human heads, each so
individualistic as to give the impression of a
portrait.
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind.
>>>
If such portraits are enough to establish that human
subjectivity had at last taken hold, other objects from the
same site clearly demonstrate that articulated thought was
definitely being externalized and embodied as a form of
knowledge consistent with symbolic schema:
Page 29
The new tool must have seemed entirely
magical, and it is tempting to see in it the origin of
the age-old myth of the magic wand. It seems to
represent the first deliberate and detailed use of a
device which would serve to extend the memory,
because with it knowledge could be held in
recorded form outside the brain or the sequence
of a ritual. These magic objects are referred to
by modern archaeologists as batons, and they
are made of carved bone or antler horn. Several
thousand examples have survived, and they
appear in most of the cultures of the period.
Page 30
The first clue to the batons specific purpose
comes from the fact that they are all found in the
southern latitudes, around the Mediterranean,
193
principally in France, Italy, and Spain. It is here
that, as the ice began finally to retreat, climactic
improvement would have been accompanied by
more vegetation, an increasing variety of game,
and the opportunity to benefit from both. The
second clue is that the regularity and repetition
of the carved pattern sets on the batons indicate
a sense of periodicity.
Page 31
The most extraordinary example of all, the
French La Marche bone, dates from 13,000
years ago and was discovered in a find that
included decorated tools, amulets, and a library
of stones engraved with human and animal
images. Apart from a carving of a pregnant
mare, the bone carries a series of marks carved in
sets and subsets, each set made with a different
tool.
When compared with an astronomical model,
the bone is revealed to be an exact sixty-mark
notation of the lunar calendar. The subsets
begin at conventional lunar phase points, with
the observational limitations to be expected in
the European mid-latitudes. The entire calendar
covers a period of 7.5 months with remarkable
accuracy. The whole sequence seems to run from
the beginning of the thaw in March to the first
frost in November, covering the period when the
hunters would be able to live out of their cave
shelters.
James Burke and Robert Ornstein,
The Axemakers Gift.
>>>
Clearly, when humans emerged from their European caves
at the end of the Ice Age, they did so as fully conscious of
their own cognitive abilities: humans had acquired the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 10.0) Toward Consciousness-Of-Self 194

reflective ability to modify their own thoughts directly,

through thought; and this, instead of simply motivating the
formation of specific conscious states, through the use of
external objects. I contend that the most likely cause of this
adaptive advancement was the co-opting of dormant neural
processes, associated with an olfactory sense which proved
sporadically useless under Ice Age living conditions, by other
cognitive processes: this in effect produced a folding of
conscious states onto themselves, which resulted in that sense
of consciousness-of-self we all live within today.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
It now seems rather probable that we have managed
to somewhat localized the conditions, and defined the
mechanisms, through which human consciousness-of-self
initially came into being.
Since it is the intention of this inquiry to try and establish
the point-of-origin for writing, through an analysis of
the development of human consciousness, it appears
that we have finally arrived at a point in our philosophic
investigation where our goal is within reach.
Here we can say: in co-opting dormant olfactory processes,
the active senses in effect acquire a neurological space in
which to produce concepts from the articulations of conscious
states. Derrida notes that this ability characterizes all the
articulations which consciousness produces as writing in its
broadest sense: it is the nature of this process as differential
transference which is of primary importance here.
This process, as we noted earlier, is integral to the
production of concepts.
As we have seen, the necessary prerequisites through
which writing can become established were already in
evidence with the unreflective and nonthetic conscious states
of hominids; but, only in an externalized form. It is only
through the repurposing of dormant olfactory neurology
that a distinctly conceptual space, as consciousness-of-
self, becomes available in such a way as to enable The
Trace of differential transferences to become instituted in a
consistently unmotivated state that allows articulations to
co-extend directly with themselves, thus allowing syntactic
and grammatological structure to develop.
Although we saw concept formation being established
within the externalized material formalizations of those
conscious states which hominids produced, the fact remains
that there is for us a certain contextual sense which defines
the creation of concepts as somehow distinctly characterized
195
by our chemo-olfactory processes:
Page 77
The philosophical faculty of coadaptation,
which also regulates the creation of concepts, is
called taste. If the laying-out of the plane is called
Reason, the invention of personae Imagination,
and the creation of concepts Understanding,
then taste appears as the triple faculty of the
still-undetermined concept, of the persona still in
limbo, and of the still-transparent plane. That is
why it is necessary to create, invent, and lay out,
while taste is like the rule of correspondence of
the three instances that are different in kind. It is
certainly not a faculty of measuring. No measure
will be found in those infinite movements that
make up the plane of the immanence, in those
accelerated lines without contour, and those
inclines and curves; in those excessive and
sometimes antipathetic personae; or in those
concepts with irregular forms, strident intensities,
and colors that are so bright and barbarous that
they can inspire a kind of disgust (especially in
repulsive concepts). Nonetheless, what appears
as philosophical taste in every case is love of
the well-made concept, well-made meaning
not a moderation of the concept but a sort of
stimulation, a sort of modulation in which
conceptual activity has no limit in itself but only
in the other two limitless activities.
Page 78
Philosophical taste neither replaces creation
nor restrains it. On the contrary, the creation
of concepts calls for a taste that modulates it.
The free creation of determined concepts needs
a taste for the undetermined concept. Taste is
this power, this being-potential of the concept:
it is certainly not for rational or reasonable
reasons than a particular concept is created or a
particular component chosen.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
What Is Philosophy.
This is a very strange, almost ineffable sense of the
concept as characterized by chemo-olfactory processes; in
truth, this is something which attends concept formation
as an unreflective state: this is in every sense of the term a
nonthetic aspect of our consciousness-of-self, and is of a non-
conscious modality which shapes for us the way in which the
concept is experienced as sensible, as intelligible. This isnt
a synthetic process which brings aspects of consciousness
together: it is something more basic, something which first
establishes the nature of that partiality through which
such aspects can be integrated. This is of the threshold
between non-conscious processes and conscious states, which
determines that the articulations of synthetic consciousness-
of-self can be effected. This is the very partiality of structure
which, in an unreflective fashion, attends concept formation
from non-conscious processes. Here, we cannot upon
reflection say why this aspect of the construction of a concept
works for us; only that a certain functionality which we seek
is achieved.
Whereas earlier in this inquiry we had decided to employ
conscious states as the gathering point where we would
compose concepts from intensive ordinates, we now see a
further factor becoming established with the occurrence
we call consciousness-of-self: already intelligible, concepts
become embodied in neural processes previously dedicated
to the chemo-olfactory senses. In this way, concepts can
become objects for consciousness and can be modified as
such. Previously articulate through an externally functional
co-extension of motor reflex activity and sensory perception,
concepts are now articulated internally as consciousness co-
extends with itself.
Where before, the external orientation of sensory perception
and motor reflex activity determined that conceptual
formations would invariably occur in an externalized context,
now, the conceptual formations characterizing consciousness-
196
of-self must be intentionally externalized.
>>>
Earlier, we considered a few examples wherein non-
conscious processes appear to have become established as
the relational patterns of conscious states: most notably, we
considered a probable origin for that sense of what we call
reason in the proportionate ratios established by a Dorsal
Stream processing of grip scaling for grasping actions of the
hands.
We also noted a remarkable correspondence between
Husserls use of retention and protention in establishing the
sense of a universal Now; and, the motor reflex dynamics
of respiration, experienced as co-extended with sensory
perception, in the articulation of a fundamentally basic
conscious state.
It is therefore tempting at this point to try and establish
some sort of functional correlation between breathing /
smelling, and, conscious states / consciousness-of-self. At
first glance, it would seem that such a relationship might
be contextualized within very recent research which has
revealed the presence of background energy patterns within
the brain, as referenced earlier in this inquiry (The Brains
Dark Energy; Markus E. Raichle, Scientific American, March
2010).
However, we would not find the evolutionary origin of such
a connection in human consciousness-of-self. Nor would we
find it in hominids. We wouldnt even find it in mammals.
In all probability, we would have to climb all the way down
the evolutionary ladder to those animals which were the
first to make the transition from a cold-blooded to a warm-
blooded form of existence. Here, we would again find the
kind of developmental potential which is inherent in dormant
neurological processes: in the form of those mechanisms
which cold-blooded animals use to regulate their body
temperature, through what are essentially territorial
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
interactions with their environment. This is a transitional
phase in evolutionary development which is almost
inconceivably old; it must have happened before 145 million
years ago, when mammals are thought to have first evolved.
In fact, this transition happened so long ago that, for the
most part, the very neurology which underlies the behavioral
abilities we have been considering throughout this inquiry
did not yet exist. The parts of the brain responsible for those
behaviors had not yet evolved.
All of the evolutionary advances in neurological complexity
and configuration which occurred after that transition from
a cold-blooded nature to a warm-blooded mode of existence
necessarily happened as a differentiation: of what had
been before, into something new. Neural structures do not
simply disappear when they are not being used: established
neurology is too valuable for an organism to waste. Instead,
the functions of dormant neurology becomes dedicated
toward other purposes.
If our analysis of what occurred in the Ice Age Europe
(when olfactory neurology became functionally dormant)
can be taken as in any way indicative of what might have
happened in that unthinkably ancient evolution of cold-
blooded mammals into ones which were warm-blooded, then
some very interesting possibilities suggest themselves.
Since we know that any new form of neurological process
which comes into being through a co-opting of dormant
processes must be, at the same time, both the newly
developed and the older co-opted processes; and since we can
easily establish the kinds of behavior through which modern
cold-blooded animals regulate their body temperature
(through interactions with their environment), some very
generalized correlations can quickly be outlined.
First, cold-blooded animals warm themselves in the sun
so that they can attain the level of metabolic activity they
need to do pretty much everything, except bask in the sun.
This certainly sounds exactly like a brain which maintains
197
a background level of ubiquitous activity, from which it
deviates whenever it engages in some specific task.
Second, actively using the ambient thermal characteristics
of the surrounding environment to regulate body
temperature sounds remarkably like the processes of
deterritorialization and reterritorialization that Deleuze and
Guattari described in establishing the fundamental concepts
of geophilosophy. If we were to find ourselves wondering
where the underlying dynamics of such essentially territorial
activities could have arisen, this might be a valid context
in which to begin looking; particularly since the distinction
between relative and absolute territorializations (which we
do not examine in the course of this inquiry) seems, in this
context, to correspond to the distinction between conscious
states and consciousness-of-self: with conscious states
occurring as relative to the environment, and consciousness-
of-self maintaining a similar relation, but in a transcendental
manifestation.
Third, it is a generally accepted truism that cold-blooded
and warm-blooded animals are also distinguished by
the presence of emotion in the latter. This is to say, while
cold-blooded animals try to stay in places where they are
warming, and try to move away from places where they are
too cold; humans certainly exhibit a conscious stability of
emotional states: some of which they try to stay within, and
some of which they try to keep away from.
Interestingly, as we saw with the feeling tones
encountered with reference to the gymno-therapeutic
exercises of Kum Nye Relaxation, there does seem to be some
form of direct connection between motor reflex activities
and emotional states, as demonstrated through such proto-
emotive feeling tones. Since there is a necessary and
essentially functional connection between a cold-blooded
animals ability to actively regulate its body temperature by
interacting with its environment, and its ability to activate its
motor reflexes with a functional efficiency, we might suppose
that this kind of neural relationship between steady states
and activations is somehow determinate of the way in which
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
emotions function; and as such, is also implicated in some
reciprocal relationship linking the formation of conscious
states (as delay) and motivation.
Perhaps it is an archaic, residual trace of this ability to
functionally modulate body temperature, as structurally
inherent within all of the brains later neurology, which
eventually articulates the establishment of volitional memory
- a neural articulation which does seem to have become
established in the context of warming beside a fire. This
would certainly help to explain the distinction Bergson noted
between movement-based memory, and volitional memory:
how the first seems invariably oriented toward external
occurrences, and how the second invariably occurs as an
internal articulation. Indeed, the character of volitional
memory still seems to be entirely in keeping with the kinds of
transitions which would regulate the thermal state of a cold-
blooded animal: as an intention toward a characteristically
steady (yet necessarily transitory) state, which is in itself
transitional toward activations specifically occurring as
contingent upon its formation.
In all probability, this list could be extended to a
considerable length; but for our purposes here, it is enough to
note how several nagging and unexamined questions could
quite possibly find their resolution within this context:
- What is the nature of the underlying neurological
processes through and within which conscious states could
initially begin to form?
- In that the production of conceptual composites is a
neurological possibility, why do these relational structures
initially form (with hominids) in an externalized context?
What mechanism enables such formations, and why does it
at first compose these localizations of conceptual structure
within exclusively external reference?
- What is the underlying nature of conscious intentionality,
such that it appears to be evident even in situations where
consciousness is not conscious of itself: in the nonthetic form
198
of consciousness, for instance, which Sartre attributes to the
unreflective and direct perception of the visual?
- The fundamental sense of time through which Husserl
characterizes intentionality seems to be a composite structure
derived from two non-conscious processes: breathing, and
the scaling of the hands grasp. How could such a synthesis
be affected before synthetic consciousness is established?
What is the nature of the process that could effect the
bringing together of such very different components, given
that the nature of this synthesis appears be opaque within
consciousness, rather than transparent as consciousness?
- What is the nature of the essential relationship between
motivation and modification? Why are these two processes
so closely related that they are only distinguishable within
the context of consciousness-of-self? Why is that which is the
compulsion to effect movement toward an end state all but
indistinguishable from the ability to effect change, within
the context of a conscious states stability? Why is the ability
to effect change so clearly distinguishable from motivational
stimuli within the context of consciousness-of-self? What
is the nature of the transition from simple, non-reflective
conscious states which allows such a clear distinction to then
take form?
- Why did the co-opting of dormant olfactory processes
result in the formation of volitional memory, and not
something else; why was the nature of the underlying neural
structures which were so co-opted such, that the formation of
volitional memory ensued as the form of transitional stability
which it became?
- And finally, what does it mean when Deleuze and Guattari
say that taste somehow modulates the formation of
concepts? Where did this process of modulation come from,
that it already determines the way in which co-opted chemo-
olfactory processes are functionally incorporated into the
establishment of volitional memory, as formational for
consciousness-of-self?
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
Again, I digress from the primary focus of our present
inquiry: but now I think we have at least some sense of
what it is within conscious states which articulates into
consciousness-of-self through volitional memory, by way of
an imaging consciousness; and, why that first occurs as a
modulation.
We now also have a better idea of what that sense of
fascination is which limited sign formation on The Hominid
Stone to the single example we examined. In addition, we
may have established the most probable way in which the
images of hominids found on this stone were articulated with
the conscious states of the being who produced them; through
intensive ordinates forming vectors of emotional relation.
If there is any form of hominid grammatology upon that
stone (and this would necessarily occur in some manner of
externalized, territorial form), it will be articulated through
these emotional states.
>>>
As tempting a proposition as the thorough investigation of
these aforementioned general considerations might be, for
the purposes of our inquiry we need to take a closer look at
something a little more specific.
Rather than considering how archaic neural processes
might have been incorporated into the development
of entirely new neurological structures, we are looking
at something which is subtly different: we are instead
considering how functional neural processes might be
experienced a bit differently after co-opting a dormant
neurological capability.
We do have a few guidelines as to what this might be
like: Sartre has consistently iterated that consciousness is
always wholly transparent to itself; and so whatever the
results which we see might be, we know that they must at
once be entirely both the co-opting process and the co-opted
neurology in question.
199
We also have an exceptionally well-documented example of
a specific sense which demonstrably undergoes several forms
of derivational extension: that of vision.
We know immediately the nature of those direct
perceptions furnished to us by sight. We have examined the
production of externalized images, as effected through a
transference of differential proportions and as illustrated in
image examples found upon The Hominids Stone. And, we
are familiar with a variety of imaging mechanisms; from the
relational indications of imaging consciousness, through to
the intensive ordinates of symbolic schema, and on into the
articulated consistencies of the concept.
Perhaps the best way to investigate what effects a co-opting
of dormant olfactory processes would have on conscious
states would be to tentatively examine the formation of what
Sartre calls an imaging consciousness.
Perhaps in this way we can find some indication of how
the visual components of conscious states might be gathered
together a little differently within the co-opted neural
processing of a dormant olfactory sense.
>>>
This does seem a reasonable course for our inquiry to take,
because it appears that the establishment of an imaging
consciousness is somehow a transitional phase in the
development of consciousness-of-self.
With The Hominid Stone, we saw how images were used
to personalize objects; not with a sense of ownership, but
of belonging: the belonging of an object to the group, as
the belonging of the individual in the group. Here it seemed
that we were still looking at a situation of territorialization
in which neither subjectivity nor objectivity had formed; but,
that the productive use of images for modifying a sense of
possession was tending toward establishing an object-based
referentiality for the individual within the group.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
Thus the ability to modify objects seems to become
established long before consciousness acquired an ability
to modify itself; and, the ability to produce images seems
to be a transitional phase between these states of cognitive
capability. It appears that objects, already used to motivate
conscious states, were being modified with images before
consciousness acquired the ability to modify itself by
visualizing the nature of its own existence.
Image production was initially a matter of the simple
transference of proportional relationships from something
within direct sensory perception, to the site of productive
activity. This is entirely in keeping with the productive
techniques employed through the use of paradigmatic
templates. Later, we can note the role of eye movement
in tracing image outlines (actual or apparent), and, the
functioning of movement-based memory in the formation of
symbolic schema: here, we begin to see the composition of
conceptual structures which come to be constituted through
intensive ordinates produced in a survey of figural tracings by
eye movement. This established a distinctly conceptual aspect
to the production and modification of objects, such that the
retention of relational aspects through image composition
allowed for the production of knowledge.
We must suspect that the shift toward a consciousness
which is being modified rather than simply motivated was
effected relative to images, and that a specific occurrence
of images was involved: those which were formed upon the
walls of Ice Age caves in Europe.
>>>
In considering images which are produced on objects from
direct perception, and any symbolic schema supported in that
material context, we are still dealing with situations that are
essentially motivational for consciousness. However, once we
move into a situation where we are looking at the inner walls
of a cave, we are in an entirely different set of circumstances.
Here, individuals would certainly have been, without any
doubt, experiencing the suggestion of images dancing on the
200
cave walls in the flicker of firelight. Here, as Sartre notes, we
are beginning to approach the essential nature of that which
constitutes the mental image:
Page 35
V. Faces in the Fire, Spots on Walls,
Rocks in Human Form.
In these cases as in the preceding, there are
movements that interpret forms. But there is
considerable difference in the positional attitudes
of consciousness.
When I look at a drawing, I posit in that
very look a world of human intentions of
which that drawing is a product Briefly, the
quality of representing is a real property of the
lines, I perceive it, for the same reason as I do
their dimensions and their form All imaged
consciousness produced from a drawing is
therefore built on a positing of real existence,
which precedes it and which motivates it on the
ground of perception, though this consciousness
itself can posit its object as nonexistent or simply
neutralize the existential thesis.
When we interpret a spot on the tablecloth,
a motif on a tapestry, we do not posit that the
spot, the motif has representative properties
So that, when I pass to the imaging attitude,
the intuitive basis of my image is nothing that
appeared before me in perception. These images
have for their matter a pure appearance, which
is given as such; nothing is posited at the outset;
it is a question of, as it were, an image in mid
air without substrate. We are not so far from
the mental image, where the matter has so little
independence that it appears with the image
and disappears with it. But in the case we are
studying at the moment, we still pretend to see
the image, which is to say, borrow its matter
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
from the world of perception. We localize this
appearance; it has form and matter. In a word,
the matter is not the spot, it is the spot surveyed
by the eyes in a certain way.
Page 36
There are two eventualities: in one, we affect
free eye movements without an ulterior motive
and we consider the contours of the spot at our
pleasure, following the order that pleases us and
bringing together at random this and that part
in a synthesis that nothing demands or rejects
That is to say that, on this freely effected synthesis,
I make an hypothesis: I confer a representative
value on the oriented form that has just appeared.
To tell the truth, most of the time, I do not wait
until the synthesis is completed, but, suddenly
something crystallizes at the beginning of the
image Knowledge has been incorporated in
my movements and directs them: now I know
how I must finish the operation, I know what I
must find.
Or a certain form stands out from the ground
and causes eye movements by its structure.
Actually, these are almost always what Kohler
calls weak, ambiguous forms, which have an
official figure and a secret figure. To discover the
latter, one almost always needs first a chance
eye movement Here again, the form is only
made in outline We will complete it ourselves,
by reaching a harmony between the real data
of perception (lines of the arabesques) and the
creative spontaneity of our movements
Whether they freely followed one another
or they were solicited by certain structures,
the movements, at first deprived of sense,
suddenly become symbolic systems because
they incorporate some knowledge. Realized on
the spot by their intermediary, the knowledge
201
creates the image.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
In point of fact: the sense of an image so created in tracings
made by the eye, of flickering patterns thrown by torch
or firelight, is of something that was never really there;
instead, this was always something which existed only for
the person perceiving these forms in that moment. In this,
we are already seeing an experientially disjunctive point of
development for consciousness. Here, suddenly, images are
no longer defining the position of the individual within the
group: instead, the individual is unexpectedly placed outside
the group, by being the only one to see any specific images
so intuited. Assuming even rudimentary and proto-linguistic
functionalities, sounds made in reference to such non-
existent images (as would be made with regard to the actual
occurrence of the animals being imagined) could not help but
elicit a response from others within earshot; yet, there would
be no animal there.
The next response is inevitable: a burning stick is pulled
from the fire, and the wall is approached at the point where
the image of the animal in question was perceived. Away
from the sustaining heat of the fire, that burning stick
gutters; the flame it holds fails, and fades to glowing embers:
at which point the somewhat distant fire resumes casting its
dancing patterns on the cave wall.
There! Did everyone see that? The stick is pointed to
indicate the location of the transient form of the animal
in question; it is touched to the wall, tracing the perceived
contour: and it leaves a trace of carbon black as a charcoal
outline of the shape which was tentatively traced.
Now everyone was able to see the image of the animal that
was being referred to; and the crude outline probably seemed
to be animated by the flickering firelight. But what does go
unnoticed is that something amazing had just occurred: in
attempting to stabilize the appearance of that motivating
schema which had danced in the firelight and shadow cast
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
on the cave wall; in trying to make what the eye had traced
stay in the place of that tracing, a decisive shift was effected:
starting from the motivation of a schema, we find ourselves
dealing with the modification of an image.
One must say that, at this point, consciousness was in
fact modifying itself by trying to stabilize those flickering
patterns, through the application of pigments and shapes
to the wall of the cave where the firelight played. Truly, as
Sartre notes, such images as are so perceived do not initially
exist anywhere but in the mind; so, to modify the site where
they are produced is in effect to modify the consciousness
which perceives them.
As we noted much earlier with Husserl, for consciousness to
so modify itself is a characteristic of consciousness-of-self, of
an egologic form of consciousness. However, we are not yet
seeing consciousness modify itself directly: consciousness is
instead here modifying an external, material location. This is
why we do not very often see the creation of images depicting
individuals on these cave walls: egological consciousness,
as definitional to consciousness-of-self, has not yet fully
formed. But it has begun to form, precisely in this shift from
motivated image production to the production of images as
modifications. It was forming, precisely, from a sense of the
individuals place within the group: it was a shift in this sense
of belonging which motivated an external stabilization
of consciousness, through the modification of an image;
and this in turn was a modification of consciousness which
redefined the individual within the group by shifting the
groups conscious states toward that which the individual
had experienced. In modifying the external location where
images were perceived, the individual motivated the
formation of that specific imaging consciousness for the
group.
Thus a clear distinction must be made between images
composed from direct transferences of proportional relations,
which are stabilized through direct perception; and images
produced of symbolic schema, even when these schema are
but the product of eye movements randomly generating
202
relational patterns.
The nature of this distinction lies precisely in that very
narrow difference between consciousness as being motivated
to form; and consciousness as being modified in its formation.
When we begin to see consciousness being modified in its
formation, then we are beginning to see the rudimentary
structures for consciousness-of-self being articulated. And it is
particularly interesting to note that, when this happens to an
individual, it can equally apply to the group that individual
is a part of: this is an important consideration which directly
suggests just how thoroughly transmissible consciousness-
of-self will turn out to be for others who had not directly
experienced the circumstances of its formation.
Previously, where with hominids we had only been able to
establish the occurrence of an externalized form of memory
composition (as actualized in the production of objects
which effected the territorializations of lives experiencing
the earth), we now begin to find the suggestion that the
intensive ordinates of which concepts are composed can also
be constituted through an internalization of form: the figural
traces of which the cave images were composed existed
nowhere but in the mind before they were placed upon those
walls with pigments; and in this, these tracings were made
consistent with the minds ability to realize patterns, not with
the proportional traits of a directly perceived model. It is as
if the capability to transfer proportional traits within direct
perceptual experience had been freed from the material
stability of the object by the energy dynamic of the fire.
To be more precise, and so to quote Sartre yet again:
Page 52
VIII. Mental Image
Above, I have defined the image as an
act that aims in its corporeality at an absent
or nonexistent object, through a physical or
psychic content that is given not as itself, but in
the capacity of an analogical representative of
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
the object aimed at. In the case of the mental
image the content has no externality. One sees
a portrait, a caricature, a spot: one does not see
a mental image. To see an object is to localize
it in space, between this table and that carpet,
at a certain height, on my right or on my left.
However, my mental images do not mix with the
objects that surround me. Some say the present
sensations act as reducers. But why should there
be reduction, why not rather composition?
In fact, the mental image aims at a real
thing, which exists among others in the world
of perception; but it aims at it through a psychic
content.
Page 53
The purely psychic content of the mental
image cannot escape this law: a consciousness
that faces the thing that it aims at is a perceptual
consciousness; a consciousness that aims emptily
at the thing is a pure sign consciousness. This
necessity for the matter of the mental image to be
already constituted as an object for consciousness,
I call the transcendence of the representative. But
transcendence does not mean externality: it is
the represented thing that is external, not its
mental analogon. The illusion of immanence
consists in transferring the externality, spatiality,
and all the sensible qualities of the thing to the
transcendent psychic content. It does not have
these qualities: it represents them, but in its own
way.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary.
A transition toward the formation of consciousness-of-self
will thus be evident when we can say that images are being
composed in a way which is characteristic of consciousness,
rather than the direct transferences of proportional
relationships which we saw occurring with more basic
203
conscious states. We know that this will necessarily occur
in the form of a transcendental structure, which as such is
freed of a direct connectivity with external reference; and as
Sartre makes a distinct point of mentioning, this means that
the images of which we speak here must be first constituted
internally, rather than immediately as external objects.
The question here, then, becomes one of how we might
distinguish the characteristic way in which such mental
images function.
As we have noted throughout this inquiry, any such
transcendence as Sartre mentions here MUST actually occur
somewhere; and in this case, that means there must be a
specific extension of neural configuration through which such
transcendence can be constituted.
We can immediately reference the availability of
dormant olfactory neurology as the very probably site of
such relational processing; but that isnt entirely accurate,
because there is actually something a little more interesting
going on here which we might easily miss in our haste to
confirm our initial suspicions regarding the origin of human
consciousness-of-self. What we really need to define is the
way in which such a shift into the neural substrate of dormant
olfactory processing determines the formation of an imaging
consciousness.
Before we determine the way in which such neural
processes affect the formation of imaging consciousness, we
need to examine the way in which the transition into such
neural processes is effected.
At issue here is essentially a shift from the external
composition of conceptual structure, to an internalized sense
of intensive ordinates as constituting relational patterns.
This appears to have occurred through the intermediary
of an imaging consciousness, which initially shifted from
transferring proportional relations (which were directly
perceived) onto external objects; and then instead began to
modify external locations into image composites by tracing
from the intensive ordinates of internalized transferences,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
as triggered by eye movements, which had induced motion-
based memory patterns.
It would seem that this transition can most demonstrably be
shown to have been occurring, not where the olfactory sense
was being forced into dormancy; but rather, where it was
slowly re-emerging in its proper functionality: in the warmth
of the inner cave, by the side of the fires where humans
retreated from the cold of an Ice Age winter.
This tells us that the shift in question, from consciousness
as motivated to consciousness as modified, wasnt simply a
matter of dormant neural processes being co-opted to other
uses. Rather, what we are looking at here is a situation in
which neural process were shifting between being available
for co-opting, and being unavailable. Repeatedly; over
extended periods: for all people living under those conditions
found in Ice Age Europe, throughout the entire course of their
lives.
We noted earlier the surprising speed with which dormant
neural processes become co-opted by senses which are still
fully functional. We also noted the tendency of these co-opted
networks of neural processing to rather quickly revert to their
normal sensory dedication in conditions where their habitual
stimuli are again available. So, what we are in fact looking at
is a situation where the olfactory sense was oscillating with
a high degree of frequency between being fully functional
and being completely dormant; and we are seeing this occur
as exactly coincident with a situation whereby an imaging
consciousness is beginning to form of internal consistency,
rather than external relation.
We must note in passing that this is occurring within what
is essentially a situation of modulation.
The transition toward imaging consciousness was
effected through what was in itself a transitional state of
consciousness: the transition to imaging consciousness was
precisely a transitional stage of consciousness, which just
happened to be effected within an visual context.
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If we were to postulate a cognitive process which would
have formed of this oscillation, it would have to be one which
retained that very unique dynamic of relation to itself: an
oscillation between functionality and dormancy, which also
occurs of those relations which typify imaging consciousness.
We would quickly realize that we were not yet dealing with
consciousness-of-self here; but that we were instead looking
at the formation of something which is a necessary precursor
to self-consciousness.
We must be looking at an entirely mechanical and
environmentally determined repetition of a specific
neurological shift in conscious organization; and this would
appear to be the origin of what we call volitional memory.
Warming by a fire, watching dancing shadows on the wall
of a cave during the depths of an Ice Age winter after a long
day hunting in the bitter cold didnt cause consciousness-
of-self to form. Instead, it repeatedly shifted a co-opted
neurological configuration of basic sensory processes back
and forth and back again until consciousness became
aware of this transition in itself; and, became aware of this
shifting within the context of an ability for cognizing visual
perceptions. Where hominids were evidently aware enough of
the nature of their own consciousness to form external objects
which motivated the formation of conscious states, humans
were gaining the ability to modify their own conscious states
directly: where hominids were aware of their tendency to
forget, humans extended their awareness through an ability
to remember at will, and developed a volitional memory
which has distinctly visual aspects.
The co-opting of olfactory processes which were periodically
dormant became a periodicity of shifting conscious states: it
is this periodicity itself which became the trait of volitional
memory; which in turn enabled the formation of subjective
self-consciousness, as that form of conscious relation we call
consciousness-of-self. Consciousness-of-self is, in effect, a
living, breathing conscious state which has begun to sniff at
itself; although, whatever is detected in this way is initially
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
localized as being somewhere else.
>>>
Herein lies an answer to our earlier question concerning
possible differences between human and hominid uses of the
olfactory sense.
Considering for a moment the situation in North America,
we can now see a clear indication that hominids were forced
to rely on externalized mechanisms in lieu of a volitional
memory: this is why both The Hominid Stone and The
Firelight Horse Stone were coated with a reddish substance,
which was most probably derived from blood (perhaps mixed
with ocher). It is unlikely a hominid would have been able
to remember at will where these artifacts had been hidden,
at the back of a dark cave; but by coating them with a
mixture of blood and ocher, any hominid would have been
able to locate them simply by smell alone. This suggests
that both artifacts had been hidden away by hominids;
which implies The Firelight Horse Stone, although crafted by
humans, had ended up in the possession of hominids: and
this indicates again that hominids and early humans were
contemporaneous in North America, as separate species with
shared, overlapping, or adjacent territories.
Considering again the situation in Ice Age Europe, we can
now understand why consciousness-of-self is not overtly
evident as a subjective self-awareness which would tend to
established a preponderance of personal images within the
cave wall artwork of the upper Paleolithic period: simply,
because that encounter with flickering firelight on inner
cave walls as individuals warmed themselves after returning
from hunting the winter landscape of Ice Age Europe was
still inducing tendencies of neural patterning which were
formulative of an ability to remember at will.
It is only after this ability becomes established that
consciousness-of-self can form.
In first modifying external objects with images; in then
205
modifying the cave walls upon which flickering firelight
suggested animal shapes and outlines: and in so stabilizing
these suggested images as something always apparent to
the eye, humans were also for the first time experiencing a
coincident ability to shift between a thing directly perceived
and a thing consciously remembered. This modification of
perceived images was happening at precisely the same time
as the neural organization of these Ice Age inhabitants of
Europe repeatedly shifted between co-opted and dedicated
states, with functional reference to their olfactory processes;
and this, we must assume, happened on a daily basis, for
months at a time, year after year, over tens of millennia.
It might even be possible to reconstruct the actual
occurrence of this shift: from what would initially have been
a movement-based form of memory, to a conscious ability to
remember volitionally. If it were at all possible to establish
the relative location of the fires which threw specific light
patterns that resulting in the tracing of corresponding images
(and this is not at all improbable, since light radiates from
any point source geometrically, in a spherical pattern), then
one might assume the earliest examples of Ice Age cave
art would show a relationship between the kind of animal
depicted and its distance from the fire. Assuming that it is the
characteristic movement patterns of the animals in question
which essentially informed the supposition of their image:
then, faster moving animals would tend to be depicted on
walls closer to a fire, where the dancing patterns on the
cave wall would shift most rapidly; whereas larger, more
ponderous animals would tend to be depicted farther from a
fire, where the play of shadow and light would be of a more
subdued dynamic.
This relation between distance from a firelight source and
animal type, if it were found to initially exist, would tend to
diminish in its influence as volitional memory became more
firmly established; so later examples of cave wall art would
be less likely to show a pronounced distinction between
animal types, by relative location, as determined by their
distance from a fire which served as light source.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
>>>
It would seem that we might have some grounds for saying:
the conditions in which imaging consciousness came to
function were such that, at the same time, volitional memory
was formed.
It should come as no surprise to us, then, that attempts
to consciously remember past events in our lives are made
apparent within consciousness as if images; and that our
ability to modify our conscious awareness of memories tends
to proceed through mental images of past events. We might
choose to remember a certain room relative to the position
of a doorway, or a window, or a chair, or a table; but in thus
modifying our memory, we are doing so within a relationally
visual context.
Thus from within our present experience of consciousness,
we can see that the creation of cave wall art probably marks
that point where consciousness-of-self can finally begin to
form: for here, we find the first definite indications of those
conscious functions which we demand in our own sense of
self.
Except for one thing, of course: at this point in the cognitive
development of a modern human consciousness, it isnt
a question of what is yet to happen. The most important
consideration is what had already happened; and what needs
to be examined closely is, simply, everything that this new
ability of volitional memory had been added in with.
So: precisely, volitional memory is a fundamental ability of
consciousness to modify itself; and this appears to have been
a completely new aspect of conscious organization.
We cant really call volitional memory motivational,
because it takes an effort to produce such memory and, as
we all know, there is never any assurance that it will occur
as desired. If such memory were a motivated consciousness,
it would simply form and that would be that; but, this isnt
what happens: volitional memory is a modification of
206
consciousness as surely as we cease remembering something
when we stop consciously trying to keep it in mind.
If we are wondering at this point where consciousness-of-
self will form given this new ability for volitional memory,
then perhaps we should first look at where a sense of personal
identity had already been forming.
Initially, we saw every indication that personal identity was
beginning to form of modified object-relation. With hominids,
we saw how produced objects became the territorial relations
of their lives, in a possession-based form of knowledge. We
also saw how such objects were eventually modified with
images, in such a way as to suggest the belonging of the
object was a state shared with its possessor, relative to the
group. We saw how such objects were relational; and, how
such distinguishing objects could come to serve as a sign
for the individual possessing it within the group. If we add to
this the function of volitional memory as formed within the
context of image modifications that are made relative to The
Trace of schemata, it isnt consciousness-of-self which we
find forming.
It is writing that we see beginning to form.
When we looked at the single certain example of a sign
I have been able to find upon The Hominid Stone, we
noted that this instance of sign formation occurred as
the modification of an image. This was a very singular
modification; and it was only through a careful consideration
of what constitutes a sign that we were able to assert its
occurrence as such. In this, we noted that we did in fact have
a certain established commonality, in the form of the initial
image which was modified by the sign; such that we could all
identify the nature of that base image, and that it had been
modified.
It was through this incontrovertible modification that we
could see the obvious sense of Sartres definition of the sign
as empty; and the applicability of this description in the
absence of the facial feature where the symbolic schema of
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
that sign was localized in its occurrence.
But, we cannot say that this feature is truly forgotten in its
absence. The symbolic schema which assumes the position
of the nose does so as a localization actualized through an
equivalency: the intensive ordinate of this symbolic schema
is the singularization of that diagrammatic feature which
localizes it. The hominid in the boat is recognized by smell;
or, as humans would tend to instead say, Id know that guy
on sight!
So, we see in the single obvious instance of a sign which
appears on The Hominid Stone the modification of an image
through a positional equivalency with something that is not
there: the sign, as Sartre would say, is positing nothing.
We can also see here the three fundamental aspects of
philosophy which Deleuze and Guattari state are placed in
articulated co-extension through a process they define as
characteristically that of taste:
Page 76-77
Philosophy has three elements, each of
which fits with the other two but must be
considered for itself: the prephilosophical plane it
lays out (immanence), the persona or personae it
must invent and bring to life (insistence), and the
philosophical concepts it must create (consistency).
Laying out, inventing, and creating constitute
the philosophical trinity - diagrammatic,
personalistic, and intensive features.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
What Is Philosophy.
Here we would say, the relationship established between a
diagrammatic feature and an intensive ordinate gave us a
conceptual persona. Simply, the immanence of the intensive
ordinate to the diagrammatic feature allows us to localize
a conceptual persona; because the diagrammatic feature is
already immanent to the image it helps compose (as a facial
207
feature): and we thus have a situation where, as the Deleuze
says, immanence is immanent to itself.
As Deleuze notes:
Page 27
We will say of pure immanence that it is A
LIFE, and nothing else. It is not immanence to
life, but the immanent that is in nothing is itself
a life. A life is the immanence of immanence,
absolute immanence: it is complete power,
complete bliss.
Gilles Deleuze, Immanence, A Life.
When we see signs beginning to form, we can
compositionally establish the occurrence of conceptual
persona; and this occurs before consciousness-of-self has
stabilized as such.
We could also say of that sign on The Hominid Stone:
the image of the face laid out the place where we began
thinking; what was thought as consistent with this place was
a change upon that face; and an insistent image resulted,
demanding we see it in a certain way. It is the nature of that
way in which such placements occur that demands thought
proceed: not simply as the motivating demand of symbolic
schema to be deciphered, but, as a modification of the eyes
tracing of intensive ordinates which localizes the resolution
of the sign within the experiential context that compelled
those thoughts which had placed it so. The endoconsistency
of the symbolic schemas intensive ordinates are articulated
with an exoconsistency of the thoughts which had placed it
equitably in the position of a diagrammatic feature; and this
articulation is a sign.
The relations established here are those internal to thought,
not of external perception; because, the conceptual composite
which results is not something which it would ever be possible
to perceive directly, as something which is seen to occurred
in the world of immediate experience. Simply, we will never
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
see anyone who has a symbolic schema instead of a nose. As
thought compelled within relationships of territorialization,
such articulations are those of events: but they are
conceptual, rather than perceptual, articulations.
Or we could say: images, in being modified by signs, can
be read as intended; because that form of modification
came into being before consciousness-of-self did; and so we
can at the very least form conceptual personae from such
instances of sign use. This is a very important point, because
it means that the position of the sign will produce again the
very thought that articulated its placement: here, we have
intelligibility being embodied as language through a very
singular production of the conceptual.
This strongly suggests that, even if writing does not
necessarily form before consciousness-of-self, it can do so; and
certainly, both might form at the same time.
>>>
We encountered earlier such a sense of the singularization
of consciousness; and at that point, we were looking at the
formation of what was being referred to as a subjectless
transcendental field. There, we were immediately introduced
to the nature of such a field as also being descriptive of
writing. Here, we can find out a little more about the
nature of such a relational field; and soon, we will be able
to address that issue of the silence of prehistoric arcana
which arose precisely in the context of writing as a subjectless
transcendental field:
Page 47
Sartres presupposition of an impersonal
transcendental field restores the rights of
immanence. When immanence is no longer
immanent to something other than itself it is
possible to speak of a plane of immanence. Such
a plane is, perhaps, a radical empiricism: it does
not present a flux of the lived that is immanent
to a subject and individualized in that which
208
belongs to a self. It presents only events, that is,
possible worlds as concepts, and other people
as expressions of possible worlds or conceptual
personae. The event does not relate the lived
to a transcendental subject = Self but, on the
contrary, is related to the immanent survey of
a field without subject; the Other Person does
not restore transcendence to an other self but
returns every other self to the immanence of the
field surveyed. Empiricism knows only events
and other people and is therefore a great creator
of concepts. Its force begins from the moment it
defines the subject: a habitus, a habit, nothing
but a habit in a field of immanence, the habit of
saying I.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
What Is Philosophy.
>>>
Here we can say:
Before consciousness-of-self has formed, we see the
establishment of a subjectless transcendental field which
is characteristic of writing. We know that, even as a
transcendence, this field must still occur somewhere. We
have now determined the place of this occurrence: it is in
an oscillating co-opting of periodically dormant olfactory
neurology; and it is experienced within consciousness as
volitional memory.
We can conclude, then:
The impersonal transcendental field which characterizes
writing comes to be formed internally, within volitional
memory. In this we might say, the intersubjective nature
of this field is external, as it ultimately originates of
environmental conditions which were common to all
who so initially developed volitional memory within that
territorial context; but the volitional memory which so
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
formed was of neurological configuration, and established
the ability to effect transcendental transferences (of the
energy differentials articulate in intensive ordinates) within
consciousness. In this way, the subjectless transcendental field
becomes personalized through the formation of concepts.
The articulations which writing forms in this way are
events. Events are temporal in nature, and as such are
characteristically differences-in-kind. These are events of
consciousness, which we call thought; but it is still the
relationships of territoriality which compel thinking as such.
In this way, the formation of conceptual personae defines
geophilosophical determinations; and does so through
singularizations of difference-in-kind; a singularization of
the concept, articulated by the sign; or, by the formation of
conceptual personae. This, we should recall, was a process
already beginning to form in that very early use of personal
adornment which we examined in Ice Age Europe.
Volitional memory articulates ...the purely psychic
content of the mental image,...but in its own way.
The nature of that way is now readily apparent: simply, it is
the singularization of event through differences-in-kind.
Through an internalization of event in the functional
nature of volitional memory, we see the concept coming to
be articulated, and to compositionally form in a way which
is characterized as consistent with taste. Here we see the
formation of conceptual personae in a geophilosophical
context.
This implies:
Writing articulates concepts as events: the events of
territorial relationships.
Such events are the singularization of differences-in-kind;
and this proceeds as the in between of a before and an
after, which is also always characteristic of A LIFE.
209
It is not possible to distinguish any sense of before and
after without the specific use of memory.
Therefore, we may say that volitional memory allows us
to modify those singularizations of event which determine
differences-in-kind.
Simply, by articulating a before with an after, a specific
relation is defined as an event. Now, it is not possible for
any before to occur at the same time as the after it is
followed by; a before and after can ONLY be co-extensive
within memory. This is to say, a before and an after can
be GROUPED together in memory; and the process of such
grouping is the articulation of before and after that
specifies or singularizes the kind of difference which is being
composed: that is, the event which is being conceptualized.
The nature of this grouping is the very same process
which Deleuze and Guattari describe as laying out the plane
of immanence: which is to say, the processes through which
the nature of diagrammatic features comes to be established.
This is very different than the sequential knowledge
constructs which hominids created externally, as a kind of
materially conceptual product. This kind of grouping can
only occur as the internal articulation of thought with itself:
it is only through volitional memory that we see events
become articulations which transcend the sequence of their
occurrence, to become the thought of an event-as-difference.
And this in itself pretty much gives us everything we would
characterize as essentially modern human behavior.
To start with, though: because it is the focus of this
inquiry; and since we already know that it can form before
consciousness-of-self does, we will note that this gives to us
directly the origin of writing.
This is an origin we must see as being consistent with
that which it forms from; so, in keeping with all our earlier
considerations in the course of this inquiry, we can now
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
determine the exact nature of the articulations which define
signs as differences-in-kind.
Originally, signs occurred as conceptual tools for modifying
images.
They did not occur as words signifying objects.
Such modifications were always an event which articulated
a before and an after of composition, as production: signs
singularize differences-in-kind, defining the specific nature of
events as articulated through thought.
In this we can still see a trace of that sense of modification
established through the tracing of animal forms derived
from patterns of flickering firelight upon cave walls:
an externalization of something which had begun to
approximate a mental image.
Still farther back, we also see that trace in the modification
of objects by the production of images upon their surface:
the establishment of a commonality of definitional relation
within the group.
Ultimately, we are looking at that definite sense of
territoriality through which tools, as produced objects,
defined the relational situation of living upon this earth
for the hominids who produced, carried, and used them:
the singularization of a life, through the events which
circumscribe experience.
So here, we find that signs are determined through a
productive functionality which articulates through their
definitional resolution. To determine the occurrence of a sign
is to define how it functions in modifying an image.
As with a tool, signs have no necessary relation to a specific
application. Tools can be used for a variety of tasks, in
entirely opportunistic ways: tools facilitate processes and
210
their functionality is essentially variable. Similarly, signs are
unmotivated and arbitrary in nature; they are empty in
not having any necessary relational content, such as can be
established for images, relative to direct perception.
Signs, as tools for modifying images, have instead
functional applications. In this, these particular types of
image-modifying tools correspond with Sartres definition
of signs as non-positional: as with the usage of any tool,
these particular types of signs can be functionally employed
to modify any image. The sign functions through the
singularization of its non-positional nature; that is, through
its localization within an imaging structure. Such an image-
modifying tool can be used in relation to any image; but in
actually use, it singularizes the occurrence of specific images
through the localization of its use.
This is the arbitrariness which Derrida identifies as
the unmotivated nature of the instituted trace: signs do
not motivate consciousness; and these particular kinds of
originary signs, rather than being motivational, serve to
modify images much as tools are used to modify physical
materials.
>>>
As with the material dynamics we saw diverging from a
hand-to-mouth motivation toward obtaining food, whereby
production began to feed itself, so we also see a similar
facility coming to be established with the sign.
We can say that the sign is grasped through a survey of
its figural nature, which establishes its intensive ordinates
by way of the eye tracing as if a finger. This is the internal
consistency of any symbolic schema. The exoconsistency of
the schema, however, is determined precisely by the use to
which it is put: we might say here, the endoconsistency of
the symbolic schema resolves into an articulate sign through
its exoconsistent relations. Specifically, the resolution of
the schema into a sign modifies the image composite in
which the sign is positionally determined; and this effects a
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
singularization which functions by articulating the formation
of a concept.
Any concept can be further modified in its formation by the
addition of more constituent elements: further articulations
effected with other orderings of differentials, each of which
co-extend other befores and afters, compositionally
singularize increasingly complex even-structures as precisely
that kind of continuous multiplicity which, as Bergson
demonstrated, is characteristic of the temporal.
In effect, this manner of singularization composes a
particular kind of conceptual formation: that of the event-
horizon.
We are looking here at a form of writing which produces its
own intersubjective commonality, in the form of conceptual
personae, through establishing singularized (rather than
subjective) horizons of event (instead of object references).
Simply, we are dealing here with a visual form of event
language.
Event languages are still in use today, but in a much
different form: in our modern world, event languages are
used extensively in the programming of computerized
musical instruments, such as synthesizers.
In keeping with the nonnumeric nature of the temporal
composites formed through this use of signs as tools for
modifying images, I would describe this way of embodying
intelligibility as anametric image writing.
Thus I would say: the nature of the sign in anametric
image writing is defined by its functional occurrence, not
by signifying identity. This functional nature is always
differential and as such it does not posit anything; rather, it
is itself positionally defined or localized, in terms of before
and after, through the singularization of grouping patterns
211
which define compositional horizons-of-event.
>>>
There is thus a certain sense of material dynamics which
underwrites the sign at its point of origin; and in this we can
seen numerous important material characteristics associated
with the origin of writing.
The most obvious of these would be that of the
developmental dynamic whereby production (such as that
of the cores from which similar flakes were systematically
produced in Mousterian technologies) is itself directed toward
further productive acts (the stone flakes so obtained were
then further refined in shape for specific uses); and so with
signs, we first start to see concepts (of the figural and its
intensive ordinates) being used to produce further concepts
(in the articulations of signs used to modify images).
A little more subtle example of even greater importance
is a direct developmental linkage which I have been able
to document between the three major epochs of material
culture which define the early history of the First Nations,
and, the essentially grammatological advances made in
the compositional evolution of their image language, as
prefigured by the type of stone used as a material substrate in
the production of their anametric image writing.
Indeed, the course of that developmental sequence is so
clear and obvious that I am prepared to state unequivocally
that the First Nations of North America invented writing.
This is not to say they were the only people to do so: the
prerequisites for the formation of writing systems appear to
have been precipitating as early as our hominid ancestors
upright stance.
It is simply to say that the First Nations of North America
invented writing on their own, independent of and in all
probability considerably before any other people did.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
In point of fact, it appears that the last developmental
commonality formational to the origin of writing which is
clearly evident between the First Nations of North America
and Ice Age Europe is that of the material dynamic whereby
production feeds production. It is evident to me that the co-
opting of olfactory dormancy effected by the First Nations of
North America did not occur in the caves of Ice Age Europe;
and to assume otherwise is to in effect imply that all people
waited patiently for the cognitive advances of Ice Age Europe
to occur before heading off on their own developmental
courses. The evidence I have assembled seems to strongly
indicate these same cognitive advances were effected through
a nomadic encounter with distinctly Arctic and Alpine
environments; and that this resulted in the formation of
a distinctive consciousness-of-self which has always been
recognized as quite different than that which characterizes
European developments.
Thus, the chronology which attends the development
of volitional memory and consciousness-of-self in the Ice
Age Europe is not applicable to the First Nations of North
America: and indeed, it appears that this chronology for
these people needs to be pushed back to a point several tens
of millennia before it can be demonstrated in Ice Age Europe.
This can hardly be surprising, though. If, as has been
postulated here, consciousness-of-self formed for we humans
through our protracted exposure to environments where
sub-freezing temperatures were the norm, then certainly the
original members of the First Nations would have seen more
of that than pretty well anyone else.
Even in arriving prior to the onset of the Ice Ages last major
period of glaciation in North America, probably by way of
watercraft, they still would have had to have been adapted to
Arctic and sub-arctic (although coastal) conditions on either
side of the Bering Sea.
And arriving in North America, the size and diversity of
the predators here would have undoubtedly forced them
periodically toward the relative safety of alpine areas on the
212
upper slopes of the mountains that line the Northwest Coast,
and sanctuary at the edge of the glacial reaches encasing the
barren rock of the utmost peaks.
In this, it seems most probable that the initial engagement
of the First Nations with an imaging consciousness forming of
volitional memory was effected in relation to the production
of stone tools, and the process of determining sub-surface
material properties from the surface features apparent
upon the stones they so used. Here, one would expect that
the attendant ascription of mental imagery to this external
source was not one which might result in an exclusion of the
individual from the group, as was probably the situation
which initially motivated the production of cave wall art
in Ice Age Europe. Rather, the dynamic of working stone
to produce tools would have been modified into one of
producing images; and the result would have been shared
with the group as were the tools produced. Instead of a
consciousness-of-self which originates in separation from
the group, we would expect to see a sense of individuality
forming which is defined through group membership:
and that is exactly what has always been seen as being
traditionally characteristic of consciousness-of-self for First
Nations members:
Page xvii
Three principal themes emerged early on in
the Lake Mohonk conferences and were thereafter
regularly deployed as rationales guiding the
formulation of federal Indian policies: 1) the
need for inculcation of individualism among
native people, 2) that to achieve this end
Indians should be universally educated to hold
eurowestern beliefs, and that, 3) all Indians,
duly educated and thus individualized, should
be absorbed as citizens into the U.S. body politic.
Individualism, of course - as was very concretely
reflected in the rationale advanced in support of
the Allotment Act - represented the very antithesis
of the traditional communal values upon which
all American Indian societies are based. As U.S.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
Indian Commissioner George Manypenny put it
as early as 1856, for assimilation to occur, it was
necessary that Indians learn to say I instead
of we, me instead of us, mine instead of
ours.
Ward Churchill, Kill The Indian, Save The Man:
The genocidal impact of American Indian
residential schools. Copyright 2004 by Ward
Churchill, Published by City Lights Books,
San Francisco.
>>>
There is a very clear distinction between the way in which
consciousness-of-self is traditionally realized by members of
the First Nations, and the way in which it is realized by those
of a European cultural background.
This difference is so pronounced that we must suspect it
traces back to some fundamental disjunction in cultural
development.
Since we are looking here at a variance in consciousness-of-
self, it would seem probable that this disjunction originates
at the transition from a subjectless transcendental field,
to, consciousness-of-self. As we have seen, this transition
occurred through the development of volitional memory;
and, the ability to remember at will was effected along with
the establishment of imaging consciousness.
If volitional memory originally developed as contingent
upon periodic oscillations of neurological configuration:
between a dormancy in, and the functional actualization of,
the olfactory sense; then, we must assume that this particular
aspect of the establishment of volitional memory is common
to the experiences of both the people of Ice Age Europe and
the original people of the First Nations.
The divergence in the development of consciousness-of-
self which is demonstrable between these two groups must
213
therefore be due to some fundamental difference in the way
that each effected an imaging consciousness; and since this
difference is defined by a transition from the subjectless
transcendental field to consciousness-of-self, it must have
occurred as in some way characteristic of the relationships
holding between the individual and the group.
We saw how the development of an imaging consciousness
occurred in Ice Age Europe within the context of cave wall
art. There, this process was contingent upon an essentially
egological experience. Finding themselves potentially
excluded from the group by their supposition of animal
shapes perceived in the flickering patterns of firelight
that played upon the walls of caves in which they sought
winter shelter, individuals were motivated to stabilize their
perceptions before the group by tracing these patterns upon
the cave walls.
In this way, a stabilization of the individuals subjective
perceptions was effected in imagery which became the focus
of the groups shared perceptions.
The situation for the nomadic forbearers of the First Nations
must have been significantly different.
We must assume that some manner of temporary shelter
was the norm for these seasonally nomadic people. In such
a situation, the physical relationship between the fires they
used to keep themselves warm and the walls of the shelters on
which firelight played would have been relatively constant.
The surfaces of their shelter walls would have been of a more
or less constant distance from their fires: the effects caused
by variable distance seen with respect to the cave walls of Ice
Age Europe would have been more or less absent.
The texture of the wall surfaces would have been essentially
uniform: the variations of composition, form, and texture
found in cave walls would have been completely absent.
As a result, we can assume that the human eye would be
much less inclined toward tracing randomly perceived image
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
patterns on the walls of temporary shelters than it would be
with reference to the walls of caves.
Instead, it would seem likely that such patterns were traced
by eye movements upon stones being worked into weapons,
by firelight, after long days of hunting in the winter cold.
Often, new sources of stone appropriate for the production of
tools would have been discovered while hunting; and, stone
tools might need to be replaced or reworked after having
been used for hunting. This is a productive process which
inevitably proceeds through a close examination of surface
features upon stones being worked, that optimal striking
points for flaking stone might be discerned with reference to
the intuited subsurface properties of individual stones.
This is where random eye movements, induced by flickering
firelight upon the variant surface of stones held under a
close and haptic examination, would imply images. But this
would be occurring within a very different dynamic holding
between the individual and the group than that seen in Ice
Age Europe.
In the case of Ice Age Europe, the individual would indicate
immediately to the group something which nobody else
could see; but someone working to produce a stone tool
would only share that tool with the group after they were
finished making it. This would give them the opportunity to
completely re-mark the surface of a stone in accordance with
their perceptions, before others were shown the results.
In addition, others would be introduced to the image
patterns so created on an individual basis. The stones upon
which these images were produced were so small, and the
image compositions so tiny, that only one person at a time
would be able to view them.
Thus, the finished product would be passed from person
to person, with each individual taking the opportunity to
comment on their perception of the image patterns they
were viewing. Instead of one persons perceptions being
effected for the entire group all at once, a group consensus
214
on the nature of the imaging patterns would incrementally
emerge as different opinions were voiced. Note that this is
very similar to a kind of process which we examined earlier:
the construction of concepts from the differential aspects of
intensive ordinates.
In the European development of imaging consciousness, the
individuals perceptions would simultaneously be effected
for the entire group. In the First Nations development
of an imaging consciousness, each individual would be
contributing to a group consensus regarding the nature of the
imaging patterns being viewed.
At the point where consciousness-of-self was effected
for individuals of the First Nations, there would thus have
been a productive constellation of tools, images, and the
re-marking within which the use of signs formed; and this
formation would have been characterized by the construction
of concepts, through the personalization of the subjectless
transcendental field: which is to say, through the creation of
what is in effect conceptual personae.
This situation would in itself tend to produce a dynamic
whereby individuals would seek to create ever more accurate
imaging compositions, leading to a stronger group consensus
concerning the nature of the patterns being created. Since
there was no shortage of source material (in the form
of available stones), a very pronounced and productive
developmental dynamic would result. In contrast, European
cave sites had a limited amount of wall space available; and
one might imagine that some individuals took exception
to the images which they had created being covered over
by images others would wish to produce. Indeed, evidence
is emerging that European wall art moved out of the inner
cave sites currently know and spread out upon exterior cliff
faces, where there was much more available space. It seems
likely, though, that this would not have been happening in
winter; and most probably, this was done by daylight: so,
except when a direct proportional transference of immediate
perceptions was employed, this could only have occurred
after an imaging consciousness had come into being through
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self 215

the application of artwork to the inner walls of winter caves.

Given the probability that consciousness-of-self developed

through the establishment of imaging consciousness and in
the context of volitional memory, this divergence between the
nature of the situations in which images were produced by
individuals for the group would be sufficient to account for
the very different ways in which consciousness-of-self came to
be realized within these two separate populations.

The European context would be one in which the individual

saw their subjectivity form in leading the group, and so in
distinction from the group. The context in which subjectivity
formed for the First Nations would have been one in which
the individual realized their identity in the context of the
group, as part of a group process dedicated toward forming
consensus.

These are two very different dynamics through which

consciousness-of-self came to be effected.
It must be noted that, in either case, the end result is a
consciousness-of-self: however, the European model seems
to have led toward the establishment of despotic regimes;
whereas the First Nations model provided the roots for the
pluralistic democracies favored by free citizens in modern
nations around the world today.
Since the purpose of this philosophic investigation has been
an inquiry into the origin of writing, as determined through
an analysis of the nature of human consciousness, it would
be fitting for us to now consider an example of anametric
image writing which clearly demonstrates, through sign use,
consciousness-of-self.
Our first step will be to establish the nature of the image in
which the sign we will be examining occurs.
[A wide range of equipment was used to capture these
images: from a very old Argus Cosina 35mm camera; to an
Olympus OM20, OM-4 T, and E510; to a Nikon D700.]
This particular example is a personal favorite of mine. It is
one which was left for me to find, sitting on a very large drift
log that I use to sit upon at high tide, on the beach of a Gulf
Island located between the mainland of British Columbia and
Vancouver Island. At that time, I was waiting to hear if an
article I had submitted on the initial stages of my research
had been accepted for publication by Semiotext[e] (it was);
and, I was continuing along in the field work phase of that
project.
One day, I was sitting beside the ocean at low tide:
suddenly, a sea otter popped out of the ocean, looked
around, and then began bounding across the beach before
disappearing into the driftwood piled above the high tide
line. Curious, I followed (because sea otters are so interesting,
not to mention cute) and, while looking around to see where
that sea otter had gone, I found this rock, sitting by itself, on
a large drift log! I had been sitting on that log a day or two
earlier, at high tide, and this stone hadnt been there then.
Had I first found that stone, and then taken to sitting there
to see if someone might drop by to see me, eventually that
otter would have come running across the beach toward me;
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
and that would have been an unforgettable experience, too:
because the sea otters there are very large indeed (that one
must have been between four and five feet long, from the tip
of its nose to the end of its tail).
A stone astrolabe that I have also turned up for me in a
similar fashion: except that artifact was sitting on a rock shelf
at the waters edge at low tide, with no other stones anywhere
near it; and this happened five years later, on another island
hundreds of miles away, on another beach that I was in the
habit of walking along regularly. Then, I wasnt following an
otter; I was accompanying my four year old daughter in her
shoreline explorations.
On this particular stone, which I happened upon by
following that otter, one specific image area quickly caught
my eye. Of course, I was looking at lots of stones at that time;
but this one is more colorful than most of the examples I work
with, so I paid it particular attention. Looking closely at it,
I noticed a fairly large (as such images go) and beautifully
216
fashioned bird. Looking more closely, it seemed to me that
this bird had teeth. When I photographed this image area,
and made an enlargement, I discovered that it wasnt a bird
after all; because, it definitely had teeth. It was in fact the
image of a dragon: a residual species of pterodactyl.
Since pterodactyls are generally assumed to have become
extinct 65 million years ago, we do need to establish
that this is in fact an image of such a creature. By way of
correlation, we can compare together: this image; traditional
descriptions of dragons from Chinese history; what is known
of pterodactyls from the fossil record; and of course, the other
images of pterodactyls I have happened upon.
The astrolabe also shows images of pterodactyls.
As I mentioned, this particular image is of a pterodactyl,
which apparently were not nearly as extinct from 65 million
years ago on as is commonly supposed. In this particular
example of anametric image writing, the animal in question
is shown standing on two legs; and, it is quite obviously not a
hominid. It would be reasonable to assume that its two upper
limbs are wings; and indeed, it is also shown in flight.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self 217

Page 45
Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to fly, and
only two other animals have since joined them in
the air: birds and bats. By comparing the bones
of all three creatures, paleontologists have tried
to draw analogies that might suggest exactly
how pterosaurs flew. Judging from the bones in
the shoulder region, researchers have concluded
that the extinct reptiles could have flapped their
wings as powerfully as a bird or a bat.

Carl Zimmer, Masters of an Ancient Sky;

in Discover Magazine, February 1994.

Pterodactyls are thought to have been essentially bipedal

when not airborne:

Page 51
Just as pterosaurs wings were designed for
birdlike flight, Padian maintains, their legs
were designed for bipedal, birdlike, walking...
Pterosaurs with wings folded up on either side
also leave their hands relatively free for handling
food or climbing trees.

Pterosaurs standing as tall as twenty feet

might have strolled along the banks of lagoons
with a humanlike gait.

Carl Zimmer, Masters of an Ancient Sky;

in Discover Magazine, February 1994.

One might wish to assume at this point that we are looking

at the image of some kind of bird; but as I mentioned, this
animal is clearly depicted as having teeth: and that was
another characteristic of pterodactyls:

Page 45
The first pterosaurs were small, ranging from
Pterodactyl in flight
robin to seagulls size. They generally had long,
narrow heads filled with teeth. Most notably
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
they possessed a finger on each hand - their
pinkie - that was longer than their entire body:
this outsize appendage supported a wing. Their
other three fingers were perfectly normal and
tipped with claws.
Carl Zimmer, Masters of an Ancient Sky;
in Discover Magazine, February 1994.
There are no birds with teeth; and this very obviously is
218
not a bat: so we must conclude that we are probably looking
at a residual species of pterodactyl which survived the great
dinosaur extinction of 65 million years ago.
We can correlate at least one aspect of this image with an
image found on The Hominid Stone, which also shows clearly
evident teeth in the mouth of a similar animal.
There is a very old Chinese story, that of The Monkey
King, which includes an account of how The Monkey King
obtained his favorite weapon, a magical cudgel, from The
Eastern Dragon King; and here we see together a hominid
with a club, and a pterodactyl. However, The Monkey Kings
cudgel is usually depicted as a long staff; and it appears more
likely that this particular hominid is more probably hunting
young pterodactyls than looking for magical gifts to steal.
Of course, the probability of a hominid scaling cliff faces
to those heights while carrying a club is debatable; so
perhaps a large piece of nesting material would have been
opportunistically employed as a cudgel to kill any young
pterodactyls that were encountered. If this were the case,
then the relationship of proportion between the pterodactyl
shown and the hominids club suggests this object was
carried there by a much, much larger pterosaur; probably, to
keep its eggs (and young) from rolling off the ledge during
inclement weather. We did in fact note a probable tendency
for hominids to keep objects used in particularly memorable
kills, when we considered the conditions under which the
African savanna was initially territorialized: a situation
which is consistent with the retention of paradigmatic
templates such as The Hominid Stone.
In the traditional Chinese story, The Monkey Kings magical
cudgel is described as weighing seventeen tons, and being
capable of crushing almost anything. That doesnt seem
even remotely possible; but such a description might seem
appropriate for an opportunistically obtained club which
attained ballistic speed by being dropped from the height
of several hundred feet, by a hominid unable to climb back
down a cliff while holding it. We might then assume that
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
others would have witnessed its arrival at the bottom of the
cliff face on at least one occasion.
Thus, while there is a distinct divergence between the sense
of The Monkey Kings story and the sense of this image, it
does not seem at all unlikely that story would ultimately have
been based upon the kind of situation depicted in this image.
This seems all the more likely if we start from what has been
inferred of the developmental growth of pterodactyls:
Page 54
These findings suggest that pteranodons went
through a massive growth spurt that ended at
adulthood... Pteranodons must have started life
with a wingspan of a few inches at most, since
their wings had to fold inside an egg that could
in turn fit inside a mother. But theres no way
that a pterosaur could grow rapidly to large size
and feed itself at the same time, Bennet says,
because flying is so metabolically costly. After
pteranodons hatched, they stayed in their nests,
waiting for their mothers to bring them food
from the ocean - just as modern albatrosses do.
Carl Zimmer, Masters of an Ancient Sky;
in Discover Magazine, February 1994.
It thus seems probable that this particular hominid is
hunting immature pterodactyls that are still nest-bound.
The hominid does appear to be climbing onto a ledge on
a cliff; and that does sound like the kind of place in which
pterodactyls would nest. There is definitely no shortage
of precipitously sheer cliff faces on the mountains of the
Northwest Coast; and I think it is safe to assume that would
have been a favored nesting place for pterodactyls.
>>>
One would have to think that the existence of such singular
creatures as pterodactyls would not go unnoticed by humans;
and that, had they survived into even remotely historical
219
times, some trace of their persistence would have been
retained in traditional folklore and myth. This does appear to
be the case, as can be demonstrated through one particularly
detailed description of dragons that has survived in
Chinese culture:
Quoting Wang Fu of the Eastern Han Dynasty
in his Literary Expositor, Luo Yuan of the
Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279 AD) has
said: Wang Fu says that depictions of creatures
with the head of a horse and the body of a snake
are commonly considered dragon images. But
dragons actually have three sections and nine
likenesses. The three connected sections are:
from the head to the upper leg, from the leg to
the abdomen, and from the abdomen to the tail.
The nine likenesses are: horns of a stag, head of a
camel, eyes of a demon, neck of a snake, belly of
a clam, scales of a fish, talons of an eagle, paws
of a tiger, and ears of an ox. The product of a
special spiritual culture, the dragon combines
features from many different animals, including
the body of a snake, and elements of fish, birds,
and mammals. One of the auspicious animals of
ancient China, the dragons exalted status has
had a significant influence on the daily lives and
culture of the Chinese for the past 5,000 years.
Text courtesy US Embassy in Taiwan
http://www.taipei.org/teco/cicc/
Ones initial impression of this description is that it is simply
a fanciful compilation of various animal parts; an almost
hallucinatory description of something that simply could not
exist as anything real. But of course we are not being told
here of some Frankenstein-ish creature stitched together from
a menagerie of animal parts: we are being given a detailed
description of something almost unknown, in comparative
terms derived from things which were commonly known.
Lets consider this description term by term, and see if any
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self 220

correlations emerge with the image we are looking at.
Horns of a stag:
There is no sign of any kind of horn upon this particular
pterodactyl; however, this particular example is not the only
kind of pterosaur known to have existed. In fact, over 100
species of pterosaur have been catalogued; and many did
have particularly strange protrusions on their heads:
Page 45
Many pterodactyloids had bizarre crests like
Tupuxuaras; some had crests shaped like swords,
others like keels.
Head of a camel:
This pterosaur has a domed skull and an elongated,
rounded snout; it is more similar in outline to the head of
a camel than perhaps to any other commonly occurring
animal. Dragons are also commonly described in Chinese
folklore as having the head of a horse; Fu Xi, to whom the
invention of writing is attributed in China, is said to have
received the knowledge of this art form from a horse-
dragon. It would seem then that there is a directly evident

Carl Zimmer, Masters of an Ancient Sky;

in Discover Magazine, February 1994.

In addition, it must be remembered that traditional Chinese

medicine characteristically attributes specific properties to
various animal parts; with the leaping abilities of the stag
being associated with its horns (which are considered to be
medicinally associated with vitality). To draw a comparison
between the horns of a stag and the crest of a pterodactyl
is not simply to mark a visual similarity: in all probability,
such an association would also imply a similarity in leaping
ability.

This is something that we

can find a correlate for in this
pterodactyl image: there is
a very clear image of a frog
located just to the right of the
pterodactyls legs. The person
who produced this image made
particular note of the jumping
ability of pterodactyls.

[This is one of the images

taken with an old Argus Cosina 35mm camera - at a point
where I had sold everything I owned of value, to fund my
field work. Needless to say, I no longer use that camera.]
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
visual correlation on this point; and not just with the side
profile of the pterodactyl shown on this stone: the stone itself
is shaped in the same form, and actually throws a shadow in
this very shape. Clearly, the camel head comparison is of
an attribute so pronounced that it is in fact thematic to this
stone, and was a consideration in the production not just of
this pterodactyl image but of the stones overall shape.
Eyes of a demon:
The stare of the pterodactyl depicted on this stone is
particularly intense and indeed seems a dominant aspect
of the overall image. Clearly, this was something which was
outstanding in any experiential encounter with a pterodactyl.
Dr. John R. Baker, in an article on dragons in Chinese
culture (First Glimpse, Internal Arts Magazine, Vol. 6, #2,
Spring 1991), notes that dragons were described as having
a penetrating gaze which could hypnotize its victim. That
does seem an accurate description of the stare which this
pterodactyl is shown as having.
Another image of a different species of pterodactyl that
I have was produced in such a way that a piercing green
reflective highlight appears in that pterodactyls eye when
the stone is held at the proper orientation. Clearly, the intense
stare of a pterodactyl is a characteristic aspect of these
creatures.
221
Neck of a snake:
Snakes dont really seem to have any neck at all; or
conversely, snakes appear to be all neck, and no body. We
might well assume here, then, that the neck of a pterodactyl
was snake-like in appearance; and that is certainly the case
with this pterodactyl image. Interestingly, this actually helps
to locate this particular pterodactyl in evolutionary history:
Page 45
This standard pterosaur model persisted for
45 million years. But around 180 million years
ago a new version made its appearance. These
newer pterosaurs are called pterodactyloids
(from the name given to the first member
of the group found, Pterodactylus, or wing
finger; the older pterosaurs are referred to
as rhamphorhynchoids). Pterodactyloids
manifested some significant changes: their long
head grew still longer, yet, because it had lost
some bones in the skull, it became even more
lightweight. Their neck became flexible and
birdlike. They lost some or all of their teeth. Most
important, their tail shrank to a stump, making
it useless for stabilizing flight. The only way that
tail loss can be explained, say paleontologists,
is by pterodactyloids having developed more
sophisticated brains capable of stabilizing flight
with quick, small changes to the wings.
Carl Zimmer, Masters of an Ancient Sky;
in Discover Magazine, February 1994.
The snake-like neck, the lack of a tail, and the retention
of teeth would seem to indicate that this particular species
of pterodactyl was a highly evolved version of a very old
lineage. We must also suspect that this pterodactyl would
have been very smart as animals go, having evolved for
tailless flight; and indeed, the intelligence of dragons is
often referenced as one of their most characteristic attributes.
Perhaps, then, it was the gleam of intelligence which made a
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
pterodactyls stare so piercing.
Belly of a clam:
Snakes dont really appear to have necks; and clams
dont appear to have readily evident bellies. I think it safe
to conclude here that dragons were not being described as
having the same kind of stomach as a clam does; and in all
probability, it is a visual comparison which is being asserted
here.
What every clam does have is a shell; and in fact that is
pretty much all that there is to see of any clam. All clam
shells have concentric growth bands on their surface; and
apart from their characteristic clamshell shape, that is really
all there is to notice of a clam. It would thus seem probably
that, whatever aspect of a pterodactyls abdominal area is
being described here, it would have had the appearance of
concentric striations or parallel bands.
As it turns out, there is every reason to think that
pterodactyls did indeed have exactly that appearance:
Page 46
Paleontologists have long noted that some
pterosaurs fossil wings bear thin parallel ridges.
Peter Wellnhofer, the curator of the Bavarian
State Museum in Munich, argued in 1987 that
these ridges represent tough fibers, possibly
made of the protein collagen, sandwiched inside
the wing to provide stiffness. Recently, (Kevin)
Padian and Jeremy Rayner, a zoologist at the
University of Bristol in England, found that the
tips of pterosaur wings support this idea. Since
bats have an elastic membrane that they pull
tight, their wing comes to a sharp point. But while
studying a particularly well preserved pterosaur
in Germany, Padian and Rayner discovered that
its wing tip forms a blunted curve. Such a shape
requires some internal stiffening, such as could
have been provided by fibers.
222
This pterosaur had been preserved in a belly-
up position, exposing the underside of its wings.
Padian and Rayner found that at the trailing
edge some of the fibers had apparently separated
from the wing and were lying on top of it at an
angle, leaving behind corresponding grooves on
the wing itself. The way the fibers had frayed
indicates that rather than being sandwiched
inside the wing, as many paleontologists had
imagined, they lined the underside like the
ribbing of an umbrella.
Carl Zimmer, Masters of an Ancient Sky;
in Discover Magazine, February 1994.
It thus seems quite likely that pterodactyls had bands of
parallel reinforcing fibers which ran across the underside of
their wings; and presumably, across their bellies where such
fibers would need to be anchored in order to function as a
stiffening mechanism for the wings.
Scales of a fish:
There is no indication of fish scales in this image of a
pterodactyl; nor is there any note made of the fossilized
remains of pterodactyl exhibiting scale-like patterns. Quite
the opposite, in fact: there are some fossilized examples of
pterodactyls which appear to
show the presence of some kind
of fur-like covering. Still, scales
would not be an unexpected
feature for something of
reptilian ancestry; so that seems
the least initially improbable
aspect of this description so far.
Dr. Baker notes that dragons
were also described as having
scales under its neck...that
projected outward and could
kill a human. Examining the
pterodactyl image we have
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
before us, we can clearly see some structures below the head,
in the vicinity of the neck: the pterodactyls teeth. Could these
teeth have in fact been some form of modified scale?
One of these teeth seems to be shown flaking off; and
this might indeed indicate that these teeth were in fact
modified scales, kept sharp by their constant flaking and
the consequent exposure of new edges which would have
resulted.
Talons of an eagle:
As Carl Zimmer noted earlier, pterodactyls had three
fingers which were equipped with claws; and these were
located mid-wing, with the pinkie finger extending through
the rest of the wings length.
Paws of a tiger:
This aspect is somewhat problematic, since the one example
that I have which appears to very clearly show the shape of
a pterodactyls foot bears no resemblance to that of a tiger at
all.
However, dragons and tigers are often seen to be associated
in Chinese culture:
Tigers have always been an eternal rival
to the dragon, thus various artworks depict a
dragon and tiger fighting an epic battle. A well
used Chinese idiom to describe equal rivals
(often in sports nowadays) is Dragon versus
Tiger. In Chinese martial arts, Dragon style
is used to describe styles of fighting based more
223
on understanding movement, while Tiger style
is based on brute strength and memorization of
techniques.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon
It would seem that it was not at all uncommon for large cats
to attack pterodactyls; or at least, were such an occurrence
rare, it would certainly be more memorable than most
other experiences. In point of fact, the particular stone we
are considering here does indeed depict a fight between
a big cat and a pterodactyl; which the pterodactyl wins.
Apparently, large cats had the unfortunate habit of mistaking
pterodactyls for birds; but they werent birds: they were a
residual species of dinosaur, large flying reptiles which had
evolved to become very intelligent.
Pterodactyls were very light, though: they had to be, so
that they could fly. Tigers, in contrast, are notoriously heavy-
weighted: so after a fight between a tiger and a pterodactyl,
it might well be that only the tigers paw prints were evident
upon the ground; and this might give rise to the impression
that dragons had feet like those of a tiger.
And in fact, this example of non-metrical image writing
does tells the story of a big cat (the face of which is shown, in
various aspects, descending from the upper left section of the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
stone pictured) that (unwisely) chose a pterosaur as its prey.
There are two aspects of the big cat shown on the left of
this image. Note how the mouth of this feline to the left of the
upper section - of the image on the left - becomes the left-side
eye of the feline s image to the right of the lower section of
this image. This is the before aspect of the felines attack
upon the pterodactyl, and shows the feline spotting the
pterodactyl...and deciding that the pterodactyl is a bird.
Having spotted a large flying animal, the feline moves in
to attack. A large and easy supper just waiting to be taken?
No. Something quite unexpected. Here, the feline s face is
224
shown with that characteristic look of rapt attention which all
stalking cats display. Note in particular the eyes, which are
shown with incredible artistry: one has a point of reflected
light at its center, while the other has a circle of reflected light
around its pupil. Taken together, these highlights give the
impression of a feline which is very close, and moving very
fast: it almost seems to jump right into the viewers face!
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self
To the right of the pterodactyl, there are many images of
this big cat in the aftermath of its unsuccessful attack; and,
it does not look very happy in any of them. In some it looks
puzzled; in some it looks hurt; and in a few, it looks quite
dead.
All cats like to pounce upon birds when they can; this,
however was not a bird, despite its ability to fly. It was a very
dangerous flying reptile - and more than a match for a big
cat.
Ears of an ox:
Again, no such ear-like structure is evident of pterodactyls;
but judging by the nature of the other comparisons we have
examined, this might simply be indicating that pterodactyls
had hearing that was as sensitive as that of an animal which
is often preyed upon by carnivores.
>>>
Dr. John R. Baker also comments upon a few other
characteristics attributed in Chinese culture to dragons: that
they had a voice like a gong; and that they were noted for
rising high and dropping low, as well as being carried
high aloft on air currents and swooping down to wreak
destruction.
225
These are characteristics well worth commenting upon; and
indeed, this pterosaur is shown, with its head turned to the
right, emitting some such sound. Note how even in this image
the teeth of the animal are clearly shown, as black detail on
the red extension of the pterodactyls face; and that the speed
of a pterodactyls strike is alluded to by the black arrowhead
above the tip of the pterodactyls (red) snout.
What has inferred from the fossil record of the flight habits
of pterodactyls is entirely consistent with the account Dr.
Baker provides:
Page 51
Rayner and Hazelhurst found that the
combination of long, thin wings and slender,
lightweight bodies made large pterosaurs very
aerodynamically efficient, able to soar on the
weakest of rising air currents. Many of the
largest pterosaurs may have been like todays
frigate bird: perhaps they soared hundreds of
miles over the ocean, grabbing fish or harassing
other pterosaurs to surrender their catches.
Carl Zimmer, Masters of an Ancient Sky;
in Discover Magazine, February 1994.
It seems quite probable that pterodactyls could have easily
traversed the short distance between mainland Alaska and
northern Asia, particularly if given a strong tail wind.
>>>
Unfortunately, the written records which have survived
from that early a point in Chinese history are few; and those
which did survive to our present day have done so for the
most part in a truncated form. The first emperor of a unified
China ordered all books to be burned in 213 B.C., in an
attempt to abolish all knowledge from the time prior to his
reign. In addition, all written records in China were ordered
to be condensed - paraphrased - in the fifth century A.D. and
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self 226

again in the thirteenth century A.D. This may help to explain

the very truncated form in which the traditional description
of dragons quoted above has survived.

It does appear that we are looking here at the image of

a pterodactyl; and this complicates matters somewhat,
because we do not have any living specimens which we could
compare this image with. However, I do have a few other

depictions of similar species (other types of pterodactyl); so

we can at least examine the specific area in which the sign I
would like to consider occurs, and compare that image area
to the other examples I have available.

The specific area I would like to focus upon is above the

back of this animal, where the wings appear to fold when
not being used for flight. Looking at two other examples of
pterodactyl image, we can see what appears to be a fairly
characteristic configuration of such folded wings which is
consistently shown above the pterodactyls body.

Viewing that area on this particular stone, we see the same

general configuration in shape; but we can also clearly see
that this characteristic shape has been modified to show
something which is quite different than the featureless
outline of folded wings.

The shape of the left wing tip which our eyes trace is
instantly familiar to anyone today; it is something we all
see countless times every day, but in a modern form. Where
today we might see someone holding a cell phone in exactly
this way, to read or send a text message; or holding an MP3
player they are shuffling through music on: here, we also see
the outline of a person looking at something in their hand.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self 227

Presumably, a stone; assumedly, this very stone. They are

reading the images on that stone; which is to say, they are in
effect whomever is looking at this stone in the moment that
this is happening.

I think we can safely presume that no person would ever

have stood so casually upon a pterodactyls back and, finding
themselves there, take the time to look at a stone. Everything
we know of dragons from mythology strongly suggests
they would not have been inclined to gladly suffer such an
indignity.

We must therefore be looking at an image modification: we

are in fact looking at a sign formation.

The folded wing shown on the right has also been modified;
and it shows the head of a pterodactyl: a pterodactyl that is
looking over the shoulder of the person who is looking at the
stone in their hand.

We are, in fact, looking at the worlds oldest written joke:

There is one right behind you!

Presumably (hopefully) there isnt; but in an age when

pterodactyls still roamed the skies, who wouldnt look, just
to be sure? And even today, many people take exception to
someone else reading over their shoulder; so here, we can
all recognize the dynamic of unease followed by that sense
of relief which so often elicits laughter. This would of course
always be laughter at ones own unwarranted unease: in
other words, this joke is contingent upon the ability of those
who read it to be aware of their own consciousness as such.
This joke is only funny for people who have developed an
established consciousness-of-self.

Just thinking about someone picking up this stone; looking

at it; recognizing the dragon image; continuing to trace
with their eyes the figural outlines of symbolic schema
of a real pterodactyl standing right behind them... well, that
found there, looking for more information pertaining to
is still pretty funny.
pterodactyls; and slowly but surely cognizing the positional
relationship holding between themselves and the possibility
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 11.0) Considering Consciousness-Of-Self 228

But it is more than just humorous; because it would not
be possible for a person to conceive of such a joke without
their being fully conscious of, and able to remember at
will, their own thought processes. Nor would there be any
purpose to composing such a joke, unless it were going to be
shared with others who had also attained consciousness-of-
self. This means that we can only be dealing here with an
interpersonal and transcendental field which is demonstrably
characterized by consciousness-of-self: an entire community
of self-conscious individuals.
The worlds oldest written joke could only have been created
by someone who was fully in possession of a consciousness-of-
self, as a member of an extended field of social organization
wherein all other individuals were also fully self-conscious.
Only a person who was fully aware of their own thought
processes as such would be able to modify the thought
processes of someone else - indeed, anyone else from that
time and place - in a way which is still so readily identifiable
as humor. This joke does not become funny until the person
reading it becomes retroactively cognizant of their own
thought processes in reading the joke, after having fallen for
that joke.
be in the minimal range of 10,000 years old.
This is an artifact from the Third Material Epoch of
First Nations culture, when techniques for shaping solid
pieces of granite had been developed and were commonly
employed in the production of stone tools. There is a very long
developmental history to the evolution of anametric image
writing which precedes that point in history; and we must
thus acknowledge that consciousness-of-self was already
a long and firmly established fact for members of the First
Nations when the worlds oldest written joke was composed.
If we were asked to choose a point of origin for writing,
and given a choice between: the use of symbols to represent
material goods in the Middle East ~5,000 years ago; and,
the use of signs to produce written jokes in North America
~10,000 years ago, really, it becomes pretty obvious that
writing originated with the First Nations of North America.
And of course, members of the First Nations are known to
this day for their excellent sense of humor.

If we had been wondering how consciousness-of-self could

become unmistakably apparent within anametric image
writing, here is our incontrovertible answer.

Here we have a clear proof demonstrating consciousness-of-

self, occurring in what must necessarily be defined as a form
of writing.

We might wonder at the age of this artifact; but in this we

can expect no help from the fossil record of pterodactyls:
their delicate, hollow bones are notoriously fragile and very
rarely survive in a fossilized form. The bones of big cats are
an entirely different matter, however, and are sturdy enough
to have left a considerable record of their presence in North
America. Their particular place in the fossil record tells us
that, in all probability, we are looking at an artifact that may
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
12.0) The Origin of Writing
In contrast to the rather shaky tale of a Middle Eastern
origin for writing, we have managed to trace an origin for
writing which seems to be entirely consistent with all the
circumstances which must necessarily have attended its
invention. We have done this through an analysis of the
nature of human consciousness, and of the archaeological
record: and this is an approach which has provided us with
ample insights into exactly how and why it would have been
possible for writing to form; and, precisely what was available
for writing to have formed from.
In examining the nature of territorial relationships holding
between various artifacts and conscious states, we noted
a steady increase in the delay between hand and mouth
which witnessed how the motivation to obtain food compelled
thinking. We noted the way in which the hand came to
hold stone artifacts; that an externalized form of material
concept took shape; and that a certain material dynamic
eventually developed, through which production began to
feed upon itself, instead of feeding the mouth directly. Here,
we began to notice that a consciousness-of-consciousness
must have been in evidence; and, that images were also being
produced.
It was not until we encountered environmental conditions
which would have allowed active neural processes to co-
opt a dormant olfactory sense that we began to see clear
indications of a volitional form of memory distinct from
that which attends motor reflex activity. It was only at
this point that we began to see indications that aspects of
conscious activity were being articulated internally, to form
composite conceptual structures which did not directly and
proportionately correspond to immediate perceptions.
We began to note distinct variations in the forms through
which visual information was being produced, such as:
images, symbolic schema, mental images, and concepts.
We saw that symbolic schema are midway between image
229
and concept; that they are the image becoming concept,
and as such appear to be visual imagery transitioning into
the neural processing of a co-extended olfactory space.
As such, symbolic schema began to acquire the relational
characteristics of neural articulations; a transformational
acquisition which becomes more fully embodied in the sign.
The sign is a further stage in the articulation of this
transition: it is of the nature of the symbolic and the
schematic, but after the visual relationships of the image
have become articulated within olfactory processing. At
this point, it is primarily conceptual relations that are
maintained, in the differential transferences of intensive
ordinates: only The Trace of the visual remains, as the
localization of symbolic schema in the closure of the figural
back onto itself; a closure effected not in visual space but
through the space, the extension, of co-opted olfactory
processing neurology.
In this transitional through of the olfactory, the entire
neurology of the brain is effectively determined as the
transitional end; and this enables the folding of conscious
states back onto themselves, forming consciousness-of-self:
consciousness articulated in co-extension with itself.
This is effected through the mediation of volitional memory,
which functionally maintains the nature of that transition
through which dormant olfactory neurology was co-opted.
Ultimately, we must suspect the nature of this transition is
maintained as a residual form of modulation, with ancient
roots that predate even the co-opted neurology of olfactory
processing.
Although the olfactory dedication of that co-opted
neurology would reassert itself, the functional nature of
volitional memory would be retained through the use
of new kinds of cultural artifacts which came into being
during that initial transitional period. In this, articulated
speech and grammatologically structured writing are of
primary importance; and long after the Ice Age had passed,
cultural constructs which originated in situations of intense
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
and prolonged cold maintained the cognitive advances
established through that specific territorialization, even in
areas never subjected to those environmental conditions.
The perceptual image; the symbolic schema; the concept;
and the sign are in between events in this transition from
conscious states, to consciousness-of-consciousness, and
on into consciousness-of-self. This is a transition which is
effected through the establishment of volitional memory.
Thus, the occurrence of the sign and of writing is
originally characterized in terms of event, and is enabled by
the ability of volitional memory to form articulations of co-
extension between a before and an after.
Prior to this point, we can expect to see consciousness-
of-consciousness embodied in the production of relational
objects that can have a conceptual function; but this does not
serve, in and of itself, as a demonstration that consciousness-
of-self is in evidence.
After this, it becomes possible for consciousness to co-
extend with momentary aspects of its own occurrence: then,
consciousness can at will remember its previous states as
coincident to itself, in the act of remembering; consciousness-
of-self is thus formed, as the ability of consciousness to
modify itself directly.
But long before this point was reached, consciousness had
already taken to modifying external objects. In this, and
in those considerations which characterize writing as a
subjectless transcendental field, we must assume that writing
began to form of volitional memory before a distinct and
stable consciousness-of-self did. Certainly, it is of the material
nature of writing that it exhibits a stability characteristic of
objects; and it is thus probable that writing in fact served to
stabilize the formation of consciousness-of-self. This would
be the most fundamental form of modification which writing
would have effected of consciousness.
It is here that we can expect to find the essential nature of
230
the sign as unmotivated and, in doing so, define signs in
terms of modification.
We noted something of this in relation to The Hominid
Stone, and the use of unmotivated composition in
modifying objects into things that are personalized. This
was an externalized process, through which concepts formed
as object-relations of territoriality that did not require a
distinction between subjects and objects. Instead, we saw
the formation of conceptual personae which embodied the
territorial relations of thinking compelled in encounters with
this earth.
There, we might say that it was the nature of specific
processes of territorialization which were being modified; but
with the establishment of volitional memory, we are dealing
with an internalized co-extension whereby unmotivated
signs are being used to modify articulations of consciousness
which are of an essentially temporal nature. Consciousness
has become cognizant of events, through its ability to
articulate the co-extension of a before with an after; and,
to do this at will.
We still have intensive ordinates being utilized as
components which compose the endoconsistency of concepts;
but the exoconsistency exhibited by unmotivated signs
is no longer exclusively that of external relation: instead,
grammatological systematization has become established
precisely in that signs are now in effect modifying each other.
>>>
That the neural substrate in which volitional memory
formed is essentially that of a co-opted non-conscious
process (that of olfactory processing) can be seen in another
important dynamic, which we have already considered
with reference to The Hominid Stone: that of a functional
forgetting, which we need to examine once again in the
context of anametric image writing.
We noted that Derridas definition of writing as the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
embodiment of the instituted trace was characterized by a
determination of the sign as unmotivated. We considered
this in the context of our chemo-olfactory senses; as, the
resolution of the delays formed in relationships holding
between the hand and the face (eye/mouth) in obtaining
food. A clinical study of this resolution indicates something
interesting:
Page 598
As a result of the neurophysiological and
behavioural observations showing the specificity
of satiety in the monkey (Rolls, 1999a),
experiments were performed to determine
whether satiety was specific to foods eaten in
humans. It was found that the pleasantness of
the taste of food eaten to satiety decreased more
than for foods that had not been eaten (Rolls
et al., 1981a). One consequence of this is that if
one food is eaten to satiety, appetite reduction
for other foods is often incomplete, and this will
lead to enhanced eating when a variety of foods
is offered (Rolls et al., 1981a,b, 1984). Because
sensory factors such as similarity of color, shape,
flavour, and texture are usually more important
than metabolic equivalence in terms of protein,
carbohydrate and fat content in influencing how
foods interact in this type of satiety, it has been
termed sensory-specific satiety (Rolls and Rolls,
1977, 1982; Rolls et al., 1981a,b, 1982; Rolls, 1990).
It should be noted that this effect is distinct from
alliesthesia, in that alliesthesia is a change in
the sensory inputs produced by internal signals
(such as glucose in the gut) (Cabanac and
Duclaux, 1979; Cabanac , 1971; Cabanac and
Fantino, 1977) whereas sensory-specific saiety is
a change in the pleasantness of sensory inputs
which is accounted for at least partly by the
external sensory stimulation received (such as
the taste of a particular food), in that, as shown
above, it is at least partly specific to the external
sensory stimulation received.
231
Page 599
The enhanced eating when a variety of foods is
available, as a result of the operation of sensory-
specific satiety, may have been advantageous in
evolution in ensuring that different foods with
important different nutrients were consumed,
but today in humans, when a wide variety of
foods is readily available, it may be a factor that
can lead to overeating and obesity.
Edmund T. Rolls, The Rules of Formation of
the Olfactory Representations Found in the
Orbitofrontal Cortex Olfactory Areas in Primates.
Oxford Journal of the Chemical Senses 26:
595-604, 2001.
Thus we can note: in situations where visual processing
has been augmented through co-opting dormant olfactory
processes, we can expect that the resolution effected
by surveying symbolic schema to the point where an
unmotivated sign is determined will in fact leave other
symbolic schema as unresolved, and still motivational.
Discerning the component intensive ordinates which form the
relational nature of the sign will not diminish the demands
made by other symbolic schema to be similarly surveyed and
resolved into signs.
In effect, there is a functionality of forgetting
which attends such resolution, such that this sense of
unmotivation does not directly influence the survey of other
symbolic schema and in no way precludes the resolution of
other signs.
We also noted something of this in our initial examination
of olfactory processing. There, we found that both olfactory
and visual processes exhibited an increased ability to discern
differences within specific stimuli groups, whether these
be of scent, or, doodles. This process of differentiation is
functionally a forgetting of previous experiences, in the
light of some new discernment: the ability to recognize an
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
experience as new and to remember it as distinct is thus
contingent upon the ability to effectively separate previous
experience from currently active functions of perception.
From this, we can infer the relation of that functional
forgetting which characterizes non-conscious processes, to,
the occurrence of volitional memory; and it is a relation that
can be found precisely in the aspect of volitional memory
which is most characteristic of anametric image writing:
specifically, functional forgetting can be seen as the
determining characteristic of grouping patterns.
>>>
In that the singularization of event horizons is necessarily a
differential process, absolutely nothing would be determined
if all such horizons of event were indistinguishable from
each other. It is the nature of temporal distinctions that
differences-in-kind are defined; and anametric image writing
would simply not function if singularized event horizons
were not distinguishable from each other through grouping
patterns, as compositionally established by image elements
and by conceptual consistencies.
Philosophically, the question What constitutes an event?
is notoriously unsolvable; because, as Bergson demonstrated,
it is the nature of duration that it changes in kind by way
of its division: and the principle of such division is always
external to that which is being circumscribed as a discrete
event. Attempting to determine if any additional factors are
aspects of a specific event simply re-divides the event being
considered into a new duration; but, one which appears to be
the same as the original event under consideration.
However, it never is the same: because only discrete,
numerical multiplicities of spatial configuration maintain
the same units of measure (unifying principle) in being
divided. This poses a real dilemma for any form of event
language: how can discrete signs form in an event language
if there is no fundamental principle through which events
can be determined as distinctly separable from each other?
232
The simple answer is, they cant; and so we immediately
know that the principle which distinguishes signs as discrete
units within an event language must be found elsewhere
than in the temporal nature of the events which such signs
embody. This is where we find the unmotivated nature of
the sign; and as a principal of discrete grouping, it ultimately
originates in the functional nature of non-conscious
processes, such as the neurology originally dedicated to
olfactory processing.
The non-conscious nature of such grouping patterns is also
readily demonstrated through the functional influence of
Ventral Stream visual processing in facial, object, and place-
related recognition. And of course, Deleuze and Guattari
have indicated the role of an ineffable sense of taste in
the formation of concepts. The actual mechanisms through
which grouping patterns are established in anametric image
writing are even more subtle than this, though: very often,
this is effected through visual principles such as that of
equiluminance (where an implied occurrence of the figural
dissolves through a loss of contrast resolution between
adjacent areas of different color). In such cases (which seem
in themselves to oscillate between being a generalized norm
and being specific exceptions), the quality, direction, and
intensity of incident light has the direct effect of determining
how The Trace of visual difference, which is instituted
through the discernment of the figural, is resolved.
Grouping patterns which form of distinct image elements
are determined by the ability of the eye to positionally
discern figural components: in effect, visual intensities cannot
be ordered into composite structures if they are not surveyed.
Particularly intriguing, one finds that the ordinate relations
which determine composite formations will vary not only
between perceivers but also, for any specific viewer, from
one moment to the next. This in itself is very reminiscent of
Husserls definition of an egological consciousness-of-self.
This differential variance is so pronounced that, I decided
long ago it is absolutely necessary to proceed in any reading
of anametric image writing through the use of black and
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
white printouts of these image compensates, and with a
collection of colored pencil crayons ready at hand. Without a
marking-out and coloring-in of image composites which are
noted as of interest, there is absolutely no assurance one will
ever be able to find the same grouping of features again; even
if but a moment passes, in which the eyes shift away without
a finger first being placed at the point where the area of
interest is located.
This is a functional aspect of forgetting which is quite
distinct from our experience of volitional memory; and
it really needs to be directly experienced in order to be
understood as such. Because here, it does not matter if one
does or does not remember the image one is seeking to
discern: it will, or will not, be resolved within consciousness
in accordance with the functional nature of non-conscious
processes, regardless of how volitional memory has modified
consciousness-of-self in its formation.
In this, the essentially productive nature of anametric
image writing can be directly seen (as well as not seen,
as the case may be); and it is a productivity which very
obviously articulates the formation of conscious states with
the functional nature of non-conscious processes. This is,
in effect, that dynamic of differential transference which
characterizes any articulation of co-extension within
consciousness; and as such it is also the threshold through
which consciousness-of-self begins to form as exactly
coincident with the threshold upon which the functional
nature of volitional memory also forms.
It is thus with complete certainty that one can state
categorically: unlike phonetic writing, this form of writing
is not defined by the concept of exchange, or of circulation;
the notion of an immutable meaning-value which ensures
translatability is meaningless here. Instead, it is a productive
functionality which one encounters: and this is an
essentially generative aspect of consciousness that is directly
transforming an embodiment of intelligibility as knowledge
into this form of writing.
233
Simply, the motivational aspects of non-conscious processes
are embodied in the generative resolution of signs; and these
now unmotivated constructs are transformational through
their functional application in modifying images.
Non-conscious processes generate the differences which
become the grouping patterns of conscious states; and these
are transformed into grammatological structures within the
volitional memory which characterizes consciousness-of-self.
So, while it is through volitional memory that the sign is
determined in its functional modification of images (and is
thus defined as transformational), the conceptual grouping
of signs into articulations of grammatological structure is
still dependent the functional forgetting which attends
non-conscious processes (as the generative component of
the signs occurrence). In effect, we are looking at the way in
which the signs that form anametric image writing articulate
a specific kind of co-extension between the generative and
transformational aspects which characterize any language.
Here, the sign singularizes duration into discrete event
horizons of essentially grammatological structure; and it
does this by way of conceptual formations. This is where
conceptual personae form; and this is why we saw the
possibility of their formation before we actually encountered
consciousness-of-self. However, we must note that the
initial formation of conceptual personae occurred through
territorializations, as thought compelled in encounters with
the earth: that is, through the composition of concepts in
which exoconsistencies of external relation were effected.
In contrast, once volitional memory is established, the
conceptual formation of signs proceeds in such a way that
the exoconsistencies of the concept are articulating signs
with other signs, establishing the grammatological structure
which characterizes language. Here, external relations of
a territorial nature (which compel thought) are still being
articulated; but they are being articulated in a specific way
characteristic of that neurological process we call volitional
memory, through which consciousness-of-self comes to
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
be established. Now, external relationships are being
conceptualized as events, in terms of an in between which
forms from a before and an after; and it is the singular
nature of such in betweens which facilitates the formation
of conceptual personae from the events of A LIFE.
>>>
One might suspect that a form of writing which articulates
the events of consciousness in such a singular way would be
used by people who also used spoken languages that do not
conform to the ideals of any standardized Western European
system of linguistic definition. And of course, this is exactly
the case:
Page 215-216
In the Hopi language, lightning, wave, flame,
meteor, puff of smoke, pulsation are verbs -
events of necessarily brief duration cannot be
anything but verbs. Cloud and storm are
at about the lower limit of duration for nouns.
Hopi, you see, actually has a classification of
events (or linguistic isolates) by duration type,
something strange to our modes of thought.
On the other hand, in Nootka, a language of
Vancouver Island, all words seem to us to be
verbs, but really there are no classes 1 and 2; we
have, as it were, a monistic view of nature that
gives us only one class of word for all kinds of
events. A house occurs or it houses is the way
of saying house, exactly like a flame occurs
or it burns. These terms seem to us like verbs
because they are inflected for durational and
temporal nuances, so that the suffixes of the
word for house event make it mean long-lasting
house, temporary house, future house, house
that used to be, what started out to be a house,
and so on.
Page 216
What surprises most is to find that various
234
grand generalizations of the Western world, such
as time, velocity, and matter, are not essential
to the construction of a consistent picture of
the universe. The psychic experiences that we
class under these headings are, of course, not
destroyed; rather categories derived from other
kinds of experiences take over the rulership of
the cosmology and seem to function just as
well. Hopi may be called a timeless language.
It recognizes psychological time, which is much
like Bergsons duration, but this time is quite
unlike the mathematical time, T, used by our
physicists.
Benjamin Lee Whorf, Science and Linguistics, in
Language, Thought, & Reality;
Selected writings edited by John B. Carroll.
Copyright 1956 by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; fourteenth printing 1979 by
MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts.
It is interesting that Whorf viewed the temporal aspects of
Hopi with reference to Bergsons philosophic investigations
into the nature of time; and having examined these
ourselves, we know that there is in fact a very real distinction
to be made between a metrical conception of time (the
T employed by physicists as a matter of measure) and
the concept of time as event or duration, a nonnumerical
conception which distinguishes difference-in-kind.
Here, we must note that the spoken languages of the First
Nations and their form of anametric image writing conform
with each other in their singular grasp of duration as
conceptualized event. Neither corresponds with the standard
interpretive systemizations of Western European linguistics.
That such variant forms of temporal distinction are
inherently a part of First Nations languages would again
seem to indicate a point of divergence from any commonality
with European roots having occurred after the material
dynamic of production-feeding-production had become
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
cognitively established; but, before the consciousness-of-self
which emerged from Ice Age Europe had formed.
Viewed from within the context of Bergsonian duration, it is
apparent, then, that the very nature of self-variance (which
consciousness-of-self is definitionally the awareness of) is an
essential feature of anametric image writing: so much so, that
we must attribute this variability to the functional nature of
non-conscious processes. Thus, although we might at first be
tempted to say that this form of writing serves to stabilize the
formation of consciousness-of-self, it would be more accurate
to say that anametric image writing functionally articulates
the processes which allow consciousness-of-self to form.
It is only with reference to the functional nature of non-
conscious processes, as an ongoing dynamic of forgetting,
that volitional memory can grasp the paradoxical formation
of concepts such as self-variance: that is, something
different which is still the same, such as consciousness-of-
self.
In this, we have a clear indication of how a subjectless
transcendental field such as writing can come to induce
the formation of consciousness-of-self; and a better sense of
how conceptual personae are composed within this form of
writing.
With anametric image writing, what at first appears to be
a compositional instability (with reference to any standard
linguistic definition concerning a phonetic signification of
the same object by the same word) is in fact a functional
meta-stability. Instead of linear narratives, one finds
metanarratives being grammatologically supported through
anametric grouping patterns.
Derrida notes the advanced nature of such systems of
linguistic formalization:
Page 86
The linear norm was never able to impose itself
absolutely for the very reasons that intrinsically
235
circumscribed graphic phoneticism. We now
know them; these limits came into being at the
same time as the possibility of what they limited,
they opened what they finished and we have
already named them: discreteness, differance,
spacing. The production of the linear norm
thus emphasized these limits and marked the
concepts of symbol and language... The line
represents only a particular model, whatever
might be its privilege. This model has become a
model and, as a model, it remains inaccessible. If
one allows that the linearity of language entails
this vulgar and mundane concept of temporality
(homogeneous, dominated by the form of the
now and the idea of continuous movement,
straight or circular) which Heidegger shows to be
the intrinsic determining concept of all ontology
from Aristotle to Hegel, the meditation upon
writing and the deconstruction of the history of
philosophy become inseparable.
The enigmatic model of the line is thus the very
thing that philosophy could not see when it had
its eyes open on the interior of its own history.
Page 87
The access to pluri-dimensionality and to a
delinearized temporality is not a simple regression
toward the mythogram; on the contrary, it
makes all the rationality subjected to the linear
model appear as another form and another age
of mythography. The meta-rationality or meta-
scientificity which are thus announced within
the meditation upon writing can therefore be
no more shut up within a science of man than
conform to the traditional idea of science. In one
and the same gesture, they leave man, science,
and the line behind.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
As noted with reference to Note 92 on page 89 of Derridas
Introduction to Husserls Origin of Geometry, the way in which
temporality is embodied within anametric image writing
is very different from the expression of the temporal which
informs a Western conception of time, as it structurally occurs
within the phonetic forms of writing used throughout Europe.
Derrida further contends that the Western way of
conceiving time - as a linear flow, from the past into the
presence of the present, and on into the future - is structurally
determinate of all the forms of knowledge which have arisen
within a Western European context.
It is from a critique of this structural determination that
Derrida asserts the inability of Western science in general
- and particularly the science of man, which is of course
anthropology - to contained by way of its current definitional
practices the essential nature of writing.
Our own analysis of anametric image writing has
confirmed this; for not only did we see a form of writing
which is not based upon presence, we also noted how
temporality was embodied therein as the conceptual event of
duration; and we further found that grammatical structures
of metanarrative were the rule, rather than a linear
exposition of temporal flow.
It is the inherently nonlinear nature of anametric image
writing which clearly establishes the essentially temporal
character of its productive functions.
In the reality of occurrence, any given event can have
multiple outcomes, depending on how its components are
ordered: this is simply the empirical nature of our direct
experiences upon this earth.
Anametric image writing thus functions as much more
than simple linear narratives of historical events, which
always have a determined beginning and end: examples of
236
anametric image writing in fact function as dynamic event-
maps of the traditional territories long occupied by the First
Nations of North America. The metanarrative structure of
anametric image writing allows for multiple compositions to
be actualized, in accordance with the actual components that
are utilized as constituting any singular act of reading. As
with real events, the metanarrative structures of anametric
image writing vary: depending upon what components are
brought together in an event; and, the order in which these
constituent elements are brought together in composing
an event. This is entirely consistent with the way in which
concepts are formed.
In that such a form of writing is at the same time more
originary and more advanced than the phonetic forms of
writing which evolved in the Middle East, it seems almost
certain that writing was invented in North America long
before it came into use throughout the Mediterranean basin.
Indeed, it seems fairly evident that graphemic forms of
writing in general preceded phonetic forms:
Page 88
Reflection on the essence of mathematics,
politics, economics, religion, technology, law,
etc. communicates most intimately with the
reflection upon and information surrounding
the history of writing. The continuous vein that
circulates through all these fields of reflection
and constitutes their fundamental unity is
the problem of the phoneticization of writing.
This phoneticization has a history, no script
is absolutely exempt from it, and the enigma
of this evolution does not allow itself to be
dominated by the concept of history. To be sure,
the latter appears at a determined moment in
the phoneticization of script and it presupposes
phoneticization in an essential way.
Page 89
Phonetic and non-phonetic are therefore
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
never pure qualities of certain systems of
writing, they are the abstract characteristics of
typical elements, more or less numerous and
dominant within all systems of signification
in general. Their importance owes less to their
quantitative distribution than to their structural
organization. The cuneiform, for example, is at
the same time ideogrammatic and phonetic ... In
fact, each graphic form may have a double value
- ideographic and phonetic.
This is true of all systems of writing and does
not depend upon what is sometimes hastily
considered to be levels of the elaboration. Within
the structure of a pictographic tale for example,
a representation-of-a-thing, such as a totemic
blazon, may take the symbolic value of a proper
name... Going beyond this real consciousness,
the structure of this signifier may continue to
operate not only on the fringes of the potential
consciousness but according to the causality of
the unconscious.
Thus the name, especially the so-called proper
name, is always caught in a chain or a system
of differences. It becomes an appellation only
to the extent that it may inscribe itself within a
figuration. Whether it be linked by its origin to
the representation of things in space or whether
it remains caught in a system of phonetic
differences or social classifications apparently
released from ordinary space, the proper-ness
of the name does not escape spacing. Metaphor
shapes and undermines the proper name.
The literal [propre] meaning does not exist, its
appearance is a necessary function - and must
be analyzed as such - in the system of differences
and metaphors. The absolute parousia of the
literal meaning, as the presence of the self of the
logos within its voice, in the absolute hearing-
itself-speak, should be situated as a function
237
responding to an indestructible but relative
necessity, within a system that encompasses it.
That amounts to situating the metaphysics or the
ontotheology of the logos.
Page 90
As pictogram, a representation of the thing
may find itself endowed with a phonetic value.
This does not efface the pictographic reference
which, moreover, has never been simply
realistic. The signifier is broken or constellated
into a system: it refers at once, and at least, to
a thing and to a sound. The thing is itself a
collection of things or a chain of differences
in space; the sound, which is also inscribed
within a chain, may be a word; the inscription
is then ideogrammatical or synthetic, it cannot
be decomposed; but the sound may also be
an atomic element itself entering into the
composition: we are dealing then with a script
apparently pictographic and in fact phonetico-
analytic in the same way as the alphabet. What
is now known of the writing of the Aztecs of
Mexico seems to cover all these possibilities.
And the same is true of the writing of the
Easter Islands. Not only is the latter picto-
ideo-phonographic, but in the very interior
of its non-phonetic structures, equivocity and
overdetermination can give rise to metaphors
taken over by a true graphic rhetoric, if this absurd
expression may be risked.
We shall now discover the complexity of this
structure in the so-called primitive scripts
and in cultures believed without writing. But
we have known for a long time that largely
nonphonetic scripts like Chinese or Japanese
included phonetic elements very early. They
remained structurally dominated by the
ideogram or algebra and we thus have the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
testimony of a powerful movement of civilization
developing outside of all logocentrism. Writing
did not reduce the voice to itself, it incorporated
it into a system...
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology.
Derrida points out a troubling implication of the way
in which phonetic writing has long been considered the
developmental apex of writing in general: in that history
is considered to have begun with the invention of writing;
and given that this determination is made with respect to
phonetic forms of writing: it follows that any form of writing
which is not phonetic in form is therefore prehistoric; and,
as falling outside of history, therefore lacks all the legitimacy
accorded to the historical.
In the context of our analysis, this seems an almost absurd
situation. Derrida notes the double value of writing, which
in phonetic languages articulates written with spoken forms
through the word. In the languages of the First Nations, this
articulation is effected by the event; and one must wonder
if anything could be more inherently historical than that.
Clearly, predicating the nature of the historical upon the
word is an arbitrary approach at best.
Indeed, we can find many things in Derridas critique with
which we are now familiar. He mentions that the signifier
may function at the fringe of consciousness according to
the causality of the unconscious; and we have examined
the role of non-conscious processes in the linguistic functions
of anametric image writing. He talks about an essentially
egological aspect of writing, which situates the speaker and
listener within language: we have encountered the functional
formation of conceptual personae, who think the events of
anametric image writing. He notes the way in which things
occur as a collection of things or a chain of differences;
and we have examined the role played by the compositional
endoconsistencies and relational exoconsistencies which
constitute the event as concept.
238
Through all of these considerations, we can easily see that
any form of writing is best contextualize with reference to the
spoken language which necessarily accompanies it; and that
there is little if any justification for defining an essentially
graphemic form of writing in terms derived from an entirely
different form of phonetic speech. Yet, this is precisely the
approach undertaken in the classical Western European ideal
of linguistics: that phonetic speech was formed into the first
instances of writing, which occurred in the Middle East a
few thousand years ago; and that all forms of writing must
necessarily be determined as variations of the phonetic model
of speech common to Western European roots. This is the
conceptual basis of the universalist and phonetically centered
model of linguistics which dominates academic discourse on
the origin of writing; and, as we have seen in the course of
our inquiry, it is an entirely misguided approach.
Derrida has characterized this approach in much stronger
terms than misguided:
Page 93
Indeed one must understand this incompetence
of science which is also the incompetence of
philosophy, the closure of the epistm. Above all
it does not invoke a return to a prescientific or
infra-philosophic form of discourse. Quite the
contrary. This common root, which is not a root
but the concealment of the origin and which is not
common because it does not amount to the same
thing except with the unmonotonous insistence
of difference, this unnameable movement
of difference-itself, that I have strategically
nicknamed trace, reserve, or differance, could be
called writing only within the historical closure,
that is to say within the limits of science and
philosophy.
The constitution of a science or philosophy of
writing is a necessary and difficult task. But, a
thought of the trace, of differance or of reserve,
having arrived at these limits and repeating
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
them ceaselessly, must also point beyond the
field of the epistm... In a certain sense, thought
means nothing... Thinking is what we already
know we have not yet begun; measured against
the shape of writing, it is broached only in the
epistm.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology.
Derrida rightly notes that the epistemological
determinations defining the way in which knowledge about
the origin of writing is granted legitimacy are entirely
contingent upon a definition of writing which is specific to a
particular form of writing; and that this has in fact lead to
the concealment of writings origin.
The effects of the tacit assumption that all other forms of
writing can be assessed through a comparison with the ideal
of European phonetic forms of writing extend, as Derrida
notes, throughout the body of Western knowledge. That such
an assumption has been accepted as established fact is, like
the endless repetition of the story of writings Middle Eastern
origin, due exclusively to a general academic refusal to accept
alternative perspectives. The consequences of this refusal
have been far reaching, and continue to this day; and it is
a position which is being seen as increasingly untenable by
other cultures:
Page xxxv
The production of the West as hegemonic
knowledge required the creation of an Other,
constituted as an intrinsically disqualified being,
a collection of characteristics that were markers
of inferiority towards the power and knowledge
of the West and, thus available for use and
appropriation by the latter.
Whatever the epistemological merits of
modern science and their admittedly positive
or, at least, benign effects, the self-constitution
of science as a universal form of knowledge
239
that claims the right to legislate over all other
forms of knowledge leads to it being frequently
regarded in the non-Western world as a Western
particularism whose specificity consists of
holding the power to define as particular, local,
contextual, and situational all knowledges that
are its rivals.
One of the most important events of the
colonial intervention from the late seventeenth
century to the early twentieth century was the
invention of the savage as an inferior being
and the promotion of the idea of scientific and
technological progress as imperative to achieve
the highest stage of development - Western
civilization.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Joao Arriscado Nunes,
and Maria Paula Meneses, Introduction, in
Another Knowledge Is Possible: Beyond northern
epistemologies, Volume 3 in Reinventing Social
Emancipation: Toward New Manifestos, edited
by Boavantura de Sousa Santos. Copyright in
the collection by Verso, 2008; Copyright by
individual contributors 2007, 2008.
Printed by Verso, an imprint of New Left Books,
London and New York, NY.
As we have noted throughout this inquiry, denying the
legitimacy of another peoples form of writing is always at the
same time a denial of their basic humanity.
Derrida is entirely correct in noting that the only way past
the concealment effected by this historical closure would be
to define the relationship of The Trace to writing, within
the limits circumscribed by science and philosophy: limits
which, by way of their epistemological legitimacy, can in fact
establish the historical truth of writings origin.
This is precisely what we have been doing here; and having
taken such a close look at anametric image writing, this
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
would perhaps be a good point in our inquiry to instead
consider more directly the conventional view of writing and
its origin.
>>>
An all too typical example of the preference which is given
to phonetic forms of writing within modern linguistics can be
found in the Wikipedia entry for History of Writing.
Lets consider for a moment how the history of writing is
presented to the world through this venue:
Scholars make a reasonable distinction
between prehistory and history with writing.[2]
Scholars have disagreed concerning when
prehistory becomes history and when proto-
writing became true writing; the definition is
largely subjective.[3] Writing, in its most general
terms, is just a drawn device to indicate a message
and is composed of glyphs.[4]
The emergence of writing in a given area
is usually followed by several centuries of
fragmentary inscriptions. With the presence
of coherent texts (such that is from the various
writing systems and the systems associated
literature), historians mark the historicity of
that culture.[2]
[1] Peter T. Daniels, The Study of Writing Systems,
in The Worlds Writing Systems, ed. Bright and
Daniels, p.3
[2] Shotwell, James Thomson. An Introduction to the
History of History. Records of civilization, sources
and studies. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1922.
[3] Smail, Daniel Lord. On Deep History and the
Brain. An Ahmanson foundation book in the
240
humanities. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2008.
[4] Bricker, Victoria Reifler, and Patricia A. Andrews.
Epigraphy. Supplement to the Handbook of
Middle American Indians, v. 5. Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1992.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing
The first thing we should notice is that a reasonable
distinction is established, by scholars and on the basis of
writing, between prehistory and history.
This means: what history can be said to include is decided
with reference to writing; this distinction is established by
scholars, who presumably know what they are talking about;
and, this distinction is reasonable.
This further implies: history is somehow being conceived
as a product of writing, although no justification for this
determination is given; and anything which is not so
grounded by writing - and a very specific form of writing
is involved in this determination - is therefore prehistoric.
Notice this does not mean non-historical: the exclusion
being effected here is more subtle. That which does not occur
as characteristic of (phonetic) writing is not granted the
status of being other; it is instead being situated as prior to
the depths of historical time: in effect, anything not granted
historical legitimacy by writing is thus below history
and below the form of writing through which history is
determined.
This is a very covert but structurally implicit value judgment
regarding the nature of being, and it is presented as
characteristic of anything outside the sphere of that form
of writing referenced here. This is what Derrida refers to
as an ontotheological determination: it is exactly the kind
of conceptual structure which he consistently critiques
throughout his deconstruction of the metaphysics of Western
philosophy.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
Since this determination is established by scholars, any
approach contrary to these distinctions must be unscholarly.
Therefore, such approaches do not deserve to be taught to
others; and they do not deserve to be maintained within the
discourse of history.
Above all, this approach is reasonable; and therefore,
contrary approaches are unreasonable, even irrational.
Deleuze and Guattari would, of course, call this conception
of reason an infantile approach to the matters at hand.
There is so much wrong with that first sentence, one almost
does not know where to begin in critiquing it. The temptation
to take that statement apart word-by-word must be tempered
with the realization that this would not change anything; as
Derrida notes, thinking has clearly not yet begun here with
reference to the shape of writing: and it is only in establishing
the truth of writings origin that the essential concealment
effected by such un-thought can be broached to reveal what it
actually contains.
Still, one cant help but notice that exactly the same
determination is being made here that Husserl had made
when he presented the history of European rationality
as a good model to which all other cultures might be
compared, and so assessed. In other words, we are being told
here that the form of writing being preferenced is in itself
rationality; and this is the covert assumption which justifies
that anything else be apportioned its measure of historical
legitimacy with reference to the paradigmatic model of
phonetic writing.
Next, we find a very insidious statement: there might be
some disagreement on the exact placement of a distinction
between what is historical, and what is below history; but,
this distinction is predicated upon the nature of true
writing.
Not only is everything not included in that paradigmatic
241
form of writing to be considered below history: any different
form of writing must be inherent false; and any histories
that formed within alternative kinds of writing must
therefore be entirely lies. Again, we see the essential nature
of ontotheological determinations very clearly here; and
again, we see that a value judgment is being made and then
hidden behind the textured opacity of reasons cloak.
In essence, the nature of the rationality being employed
here is simply that of a ratio, a proportionality; it equates an
ontotheological determination, through correspondence, with
an epistemological status: a value judgment is being taken as
constituting the nature of truth.
Underlying this conceptual maneuver is the tacit
assumption that truth itself is simply a matter of
correspondence; that knowledge is a correspondence of
word to object, and that rationality is a phonetically defined
process of substantiation. This is the vicious circle of historical
closure which Derrida critiques to its epistemological roots.
As much effort as we have put into avoiding making such
value judgments ourselves in the course of our inquiry, we
will nonetheless encounter them in the direction we are
attempting to travel: toward the origin of writing (or, in
returning from having established that point of origin, as the
case may be).
At least we can say here, as would Sartre: the necessary
and irrevocable transparency which attends consciousness
gives clear evidence that the opacity of reason we are here
encountering does not hide anything which could be called
thought - something which obviously has not yet begun
within this description of the history of writing.
Finally, we find the essential determination which
characterizes the form of writing being preference: writing is
a device which indicates a message.
This means: the message exists before writing. Here we
again see a covert determination being presented as fact;
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
and the underlying assumption we see being again cloaked
in reason is: spoken languages are primary in nature, and
writing is just a draw device.
Of course, we know now that writing is distinct in its own
right; and although it necessarily occurs along with spoken
languages, it has its own distinct functions which are not
those of speech.
In reality, it is those specific functions which are being
excluded from the legitimacy of their historical status by the
definition of phonetically-based writing as true. As we shall
see, these functions are in no way trivial: in fact, they include
an entire system for surveying and mapping territory.
The implications of this are immense, and they spread out
into all fields: science, law, economics; everything. This isnt
simply about who is right about writing.
It isnt until the last sentence of the second paragraph that
we see something which begins to resemble what might be
taken as the beginning of an actual thought concerning
the nature of writing. Here, we see history established in
the coherence of writing; and we should consider this for a
moment. Coherence means holding together; so, history is
established when writing begins to hold together.
That which holds writing together is called grammar; so,
the nature of historicity must somehow be predicated upon
grammatology.
We have examined very closely how signs articulate the
endoconsistency and exoconsistency of concepts: and,
how these exoconsistencies first come to constitute the
external relationships of geography as defined within a
geophilosophical context; and then come to constitute
grammatological structure, as formed of a subjectless
transcendental field through volitional memory within
the co-opted neurology of periodically dormant olfactory
processes.
242
But we also found that it is production which establishes
the essential nature of historicity: from the making of tools,
into the establishment of The Trace in things shaped
to fit together, and on into the origin of signs as tools for
modifying images.
The grouping patterns we then considered were of a
temporal dynamic: and as such, as much informed material
production as they did the production of concepts; or, the
events typifying consciousness-of-self.
Thus, while we have encountered a definite relationship
between historicity and the grammatological structure of
writing, what we saw was in no way derived from phonetic
speech.
Coherence is simply a secondary effect of the intelligibility
that we encountered through our analysis of anametric
image writing. In point of fact, intelligibility has to be
embodied within writing before its phoneticization can occur:
this is an invariable characteristic of writing.
Admittedly, phonetic forms of writing are more convenient,
and more efficient, than anametric image writing would
have been.
That being said, I must note that I now use a digital camera
despite having used film-based photographic technologies for
most of my life. I prefer digital imaging over film, because it
is more convenient and more efficient. There are things I can
do with digital photography that were impossible using film,
simply because image registration does not shift between
captures.
But I have yet to hear anyone say that digital is true
photography; or that images captured on film cannot be
considered historical; or that film photography can only be
understood in terms of digital imaging. In fact, I have heard
many very experienced and knowledgeable photographers
say exactly the opposite; and I have heard them say it over
and over again.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
As Derrida points out, the invention of phonetic forms
of writing did not establish a scientific aspect of writing
through which graphemic forms of writing could rightfully
be denigrated to the status of mythograms. If anything,
we must note that the origin of anametric image writing,
occurring as it did within a context of intersubjective
consensus, is much more in keeping with the scientific
tradition of peer review than is the model of one individual
tracing their imagined perceptions upon the wall of cave,
that everyone might believe as they do. It is also entirely
consistent with post-structural philosophy, which sees
desire as a form of production that seeks to create social
assemblages, rather than a conscious state conditioned by
the lack of some object: a politics of desire, rather than an
economy of desire.
Thus, we must agree with Derrida that the invention
of phonetic writing simply ushered in a new form of
mythography.
With this in mind, we shall now examine some of the myths
which characterize phonetic writing.
General properties
Writing systems are distinguished from other
possible symbolic communication systems in
that one must usually understand something of
the associated spoken language to comprehend
the text. By contrast, other possible symbolic
systems such as information signs, painting,
maps and mathematics often do not require
prior knowledge of a spoken language.
Every human community possesses language,
a feature regarded by many as an innate and
defining condition of mankind. However the
development of writing systems, and the process
by which they have supplanted traditional oral
systems of communication has been sporadic,
uneven and slow. Once established, writing
243
systems on the whole change more slowly than
their spoken counterparts, and often preserve
features and expressions which are no longer
current in the spoken language. The great benefit
of writing systems is their ability to maintain a
persistent record of information expressed in a
language, which can be retrieved independently
of the initial act of formulation.
All writing systems require:
1) at least one set of defined base elements
or symbols, individually termed characters and
collectively called a script;
2) at least one set of rules and conventions
(orthography) understood and shared by a
community, which arbitrarily assign meaning to
the base elements (graphemes), their ordering
and relations to one another;
3) at least one language (generally spoken)
whose constructions are represented and able
to be recalled by the interpretation of these
elements and rules;
4) some physical means of distinctly
representing the symbols by application to a
permanent or semi-permanent medium, so they
may be interpreted (usually visually, but tactile
systems have also been devised).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_systems
The first point of interest here is the role played by
knowledge in this definition of writings general properties.
Here, we see knowledge defined as understanding, which is
contextualized with reference to spoken languages.
In other words, understanding is predicated upon a
knowledge of spoken languages. This is something we
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
encountered before, with reference to Husserls assessment
of the role played by intentionality relative to the silence of
prehistoric arcana.
We have noted in the course of our analysis how the way
in which intelligibility comes to be embodied as anametric
image writing functionally circumvents any inherently
precursory role which knowledge must play in understanding
the conceptual formations produced in anametric image
writing; and that in fact, knowledge is actively generated
through the formation of conceptual structures in the
articulations effected by the sign.
This process establishes of itself an understanding of
the compositional structures within anametric image
writing; thus, it would appear that the concept we have of
understanding is substantially different than the one used
to describe the general properties of writing in its definition
as phonetic.
Let us consider for a moment this divergence in meaning, to
see what it might entail.
The etymological roots of the word understanding trace
back to the Greek word hypostasis, which literally means
that which stands under and serves as a support.
The Latin translation of this word is substantia; and it is
here that we find the origin of the word substance.
Substance has a very particular meaning within
linguistics: it is considered to be the subject of predication,
which is to say the noun; and thus predication, in the
ascription of verbs, is considered secondary to and contingent
upon a referencing of the noun.
Already, we can see a major problem arising: as Whorf
noted, the spoken languages of the First Nations tend to
preference referential formations which are of a primarily
verbal quality; with things that occur as nouns within
languages of European extraction instead occurring as
244
events. This is entirely consistent with our analysis of
anametric image writing, wherein we found conceptual
formations being composed of events in ways which were
definitionally temporal in character.
Underneath and supporting the sense of knowledge we
find being employed in the phonetic definition of writing, we
find things; but underneath and supporting the distinctions
of anametric image writing, we find events: that is, the
singularization of differences-in-kind.
From this basic disjunction, a further problem arises: the
nature of substantiation informs the process of signification;
and this is the essential core of phonetic languages, as the
ascription of names to objects. This process defines how the
word functions, and determines the nature of phonetic
forms of writing as the correspondence of words in their
written form to the objects they reference.
Knowledge of that referential correspondence is a
prerequisite for understanding phonetic forms of writing.
With anametric image writing, we encountered something
entirely different. There, we found signs articulating the
formation of concepts; and this process was contingent upon
temporal events, not material substances. When we saw
Understanding, we found it forming as inherent to the
nature of conceptual structures.
As a result, we saw knowledge occurring through a
productive functionality of the sign, instead of through a
referential correspondence of the word.
In either case, we reach the same end: a persistent record
of information which can be retrieved independently of the
initial act of formation.
As we have noted before, anametric image writing
achieves this through an embodiment of intelligibility which
produces knowledge, rather than a knowledge which enables
understanding.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
It would thus appear that the disjunction between
anametric image writing and phonetic writing is one which is
characteristic to that forming between objects and events.
If we were to look for some base commonality of conscious
experience, something of the way in which this earth
compels thinking such that objects and events are beginning
to be distinguished in thought, one particular point in the
archaeological record suggests itself.
This is the development of material technologies wherein
production is feeding production, instead of directly leading
to food being placed in the mouth.
That is where the object produced is being distinguished
from the event of its production, in contrast to the non-event
of production effected through the use of paradigmatic
templates.
This suggests that the developmental dynamic which led
to the invention of anametric image writing diverged from
the dynamic which established phonetic forms of writing
after some point between 250,000 and 100,000 years ago.
Since the formation of volitional memory and consciousness-
of-self can occur at any point in time, given the necessary
environmental conditions, the invention of anametric image
writing could have occurred anytime after that divergence.
We know for a fact how recently the invention of phonetic
forms of writing occurred.
Such are the general observations we can make concerning
the mythology of phonetic writing being presented here; but
lets be a little more specific:
Myth #1:
All writing systems require at least one set of defined base
elements or symbols, individually termed characters and
collectively called a script.
245
This is certainly true of phonetic writing; but it is not true
of anametric image writing. However, that does not make
phonetic writing true and image writing false. Rather,
what we see here instead of truth, is the concept of a
defined set circumscribing the essential nature of writing;
and this happens in such a way that some forms of writing
are considered true, and other forms are considered not true.
Again, this is a ontotheological judgment which has
disguised itself with rationality to assume an epistemological
status and thereby effect a closure of the historical.
We do see characters in anametric image: they are called
conceptual personae, and they are all welcome within that
form of writing.
We also find that anametric image writing is best
characterized through its use of signs, which articulate the
formation of concepts. These signs are the tools used by
conceptual personae to modify images; and if the range
of tools which can be used is in some way limited, the
modifications which they can effect are not. In fact, the
occurrence of signs as tools for modifying images is only
limited in the sense of these necessarily being unmotivated,
as is the embodiment of the instituted trace.
The concept of a limited set of base elements has no place in
anametric image writing.
Myth #2:
All writing systems require at least one set of rules and
conventions (orthography) understood and shared by a
community, which arbitrarily assign meaning to the base
elements (graphemes), their ordering and relations to one
another.
We did find a form of common rules at work in anametric
image writing; but these were not arbitrary, and they did
not assign meaning. What we found were fundamental
principles that define neurological functions for all humans.
We found that symbolic schema demand to be deciphered,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
and that tracing them through eye movement creates vectors
of relation. We found Dorsal Stream neurological processes
which effect grouping patterns that function in recognition.
We found that The Trace defined the figural nature of
symbolic schema; and that a tracing by the eye composed the
figural from intensive ordinates. We found that the symbolic
becomes unmotivated through its transition into a sign;
and that to decipher a sign is to produce a concept. We found
that the structure of the concept serves as the rule for the
elaboration of the schema; that one becomes conscious of
such rules by applying them; and that the schema is thought
giving itself to consciousness in becoming a sign.
We found the sign articulating the endoconsistency
and exoconsistency of concept formation; but we did not
find anything even remotely resembling a graphemic
orthography.
Anametric image writing is not bound by arbitrary
orthographic rules and conventions.
Myth #3:
All writing systems require at least one language
(generally spoken) whose constructions are represented and
able to be recalled by the interpretation of these elements and
rules.
The reality of the spoken languages associated with
anametric image writing is a given feature of their existence;
the function of anametric image writing as interpreting
linguistic representations is not.
In fact, we found precisely the opposite: spoken languages
were employed in producing consensual interpretations of the
conceptual formations found in anametric image writing.
Anametric image writing is not predicated upon an
interpretation of, or the representation of, spoken language:
it functions through the mechanisms of survey which define
our visual processes; it directly constructs concepts in the
formation of signs; and it forms signs upon event horizons
246
defined in terms of before and after. This is a form of
writing which produces its own intersubjective commonality,
in the form of conceptual personae, through establishing
singularized (rather than subjective) horizons of event
(instead of object references).
Anametric image writing is not governed by rules: it is
produced of realities.
Myth #4:
All writing systems require some physical means of
distinctly representing the symbols by application to a
permanent or semi-permanent medium, so they may be
interpreted (usually visually, but tactile systems have also
been devised).
Here, we do find some commonality between anametric
image writing and phonetic writing; but it is a commonality
established from image writing, not phonetic writing.
However, this commonality of occurrence is once again
presented in such a way as to preference phonetic writing:
a preferential referencing as precedent which is, of course,
another myth.
Consider: writing needs a physical means of distinctly
representing.
Yet, representation is not a physical process: it is a
metaphysical process, a transcendental determination.
To call representation a physical means is nonsensical;
something is missing here, and it is the process of production.
Anametric image writing is directly linked to material forms
of production: in the physical creation of stone tools, and in
the conceptual use of signs as tools for modifying images.
But of course, the concept of representation in phonetic
writing is presented as originating in the use of symbols
for goods in exchange and circulation; so we might expect
that questions concerning production are going to be
ignored: as much in obscuring who produced the goods,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
as in substituting the concept of representation for that of
production.
We can note here, though, that interpretation proceeds
through visual or tactile processes; and given that anametric
image writing occurs in the haptic space of the close optical,
where the eye traces as if a finger, we know that at least this
part is true.
After examining so many myths about phonetic writing,
one has to wonder how it could ever have come to be defined
as true writing.
That, I suppose, is the biggest myth of all.
>>>
All of these considerations clearly indicate that there is
no justification for defining the historical legitimacy of
anametric image writing by way of reference to phonetic
forms of writing. It is completely evident that anametric
image writing proceeded on a developmental path which is
entirely distinct and separate from that followed by phonetic
writing; and that phonetic writing originated when speech
was subsumed into pre-existing forms of graphemic writing.
Derrida has amply illustrated how baseless the status
accorded to phonetic writing is, in his numerous critiques
of the preference given to phonetic forms of writing within
modern linguistics; and we can also see other traces of a
graphemic origin for phonetic writing: particularly, in the
role played by conceptual personae within the religious texts
that originated in the Middle East after phonetic writing
became established there.
In truth, there is little difference between the precedence
given to phonetic writing over graphemic writing, and, the
perception that human beings are somehow justified in
ascribing to themselves a preferential status distinct from
that accorded other animals. There is certainly no truth in
claiming that humans are not a form of animal; and there is
no understanding in thinking that other animals justifiably
247
forfeit the reality of their existence by not being human.
These kinds of determinations are all at base
ontotheological judgments: and they are the same form of
value judgment as that which resulted in most First Nations
children being dragged from their parents, homes, and
communities throughout the last century; being forced into
a Residential School system which had been put under the
control of Christian churches; and being systematically
ridiculed, humiliated, isolated, beaten, abused and brutalized
- as small children completely cut off from their parents
- simply because they were members of the First Nations, and
their culture was not of European origin.
It was a system designed, not just to make children forget
their culture, but to make the experience of forgetting so
traumatic that they would be unable, without a great and
very painful effort, to even recall the reason they no longer
remembered the culture of their people. It was, in short
and by definition, a system of institutionalized terror: state
sanctioned cultural genocide, as defined by the United
Nations.
As Derrida points out, denying the reality of other forms
of writing because they are not phonetic has always been
in essence a denial of the humanity of those who used non-
phonetic types of writing; for as we discovered quite early in
our inquiry, the use of writing is a fundamental characteristic
of what we humans are as sentient beings.
In 2010, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission began
hearings into Canadas Residential School system.
Residential Schools
Residential schools for Aboriginal people
in Canada date back to the 1870s. Over 130
residential schools were located across the
country, and the last school closed in 1996. These
government-funded, church-run schools were
set up to eliminate parental involvement in the
intellectual, cultural, and spiritual development
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
of Aboriginal children.
During this era, more than 150,000 First
Nations, Mtis, and Inuit children were placed in
these schools often against their parents wishes.
Many were forbidden to speak their language
and practice their own culture. While there
is an estimated 80,000 former students living
today, the ongoing impact of residential schools
has been felt throughout generations and has
contributed to social problems that continue to
exist.
On June 11, 2008, the Prime Minister, on behalf
of the Government of Canada, delivered a formal
apology in the House of Commons to former
students, their families, and communities for
Canadas role in the operation of the residential
schools.
The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement
With the support of the Assembly of First
Nations and Inuit organizations, former
residential school students took the federal
government and the churches to court. Their cases
led to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement
Agreement, the largest class-action settlement
in Canadian history. The agreement sought to
begin repairing the harm caused by residential
schools. Aside from providing compensation to
former students, the agreement called for the
establishment of The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada with a budget of $60-
million over five years.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada has a mandate to learn the truth about
what happened in the residential schools and to
inform all Canadians about what happened in
the schools. The Commission will document the
248
truth of what happened by relying on records held
by those who operated and funded the schools,
testimony from officials of the institutions that
operated the schools, and experiences reported
by survivors, their families, communities and
anyone personally affected by the residential
school experience and its subsequent impacts.
The Commission hopes to guide and inspire
First Nations, Inuit, and Mtis peoples and
Canadians in a process of truth and healing
leading toward reconciliation and renewed
relationships based on mutual understanding
and respect.
The Commission views reconciliation as an
ongoing individual and collective process that
will require participation from all those affected
by the residential school experience. This includes
First Nations, Inuit, and Mtis former students,
their families, communities, religious groups,
former Indian Residential School employees,
government, and the people of Canada.
http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.
php?p=4
The work being undertaken by The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission is something which is long overdue in Canada.
Similarly overdue is a realization that the First Nations of
North America are the oldest literate culture in the world. As
we have seen, recognition of this fact has been precluded by
the mythologies surrounding the establishment of phonetic
writing within a Middle Eastern context: mythologies which
are in essence nothing but a simple preference which cultures
of European origin have for their own form of phonetic
writing.
>>>
Which brings us to consider the case which has been made
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
for the invention of writing in the Middle East a few thousand
years ago.
There are many problems with attributing that particular
point of origin to writing; but, these discrepancies seem to
have been more or less (and consistently) ignored in the
official version of writings origin.
Without a doubt, this is primarily due to an
unacknowledged preference within academia for the
phonetic forms of writing which are used by Western cultures;
and which in this way came to define what knowledge is, in
terms of those forms of writing historically in use throughout
Europe.
As Derrida notes:
Page 23
Now, if one ceases to limit oneself to the
model of phonetic writing, which we privilege
only by ethnocentrism, and if we draw all the
consequences from the fact that there is no purely
phonetic writing (by reason of the necessary
spacing of signs, punctuation, intervals, the
differences indispensable for the functioning of
graphemes, etc.), then the entire phonologist or
logocentrist logic becomes problematic. Its range
of legitimacy becomes narrow and superficial.
This delimitation, however, is indispensable
if one wants to be able to account, with some
coherence, for the principle of difference, such as
Saussure himself recalls it. This principle compels
us not only not to privilege one substance - here
the phonetic, so called temporal substance - while
excluding another - for example, the graphic, so
called spatial substance - but even to consider
every process of signification as a formal play of
differences. That is, of traces.
Page 23-24
Why traces? And by what right do we
249
reintroduce grammatics at the moment when we
seem to have neutralized every substance, be it
phonetic, graphic, or otherwise? Of course it is
not a question of resorting to the same concept of
writing and of simply inverting the dissymmetry
that now has become problematical. It is a
question, rather, of producing a new concept
of writing. This concept can be called gram or
differance. The play of differences supposes,
in effect, syntheses and referrals which forbid
at any moment, or in any sense, that a simple
element be present in and of itself, referring
only to itself. Whether in the order of spoken or
written discourse, no element can function as a
sign without referring to another element which
itself is not simply present. This interweaving
results in each element - phoneme or grapheme
- being constituted on the basis of the trace
within it of the other elements of the chain or
system. This interweaving, this textile, is the text
produced only in the transformation of another
text. Nothing, neither among the elements nor
within the system, is anywhere ever simply
present or absent. There are only, everywhere,
differences and traces of traces. The gram, then,
is the most general concept of semiology - which
thus becomes grammatology - and it covers not
only the field of writing in the restricted sense,
but also the field of linguistics. The advantage of
this concept - provided that it be surrounded by a
certain interpretive context, for no more than any
other conceptual element it does not signify, or
suffice, by itself - is that in principle it neutralizes
the phonologistic propensity of the sign and
in fact counterbalances it by liberating the entire
scientific field of the graphic substance (history
and systems of writing beyond the bounds of the
West) whose interest is not minimal, but which
so far has been left in the shadows of neglect.
Jacques Derrida, Semiology and Grammatology:
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
an interview with Julia Kristeva; in, Positions,
translated by Alan Bass; English translation
copyright 1981, The University of Chicago Press
(2004 edition).
It is interesting to note here that Derrida references a very
traditional distinction which describes phonetic speech as
temporal, and graphemic writing as spatial. We considered
this distinction closely in examining Derridas note 92 on
page 89 of his Introduction to Husserls Origin of Geometry;
and we noted that the compositional patterns of anametric
image writing are characteristically temporal, even though
spatially localized through the figural. Perhaps, as a further
step in Derridas project of neutralizing every (linguistic)
substance (that is, deconstructing the value judgments
which preference one form of linguistic embodiment
over another), we should say that writing is always the
articulation of a double-value system which unifies, through
linguistic intention, both spatial and temporal aspects.
From this point of view, the dominant characteristic of
Western European languages becomes the relationship
between presence / the present that Derrida has so
thoroughly investigated. If it is at all true that written
languages are implicated in the formation of consciousness-
of-self, as formed within the subjectless transcendental field
of writing, then herein lies the fundamental articulation of
this transition within European languages.
It is the example of an object situated before the individual;
it is the artwork traced on a cave wall.
It is very different from the unity of linguistic intention
encountered in anametric image writing. We have noted the
nature of this divergence in our analysis of the myths which
surround the origin of phonetic writing; and now it is time
to look at the realities which attend the origin of all writing.
Here, we will be attempting to find what might lie outside
the ontotheological enclosure of true writing.
Since one of the principles guiding this inquiry has been
250
consistency; and because (as we all know) three points define
a plane, we shall begin by composing a plane of philosophic
consistency: then, we shall see what diagrammatic features
it presents. Perhaps this will allow us to establish a few
intensive ordinates, as vectors which define the slope and
curvatures of this plane. We may even construct a concept
or two; and perhaps we will encounter the odd conceptual
persona.
>>>
The first point we can establish upon our plane of
consistency is the emergence of writing in the Middle East.
At its earliest, this appears to occur between 3,300 and 3,200
BC, according to the radiocarbon dating of excavations
conducted by Dr. Gunter Dreyer, director of the German
Archaeological Institute in Egypt. In the course of excavating
the tomb of a king named Scorpion, over 300 examples of
writing were recovered; often, these consisted of postage
stamp-sized clay tablets.
These examples of an early Egyptian form of writing
are characterized by line drawings of animals, plants,
and mountains; the deciphered examples are often notes,
numbers, lists of kings names, and names of institutions.
Although this form of writing is composed from symbolic
schema, it is considered to be true writing because each
symbol represents a sound in a spoken language; and the
symbols together compose syllables. These examples of early
Egyptian writing are contemporaneous with the earliest
examples of Sumerian writing, a fact which strongly suggests
trade ties between these two empires.
Dr. Dreyer notes: Mans first writings were not a creative
outpouring but the result of economics: when chieftains
expanded their areas of control they needed to keep a record
of taxes.
From: Were Egyptians The First Scribes?
Tuesday, December 15, 1998;
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
published by BBC Science at 19:38 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/235724.
stm
>>>
The next point of consistency we can establish is that of the
earliest examples of writing in China. Radiocarbon dated
to between 6,600 BC and 6,200 BC, these consist of highly
schematized symbols found on 8,600 year old tortoise shells.
In one grave that has been excavated, eight such tortoise
shells were found with the remains of a headless corpse.
Julian Jaynes would no doubt have concluded the missing
head was retained that it might continue to advise the
community which had conducted the burial; and we are left
to ponder what use the corpse was to make of the inscribed
shells buried along with it.
A collection of small stones was found along with the
tortoise shells, and this has led some to surmise these shells
where used as rattles. The 11 separate symbols found on
these shells are similar to ones still in use during the Shang
Dynasty of 1700-1100 BC; and this is when writing systems
of much greater complexity appeared in China. There is a
documented use of such signs from the Neolithic period in
China up to the Shang period.
Paul Rincon; BBC Science: Earliest writing found in China.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2956925.stm
>>>
We can note that the primary form of consistency being
established here is of stylized line drawings (Egypt) or
highly schematized images (China): in other words, we
have a consistency of occurrence which is figural in character.
This is encouraging, because as Derrida has often indicated,
we need to be looking for some aspect of The Trace which
will allow us to establish a consistency with respect to
diagrammatic features.
251
The plane of consistency we are composing will itself be
the virtual commonality which links these diagrammatic
features in their actualization: this is where we will find
concepts forming; but these concepts will not necessarily
be entirely consistent between each of the three points of
we examine. In fact, we must suspect that different kinds
of conceptual formations will be in evidence for each
instance we are considering: we may have established an
endoconsistency of the figural to work from, but there will
necessarily be exoconsistent variations that we will be
working toward discerning.
Our third point of consistency will be the anametric image
writing of North Americas First Nations. Dating examples
of this form of writing is a little more problematic than
either of the other two examples we are considering, since
I only collect samples from sites that have been disturbed
to the point of disassociation. We cannot rely on standard
archaeological methodologies here. Instead, we must rely
on an approach which could more accurately be called
anarchaeology: the study of the artifacts without an
established point of origin. This is in effect what we have
been doing in establishing a point-of-origin for writing; so we
already know how viable such an approach can prove to be.
Further, as we saw in our examination of the myths
which surround phonetic writing, even modern linguistics
acknowledges (in a covert realization) that the nature of
historicity can be established through grammatology. Since
our plane of consistency is being constructed with reference
to The Trace; and since our considerations have been and
will continue to be grammatological in nature, it should be
entirely possible to establish an adequate sense of historicity
for the anametric image writing of the First Nations through
our grammatological analysis.
In recognition of having borrowed the observation that
grammatological considerations establish historicity from the
Wikipedias presentation of true writings history, we will
begin with an example of image writing which illustrates
a point outlined in the Wikipedia listing for the General
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 252

properties of writing: that of a physical means of distinctly

representing symbols by application to a permanent or semi-
permanent medium.

>>>
It might seem problematic that the natural grain patterns
of stone, being as inherently variable as they are in their
composition, can provide a consistent enough medium to
support a form of writing. In point of fact, of course, it is the
differential nature of these substrates - their differance
- which supports the formation of conceptual structures
produced upon them; and this is something we examined
earlier, in comparing Husserls concept of shared referential
commonality with that used by Deleuze and Guattari.

Be that as it may, this issue of consistency does seem to have

been a consideration addressed by those who used anametric
image writing.

One very interesting example I found among various rocks

that had been dumped onto a traffic island in the middle of
a busy Ottawa street is shaped like a fishs tail; henceforth, I
will refer to it as The Ottawa Fish Tail Stone. One side of this
stone shows the characteristically intricate metanarrative
structures of anametric image writing; but the other side
shows something very revealing of the processes through
which this type of writing was composed: that side is almost
entirely covered by a thin layer of some white, plaster-like
material. I would suspect this must be some form of calcium
that had been powdered and heated to reduce it chemically:
limestone, perhaps. It would appear that those who produced
anametric image writing had developed a way to create a
uniform writing surface upon the stones which they used for
their graphemic compositions.

We can also see the initial stage of such composition:

a very large image area has been defined, in the form of
a feline face. It would appear that, starting from such a
thematic outline, an increasingly intricate elaboration re-marked was entirely covered with grammatological
would proceed in incremental steps until the surface being compositions of metanarrative structure. This is a procedural
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 253

Just how elaborate the anametric end result could be

is easily established through a close examination of the
opposite side of this stone. There, we can again find traces of
a consistent theme: that of a particular kind of big cat. We
have encountered this species before, although not in our
modern age: it is a North American Lion (Felis Atrox), such as
we noted with reference to the earliest members of the First
Nations on both The Hominid Stone (The Lion Man) and
The Firelight Horse Stone (The Lion Child, and the sleeping
lion cub).

It is perhaps not surprising that the North American Lion

was so respected: it is, after all, thought to be the largest
species of big cat ever to have existed. Fossil remains indicate
that it averaged about 5 feet tall, and was about 11.5 feet
long, from nose to tail. The estimated weight of one of these
very, very big cats is in the 700-800 pound range; and they
ranged from Alaska to the middle of South America. North
American lions are thought not to have had a mane; and
neither do any of the lions depicted on The Fish Tail Stone.

This species of lion became extinct approximately 10,000

years ago: a fact we will keep in mind; because the First
Nations did not arrive in Central Canada overnight after
reaching North America, and anametric image writing did
not achieve this elaborate degree of development in a day.

Grammatologically speaking, the most interesting facet

to this example of anametric image writing is a structural
grouping pattern which consists of interconnected rings. This
is a spatial, rather than a temporal, grouping pattern; and
it is quite common in examples of anametric image writing
- regardless of where they are found. Indeed, this pattern is
so integral to the development of anametric image writing
that the nature of this graphemic writing system cannot
be fully understood until the function and origin of these
interconnected rings is explained.
methodology entirely consistent with that used to produce
stone tools: applying the thematic form of a tool to a stone by
incrementally removing material.
>>>
Arriving in North America through the barren and desolate
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 254

reaches of a sub-Arctic landscape, the first members of the

First Nations found an empty land; that is, a land empty of
other humans.

Or was it?

That point was debatable because, with a keen eye for the
stones they used in making tools, these early people most
certainly must have noticed something very strange: in
some areas where they landed and/or wandered, there were
curious arrangements of stones; and seemingly, those stones
had been placed together to form interconnecting circles
which extended for considerable distances.

No doubt, they went looking for the other people who had,
for some unknown purpose, put so much effort into arranging
these stones. Were these abandoned campsites? If so, then
there were a lot of other people around somewhere, and they
must have had a lot of food to eat. But those other people
were never found; because, they were not there. They had
never been there. They did not exist.

The circular patterns of stone that the early members of

the First Nations had happened upon were a phenomenon
called patterned ground. Found in Arctic and sub-Arctic
conditions, patterned ground is the result of a seasonally
cyclical freezing and thawing of the surface layer of
permafrost, which has the mechanical effect of forcing
rocks to the surface; and, of sorting these surface rocks into
interlocking polygons of ring-like shape. The end result
creates the appearance of endlessly adjacent fire pits, of the
type anyone who has set up a ring of stones around a fire is
familiar with: a pattern of stone rings which resembles, more
than anything else, the pattern of bone plates found on the
shells of turtles.
in systematically mapping this entire continent, would have
Encountering such patterned ground on the first islands
made this entire territory into Turtle Island.
reached after crossing the Bering Strait, it would have
been natural to describe those locations as turtle islands
And eventually, that pattern of interconnected circles was
(even though there were no turtles to be found there).
extended throughout the entire continent of North America:
Conceptually expanding that pattern to all of North America,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
through the use of a system of survey and mapping developed
from this initial encounter with patterned ground. This isnt
particularly surprising, though: because these interconnected
circles of patterned ground are exactly the kind of vague
and anexact morphological type which Husserl specified
as being consistent with the establishment of geography.
Within anametric image writing, we find this pattern used
as a structural consistency which is quite distinct from that
of grammatological principles; instead, this principle occurs
as intermediary between the stone substrate used and the
writing being worked upon it, much as phonetic writing
occurs in lines on paper.
But there is a way in which these circular patterns which
underwrite image composites on stone are very distinct from
lines on the page. In this, we should recall that the initial
transition from conscious states to consciousness-of-self was
accompanied by a parallel shift in the way that exoconsistent
relations of the concept were formed.
Previously, we noted that externalized material concept
formations (objects as concepts) were defined by
exoconsistencies of conceptual structure which were directly
derived from external relationships of territoriality.
With the subsequent production of concepts through
the use of volitional memory, as formed within the co-
opted neurological space of olfactory processing, and as
characteristic for consciousness-of-self, we noted that signs
were modifying signs, and that the exoconsistencies of
the concept were now also appearing as grammatological
principles.
We also noted that the exoconsistencies of external
interrelation continued to be the motivating factor in the
formation of concepts, as that which compels thinking.
When taken together, this provides the necessary
components for a nomadic systematization of geographic
reference, which establishes external interrelations that
can be modified into grammatological patterns consistent
255
with the intensive ordinates of whatever compels thinking
to occur. This pattern of interconnected rings then
becomes relationally patterned, in ways consistent with
the articulations of territorially defined thought within
consciousness-of-self.
Whereas lines upon a page define the grammatological
spacing inherent in phonetic forms of writing, these
circular patterns of interconnected rings function to
geographically localized and relationally position the event
horizons of metanarrative structure which constitute the
grammatological essence of anametric image writing.
The actual system is itself quite ingenious; and, it is exactly
the kind of mapping system which would address the needs
of a nomadic people entering a territory where no human
had been before. Using distant mountains as common
points of reference, the concept of interconnected circles
is employed to measure angular displacement, relative to
movement upon the earths surface. The only other necessary
component is provided by the sun; the height of which at
midday establishes the latitude of any observer during either
equinox. Some aspects of this system for survey and mapping
are still widely know, in the form of The Sacred Mountains
and The Sacred Medicine Wheel of the First Nations; because,
of course, such a system of survey was particularly useful
for event-mapping the locations and seasonal availability of
medicinal plants.
Traces of this kind of knowledge can be found in traditional
stories from the Pacific Northwest of North America:
Page 171
Legends of the Lukungun
2. The Wives of the Stars
There was once a chief who had two daughters.
During the summer the people moved to a camp
where they fished for salmon. One day the girls
went into the forest. At night they lay down
among the trees and looked at the stars. The elder
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
sister said, I wish the big star up there (Jupiter)
would be my husband. And the younger one
said, I wish the red star there (Mars) would be
my husband. Then they fell asleep. When they
awoke, they found themselves in a strange land.
The stars had taken them into the sky. Now they
saw that the stars were men. The shiny stars eyes
were [forlorn]. And what they had wished for
came to pass. The stars became their husbands.
The following day their husbands told them to
go out and collect onions. But they forbade them
to dig up the bulbs as is done on earth; instead,
they were only allowed to cut off the stalks. To
start with, the women obeyed, but one day the
eldest sister said, I simply must eat an onion
again. She dug one up and to their amazement
they were looking down upon the earth through
the hole. When they arrived home, they didnt
say anything about this. They still went to the
forest as before to gather onion stalks. But now
they made a long rope there, without anyone
knowing about it. When they thought that it was
long enough, they made a big hole in the ground
and the oldest daughter crawled down. She said
to her sister, You wait here. When I have arrived
down there safely, Ill shake the rope; then follow
me down. Otherwise assume that Ive fallen into
the sea. The younger sister then lowered the
rope. At last the woman landed on Mount Ngak-
un (some miles above the upper part of Victoria
Harbor). There, she walked back and forth over
a long distance and pulled the rope to and fro.
Thus she was able at last to shake it a little bit
and her sister up in the sky felt some very weak
movements. She tied the rope to a tree up there,
clasped it with her hands and legs and climbed
down. The elder sister sat down below and looked
up. Finally she saw a small moving dot. It grew
bigger and bigger and then she recognized her
sister.
256
Franz Boas, Indian Myths and Legends from the
North Pacific Coast of America.
Translated from the 1895 edition by Dietrich Bertz.
Copyright 2002 by the B.C Indian Language Project
and Dietrich Bertz.
In the course of my own research, I have been able to
establish a direct correspondence between some composite
structures in the anametric image writing of the First Nations
and configurations of star patterns (one of which involved
the image of a saber tooth tiger, which gives some indication
of its age). There was definitely an association established
between the substrate grain patterns in the stones used for
anametric image writing, and the great sweep of stars seen
overhead at night; so there is an understood correlation here
between the worlds which unfold in that writing and the
place that the sisters journey to in this story.
This association can also be seen in the modern-day
example of a decorated gourd from Peru that I included in
the Introduction to this text: the top of that gourd displays
stylized stars, with image patterns outlined among them; the
lip of the gourd is shaped as mountain peaks; and the body
of the gourd is covered with images (which, however, are not
anametric in character).
Thus there is in this story a tacit reference to the process
of producing anametric image writing: scraping through
the surface layer of the stone used as substrate (using
small fragments of quartz crystal, probably mounted in
a wooden pen: I have seen countless examples of these
small quartz pieces in the collections of anthropological
museums, although they remain unlabeled since their use
has never been discovered); uncovering a black grain in the
white stone matrix (in the usual type of granite employed:
although I suspect that a type of stone called Star Obsidian
was probably also used when available; but I have yet to
encounter an example of this); and progressively exposing
more of this differential grain, which is in this way shaped
into schematic aspects of things encountered in this world.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 257

Something particularly interesting here is the knowledge
of how an incrementally small adjustment corresponds
to a wide arc of movement at a great distance; and that
this assertion is made in the context of writing, and with
reference to a mountain. This is entirely consistent with
the knowledge which would have been incorporated into
the survey and mapping system of the First Nations; and
it would also be consistent with the use of constructed
pyramids as referentially central to the application of such
systems of survey and mapping in Mesoamerica. It is thus not
unexpected that Central American cultures also developed
a highly refined understanding of astronomical calculation
adjunct to their use of writing.
>>>
It is evident that The Ottawa Fish Tail Stone was in fact used
as a map of the territory in which it was made; and since this
map is covered in anametric image writing, it is an event-
map of this territory: not just a portrayal of relative distances
between locations, but a metanarrative of the kinds of things
that happened throughout that territory. It is a functional
piece of compositional art, and quite breathtaking in the
genius of its execution. Held at just the right angle to the
sun, scarcely perceptible etchings throughout its intricately
written texture suddenly fill with the luminous blue shadows
of partially refracted light; and all the waterways of the area,
where fish can be found, become visible.
trying to define. For that, we must in fact return to examples
of anametric image writing which originated on the West
Coast of North America.
To find the origin of the grammatological principles we
are using from this form of image writing in establishing
our plane of consistency, we need to go back farther in time:
back to the initial development of symbolic schema, as the
embodiment of The Trace in the figural.
>>>
To find the nature of the examples of anametric image
writing which historically precede The Ottawa Fish Tail
Stone, we can consult the very first stone I found. Primary
to that stone is a facial image composite which itself tells a
rather interesting story; however, the specific aspect of that
facial composite which I would like to reference here occurs
immediately above the eyes of this face. It is an anametric
composite which is composed of four primary elements;
and these group into... well, these are anametric grouping
patterns so we will have to just describe them: by definition,
these are not numerical multiplicities which we are dealing

The members of the First Nations who arrived in the Ottawa

area journeyed there using a very sophisticated system of
survey, navigation, and mapping which subsequently allowed
them to entirely map that area, and to preserve information
about the area on their event-maps, using anametric image
writing.

Yet, as fascinating as this artifact is (and not in the least

because it does allow us to roughly grasp some historical
sense of the point in time that it must have been produced
before), it doesnt actually provide us with the best example
possible for the third point on the plane of consistency we are
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 258

small, portable watercraft) on their back: so this particular

image composite is an event horizon of someone who is
going hunting; probably on the mainland, from an island;
and probably for mountain goats, in the coastal mountains.
This anametric composite corresponds to the First Material
Epoch of First Nations culture, as typified by The Firelight
Horse Stone; wherein, tools were being flaked from individual
stones.

The last grouping pattern,

on the right, articulates upon
the outline of a solid granite
hand axe. This hand axe
articulates with two other
features further to right: taken
together, these three features
with here, so it is somewhat pointless to try and count such place the axe where the nose of
grouping patterns. a bear is localized by the two
other features, as eyes; so we
For reasons that will soon have here a territorialization
become clear, I refer to this effected by the development
stone as The Three Feather of solid granite hand axes,
Chief; and the motif, or totemic which provided a viable form of
blazon (to use Derridas term) defense against bears (which to
to which this name refers is this day run away when bashed
characteristic enough to have on the nose - apparently).
turned up upon two other This anametric composite
examples of anametric image corresponds to the Third
writing. We can assume that Material Epoch of First Nations
this was a rather well know culture, as typified by a
conceptual persona at one time. particularly intricate example of
anametric image writing from
The first grouping pattern, the West Coast; one which has
on the left, depicts some type been carved from solid granite
of horned animal leaping into the shape of a turtles head.
away from the outline of a
spear point. If one considers This example is a surprisingly
the features etched within accurate map: accurate
the spear points outline, that enough that I have managed
figure becomes someone with a to locate four positions on it
canoe (or some similar type of that proportionally relate the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 259

patterned ground. We can also note the occurrence of discrete

geographical location of four corresponding places which image areas: something which a modern linguist would find
are in reality hundreds of miles apart. As expected, we can to be a little more characteristic of what is expected of a
clearly see on this example the interconnected mapping graphemic form of writing; but, not what we generally expect
circles which originated from that initial encounter with to see in an event language.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 260

It is the second, middle feature of this Chiefs three feathers

that we are primarily concerned with here. This feature
articulates with the granite hand axe to form the image of
a fish; with the second feature being the body of the fish,
and the third (the granite hand axe) being the fishs tail. Of
course, in that context, the fishs tail is also the bears nose;
which explains why you might want to have a granite hand
axe with you if you happened to catch anything while you
were out fishing.

There is another event horizon that this composite fish

image is articulating: and it is one of production. Solid
granite axes were cut and shaped using sandstone files,
through a back-and-forth sawing motion which is that of
a fishs tail propelling it through the water. This particular
productive technology originated in the previous Material
Epoch, in which the working of wood was mastered. That
Second Material Epoch was defined by the production of
microblades from obsidian cores, through the use of animal
horns such as antlers or the horns of mountain goats. The
sharp tip and resilient spring of these materials allowed
pressure to be built up at a flaking point on the edge of an
obsidian core, which resulted in a single small flake suddenly
leaping free: something which was impossible to do with
consistent results when a striking stone was used. The edges
of these small flakes of volcanic glass are approximately
100 times sharper than modern surgical steel (commercially
produced obsidian microblades are still being put to use, for
exceptionally fine surgical procedures); and the uniformly
consistent size of these microblades allowed them to be
mounted together in pieces of wood (a technology perfected
with First Material Epoch spear points) that were used as
saws. The productive methodology for creating microblades
is depicted in the second, center feature and constitutes the
fishs body: an antler or mountain goat horn becomes the
fishs mouth; the microblade being flaked becomes the fishs mastery of microblade technology, that led to the formation
eye; and the microblade leaping free of the obsidian core of symbolic schema within the historical development of
becomes the fin on the fishs back. anametric image writing. This occurred when techniques
for working wood were transferred onto sedimentary stone,
It is the widespread use of wood, as enabled by the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 261

which is composed of layers visually reminiscent of the
annular growth rings of trees. The sedimentary stone was
itself being used to produce the same sorts of tools that were
in use during the First Material Epoch; but, in an entirely new
way: instead of individual stone tools being flaked from one
single stone each, an appropriate piece of sedimentary stone
would itself be shaped in such a way that multiple tools could
then be created by separating the layers of the stone. Starting
from a stone which was variably shaped actually allowed
different kinds of tools, of different sizes and shapes, to all be
created at the same time and from the same stone.
It was, however, the use of microblades in the working
of wood that created the productive tendency to shape the
images already being created upon stone in a new way:
much as the grain of wood was incorporated into designs
carved from wood, now the images being created on stone
were being formed in ways which incorporated the layers in
sedimentary stone into the formation of those images.
writing which follows this particular formulation. Yet in fact,
a variation of such schema is generally taken to be the only
evidence of anything approaching the use of writing by the
First Nations: in the form of petroglyphs. There is, however,
little difference between that particular determination and
one in which modern graffiti would be seen as typifying
English literature - to the complete exclusion of works by
Shakespeare, and every other writer who ever produced a text
in that language.
>>>
As amazing as the metanarrative structures of Third
Material Epoch grammatology are, it is to the Second
Material Epoch which we must look in order that we might
establish the third point on our plane of consistency.
To this end, we will examine one particularly fascinating
artifact that was left in my possession: a stone astrolabe from

This had two direct consequences: rather than being shaped

or sculpted onto the stone, images were being etched into
the stone in such a way that the transitional sedimentary
layers, of a different color than the stones surface, were
being utilized to distinguish the images created from the
rock surrounding them; and, this meant that all the images
created in this way were connected to all the other images
on the same stone by the commonality of that shared
transitional layer. The breadthless border which closes
upon itself to outline the figural is here also a parallel
dimension to the stones surface: an extra dimensionality
that is defined in terms of partiality.

At this point, symbolic schema were being produced

in such a way that, at the same time, a consistency of
grammatological structure was being created between them.

It might be tempting at this point to take such schema

as typical of anametric image writing: but this would
be a mistake, since there is an entire material epoch of
developmental advances in the formation of anametric image
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 262

the Second Material Epoch of First Nations culture, which

is shaped in the form of a North American Lions ear. It was
devised in such a way as to be aligned with the midday sun
through the use of a sighting notch and sighting target on one
side of its surface, which places that surface in the shadow
of the Astrolabes leading edge. The subsequent transit of
the sun then incrementally illuminates images of seasonally
available food sources in accordance with the suns height in
the sky at particular times of the year.

The degree of variance between lines etched on this

Astrolabe at the suns zenith correspond to solstices and
equinoxes, and indicate this tool was used at latitudes which
correspond to: the mouth of the Columbia River; Barkley
Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island; and the
mouth of the Skeena River (or Haida Gwaii, which escaped
glaciation at least in part). The other side is covered with
image composites which show territorial mapping; so this
artifact has both a instrumental and an instructive side to it.
Here, the function of anametric image writing as an event
language is clearly in evidence. There is also a suggestion
that the people who created this artifact were moving, by sea,
over great distances in a seasonal periodicity. This would tend
to indicate that they were in fact moving between pockets
of ice-free refugia during the glaciation of North America,
taking great care not to exhaust the productive resources of
these still habitable locations that they might return to each
area in subsequent years.

It should be noted that North American Lions appear to

have become extinct at least 5,000 years before writing was
invented in the Middle East; and that this artifact appears
to date at the latter part of the midpoint in the development
of anametric image writing in North America, probably
before the First Nations territorialized the Eastern parts of
North America. This conclusion is based upon a comparison
between the nature of the structural elements found on this
artifact, and in Third Material Epoch examples of anametric
image writing found in Eastern Canada; and structural
elements of Third Material Epoch writing found in West Coast
examples but not essentially apparent in examples from the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
same period found in Eastern Canada. There is a very clear
divergence in the grammatological structure of the writing
techniques of Western and Eastern Canada used throughout
the Third Material Epoch of First Nations culture.
>>>
We now have a clear dynamic of material development
spanning three separate and distinct epochs of First Nations
culture; and since we have determined this developmental
dynamic through a grammatological analysis; and since
grammatology does, by the way of the definition of true
writing, establish historicity: we can now define the third
point needed in creating our plane of consistency. We know
that The Ottawa Fish Tail Stone must have been made prior
to 10,000 years ago, because it shows long-extinct North
American lions; and since that particular artifact is typical of
the Third Material Epoch of First Nations culture, we can say
that The Stone Astrolabe, which utilizes the kind of substrate
medium characteristic to the initial formation of symbolic
schema, and which is typical of the Second Material Epoch of
First Nations culture, must be dated to: considerably before
10,000 years ago.
For our purposes here, this is all that we need to establish;
because now we have three points from which to compose a
plane of consistency for the figural use of symbolic schema.
These are:
Egypt: somewhat over 5,000 years ago; China: 8,600 years
ago; North America: considerably over 10,000 years ago.
Now that we have defined our plane of consistency, we
can see if any ordering within its components establishes for
us the slope of this plane; from which we might determine
vectors that will aid us in composing concepts upon it. And of
course, the primary slope is pretty obvious: it defines a vector
which leads from North America, to China, and on to the
Middle East.
263
>>>
The vector which defines the slope of our plane of
consistency seems to correspond to a temporal distinction
between historical ordinates. This suggests that some form
of dispersal or dissemination, some form of propagation
might have occurred through which anametric image writing
spread beyond North America, into China, and on into the
Middle East. However, this is only a suggestion: in order
to determine if such a dissemination might actually have
occurred; and if it did, to grasp any sense of what might
have actually happened in this occurrence, we will have to
take a much closer look at our plane of consistency. We need
to develop a clearer sense of how this plane is constructed
from diagrammatic features; we need to define exactly
what the nature of diagrammatic features are, as they occur
relative to this plane of consistency; and we need to compare
the occurrence of the conceptual formations supported by
diagrammatic features at each point upon our plane of
consistency.
First, we should consider exactly what we have constructed
in composing our plane of consistency. We can do this with
reference to determinations made by Deleuze and Guattari
concerning such planes:
Page 141
We must say that the abstract machine is
necessarily much more than language. When
linguists (following Chomsky) rise to the idea of
a purely language-based abstract machine, our
immediate objection is that their machine, far
from being too abstract, is not abstract enough
because it is limited to the form of expression and
to alleged universals that presuppose language.
Abstracting content is an operation that appears
all the more relative and inadequate when
seen from the viewpoint of abstraction itself. A
true abstract machine has no way of making
a distinction within itself between a plane of
expression and a plane of content because it
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
draws a single plane of consistency, which in turn
formalizes contents and expressions according
to strata and reterritorializations. The abstract
machine in itself is destratified, deterritorialized;
it has no form of its own (much less substance)
and makes no distinction within itself between
content and expression, even though outside itself
it presides over that distinction and distributes it
in strata, domains, and territories. An abstract
machine in itself is not physical or corporeal,
any more than it is semiotic; it is diagrammatic
(it knows nothing of the distinction between the
artificial and the natural either). It operates by
matter, not by substance; by function, not by form.
Substances and forms are of expression or of
content. But functions are not yet semiotically
formed, and matters are not yet physically
formed. The abstract machine is pure Matter-
Function - a diagram independent of the forms
and substances, expressions and contents it will
distribute.
We define the abstract machine as the aspect
or moment at which nothing but functions and
matters remain. A diagram has neither substance
nor form, neither content nor expression.
Substance is a formed matter, and matter is a
substance that is unformed either physically or
semiotically. Whereas expression and content
have distinct forms, are really distinct from each
other, function has only traits, of content and
of expression, between which it establishes a
connection: it is no longer even possible to tell
whether it is a particle or a sign. A matter-content
having only degrees of intensity, resistance,
conductivity, heating, stretching, speed, or
tardiness; and a function-expression having
only tensors, as in a system of mathematical,
or musical, writing. Writing now functions on
the same level as the real, and the real material
writes.
264
Page 144-145
On the one hand, strata could never organize
themselves if they did not harness diagrammatic
matters or functions and formalize them from
the standpoint of both expression and content;
every regime of signs, and even signifiance
and subjectification, is still a diagrammatic
effect (although relativized and negativized).
On the other hand, abstract machines would
never be present, even on the strata, if they did
not have the power or potentiality to extract
and accelerate destratified particles-signs
(the passage to the absolute). Consistency is
neither totalizing nor structuring; rather, it
is deterritorializing (a biological stratum, for
example, evolves not according to statistical
phenomena but rather according to cutting
edges of deterritorialization). The security,
tranquility, and homeostatic equilibrium of the
strata are thus never completely guaranteed: to
regain a plane of consistency that inserts itself
into the most diverse systems of stratification
and jumps from one to the other, it suffices to
prolong the lines of flight working the strata,
to connect the dots, to conjugate the process of
deterritorialization. All of these states or modes
of the abstract machine coexist in what we
call the machinic assemblage... It is along its
stratic vector that the assemblage differentiates
a form of expression (from the standpoint of
which it appears as a collective assemblage of
enunciation) from a form of content (from the
standpoint of which it appears as a machinic
assemblage of bodies); it fits one form to the
other, one manifestation to the other, placing
them in reciprocal presupposition. But along
its diagrammatic or destratified vector, it no
longer has two sides; all it retains are traits of
expression and content from which it extracts
degrees of deterritorialization that add together
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
and cutting edges that conjugate.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
A Thousand Plateaus.
Our plane of consistency has been constructed by
connecting the dots of sign usage in three different
cultures, as typified by the earliest know occurrence of
symbolic schema employed as a form of writing in each
location. This puts us in a very unique position: to properly
form a plane of consistency, one must reduce the components
being used to this end into diagrammatic features. In our
case, the components which we are making use of are in fact,
both literally and figuratively, diagrammatic features; so we
can say: there is absolutely no ambiguity whatsoever in the
slope of the vector we have established. We will, however,
need to carefully distinguish between the diagrammatic
feature of inscription, as produced by an abstract machine,
and the occurrence of diagrammatic features in conceptual
formations: that is to say, between The Trace and its
institution in unmotivated signs.
What we should therefore consider now is the nature of the
abstract machine which has given us the diagrammatic
features that we are working with, to better understand
what it is we should be comparing between the points which
define our plane of consistency. Then we will be able to more
accurately compose conceptual formations at each of these
points, utilizing the concept of a stratic vector that describes
differentiations of relation between content and expression.
We must ask, then, what is an abstract machine? Deleuze
and Guattari tell us that it is pure Matter-Function; that it is
diagrammatic; and that it knows nothing of the distinction
between the artificial and the natural: but, what does this
mean? What would this occur as, that we might recognize
this when we encounter it?
Looking for a good example of an abstract machine to
consider, we must realize that we have already examined
one: patterned ground. The processes which produce
265
patterned ground are completely mechanical, and are
determined solely by the effects of freezing and thawing
upon permafrost, mud, and stone. This is the articulation
of matter and function which characterizes patterned
ground as an abstract machine. The patterns that result
are purely diagrammatic: they shown nothing but the
result of that mechanical process; they are an abstraction
of that process; they are The Trace of that process become
diagrammatically visible.
This tells us how we must consider the nature of the
symbolic schema occurring on our plane of consistency,
for the purposes of our analysis: we must focus upon the
relationship between the matter wherein these schema are
inscribed as figural embodiments of The Trace, and the
functional nature of that process of inscription: which, taken
together and to use Derridas expression, is an embodiment
of the instituted trace.
It does not matter to us what the meaning of the symbols
involved would be: that kind of linguistic consideration
only arises after the diagrammatic function of The Trace
is established. We are only concerned with the physical,
material embodiment of The Trace as functionally
establishing the diagrammatic character of the inscription
processes we are considering, along the vector we have
established upon our plane of consistency.
In other words, we are not here primarily concerned with
the linguistic nature of what was being so inscribed: our
interest lies with the relationship between the function
of inscription as a process and the physical nature of the
matter being inscribed; that is, with the productive nature of
diagrammatic features as they are formed into our plane of
consistency.
Achieving this level of reduction and clarity in our analysis
of the diagrammatic character inherent in the figural,
as embodied upon our plane of consistency, will no doubt
be a goal as elusive as the end result of The Golden Flower
Meditation: aspects which are not essentially diagrammatic
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
will constantly arise in our analysis, as do random thoughts
in a stilling mind. This is not really a problem, though,
because we are in fact looking for intensive ordinates
produced in the context of the diagrammatic; and staying
focused upon an abstract articulation of matter and function
is a very good way to make such aspects and traits appear.
We only need to be as sure we can that we are finding aspects
and traits which are directly characteristic to each position
we examine on our plane, so that the concepts we compose
will be appropriate for each point in our analysis.
And in fact, another factor is functioning in our favor. It
is the nature of the neurological processes which constitute
vision that they themselves reduce perception into a much
more simplified form than whatever is actively being imaged:
Page 47
The question of the existence of neural dark
energy also arose when observing just how little
information from the senses actually reaches
the brains internal processing areas. Visual
information, for instance, degrades significantly
as it passes from the eye to the visual cortex.
Of the virtually unlimited information
available in the world around us, the equivalent
of 10 billion bits per second arrives on the retina
at the back of the eye. Because the optic nerve
attached to the retina has only a million output
connections, just six million bits per second can
leave the retina, and only 10,000 bits per second
make it to the visual cortex.
After further processing, visual information
feeds into the brain regions responsible for
forming our conscious perception. Surprisingly,
the amount of information constituting that
conscious perception is less than 100 bits per
second. Such a thin stream of data probably
could not produce a perception if that were all
the brain took into account; the intrinsic activity
266
[of the brain; its dark neural energy - JM - ]
must play a role.
Marcus E. Raichle, The Brains Dark Energy;
Scientific American, March 2010.
In short, we need not wonder at the fact that very simplified
diagrammatic features can support the production of
complex conceptual formations: this is entirely consistent
with the way in which the neurology of our brain functions.
But this also tells us that diagrammatic features do not
directly produce concepts: other processes are also necessarily
involved.
>>>
The transition between early Second Material Epoch image
composition, and its later stages within this epoch, is one
between edges modified as surfaces and later microblade
technology.
At the beginning of this transition, we see a use of
sedimentary stone which is consistent with Second Material
Epoch productive technologies. Here, First Material Epoch
tools are being produced of shaped stone; layers are
separated into discrete tools, and edges are then refined to
create finished implements.
Consistent with this productive practice, we see image
composites being produced in such a way that separate layers
within a single stone are exposed, one beneath but extending
beyond another; with each layer then detailed to define
images.
This is a proliferation of surface layers which marks a
distinct break from First Material Epoch image composition,
wherein entire stones were being sculpted but the production
of images was limited to a single, continuous surface.
With the early stages of Second Material Epoch image
production, we instead see the creation of distinct surfaces,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
which are then detailed internally relative to those surfaces.
There is thus a coherence of image composition established
which at the same time divides the compositions from
each other: discrete planes of image production are clearly
established and distinguished from each other. In the later
stages of Second Material Epoch image composition, this
approach has changed into something entirely different.
There is still an element of consistency which remains in
267
evidence throughout the transition between the earlier and
later stages; it is that of uniformity in size: of the individual
tools separated from a formed stone; and of the consistency
in size of microblades, as enabled by the resilient pressure
of the horn or antler tool used in production and the tensile
coherence of obsidian.
This consistency can be found within the proportional
similarity of separate layers in the early stage; and in the
proportional similarity of image areas in the later stage.
However, this consistency of proportion is defined by a
very distinct transition in production: whereas in the early
stage, each separate layer determined the way in which
productive techniques for edge definition were further
contextualized within the surface of the layer being worked;
in the later stage, the productive techniques were employed
in the discrete formation of distinct features. There, the
compositional relation of the features themselves defined
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
distinct image areas, and distinguished these image areas as
separate occurrences within a common, shared surface.
The use of features to define image areas in this
way leads directly to the invention of signs as tools for
modifying images; and it also enables signs to function
grammatologically, in articulating the variable grouping
patterns that characterize the metanarrative structure of
anametric image writing.
The initial formation of signs is a result of image areas
being singularized through a definitional use of features; and
this technique of image production originally developed from
the practice of modifying the edges of preformed stone tool
blanks to create finished implements.
Although the developmental continuity in this transition
between productive approaches for image composition is
very clear, there is still a stage missing: that through which
the discreet use of separate layers became a use of separate
layers in conjunction with each other. The intermediate phase
of this transition was effected through the use of an entirely
different medium: wood.
We know that the development of microblade technology
enabled a wholesale and very efficient productive
capability in working with wood: the use of saws made from
assemblages of individual microblade teeth allowed large
sections of wood to be quickly obtained; and the use of tools
with obsidian blades allowed wood to be efficiently and
accurately shaped.
We know that, by this point in time, the production of
any kind of implement was invariably associated with a
production of images; so, while we do not have any wooden
implements from the Northwest Coast of North America
that have in fact survived from considerably before 10,000
years ago (that I know of), we can assume wood products
were regularly decorated with images. This would have been
much easier than working images onto stone; and there is no
shortage of those much more permanent examples.
268
Thus, we can infer that the transition between early and
late stage image production in the Second Material Epoch of
First Nations culture was effected through an intermediary
stage wherein images were being created on wood.
This intermediary stage can be characterized as an absolute
deterritorialization: the techniques initially used in working
wood may have originally derived from those used in working
stone, but the material nature of wood caused entirely new
productive techniques to develop, which were not applicable
to stone.
When some of these new wood-based techniques and
technologies were transferred back onto stone, it would be
through a relative reterritorialization: the aspects of stone
which were consistent with the material nature of wood
localized the transfer of productive technologies developed
through working with wood.
Specifically, it was a similarity in material differentiation,
between the annual growth rings of trees and the layers in
sedimentary rock, which allowed wood-based techniques of
image production to be transferred onto stone.
Looking closely at the formalization of image production
common to both wood and sedimentary stone, we find that it
is the occurrence of parallel, consistent, but visually different
layers that informs such processes.
In the specific case of sedimentary stone, we find that
the production of images now occurs through the process
of inscription; a process which is suspended between, and
articulates, two co-extended consistencies: the surface layer,
and the underlying layer which is being etched toward
through a process that can be considered an abstract
machine of inscription.
Here, diagrammatic features occur as a fusion of the
inscription process (as function) with the inner, hidden,
concealed consistency (as matter); but, as formed within the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 269

context of, as defined by, as grouped through, the external

consistency of the surface (as matter).

In other words, we are looking at a process which

characteristically articulates endoconsistency and
exoconsistency.

This is a situation in which the establishment of

diagrammatic features leads directly to the production
of conceptual formations; although again, the abstract
machine which produces diagrammatic features is not itself
producing concepts: it is, rather, a form of production which is
feeding further production.

>>>
The two consistencies which characterize the separate layers
of stone involved are differential: they are of different colors,
or shades. This differential is of intensity: it is a gradient,
from lighter to darker. The abstract machine through
which articulations are established here is positional: it is a
localized production. The articulations produced, through
diagrammatic features as inscription, are therefore intensive
ordinates.

Thus we have all the components necessary for the

formation of conceptual structures, but with one very
important stipulation: since this production is being effected
by an abstract machine, it is not feeding a production
of the externalized, material concepts of direct territorial
relation that we found with hominids. Instead, we are seeing
something quite different: the formation of abstract concepts.

This is a determination which is not being made after the

fact of concept formation, as an ascription added to any
particular concept: it is a characteristic which is inherent to
the formation of any conceptual structure produced from (or
more appropriately, along with) the creation of diagrammatic
features by the abstract machine of inscription which is
functioning within this material context.
Further, this Matter-Function of production occurs as a
before/after localized between material consistencies.
The abstract concepts being formed are therefore
inherently event structures; the signs produced in the fusion,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
the immanence of diagrammatic feature and intensive
ordinate are formational of a particular characterization of
abstraction: that which we know as difference-in-kind.
To say that we cannot distinguish in this process of
abstraction between particle and sign is to say that the
occurrence of either is contingent upon a common, essential
characteristic: that of difference.
It is The Trace of difference which informs the productive
abstraction that establishes the immanence of matter and
function; through which, diagrammatic features are formed
into a plane of consistency: which is to say, essentially, upon a
plane of immanence.
Planes of consistency exist as slopes, vectors, curvatures,
and other topological features upon the ubiquitous plane of
immanence from which diagrammatic features form.
The specific immanence of the Matter-Function
articulating inscription forms a plane of consistency which
270
is characterized by diagrammatic features which define the
process of inscription.
We must therefore say that the nature of the abstraction
which here produces diagrammatic features is that of
immanence.
The relationship between diagrammatic features, between
acts of inscription is, in its most essential form, that of
immanence to immanence: a singular in between which is,
simply, A LIFE.
The grammatological structures which articulate sign
with sign thus constitute a subjectless transcendental field,
in which writing forms and from which we can compose
conceptual personae.
Which is not to say this could not be done elsewhere; it is
simply to say, this can most certainly be done here.
>>>
The relation of immanence which defines the fusion of
Matter-Function in producing this form of diagrammatic
feature has a particular nature, which is directly contingent
upon these circumstances of its occurrence.
It is a characterization defined by the articulation of
inscription, as it functionally forms in intensive ordinates
and of diagrammatic features, between the consistencies
of the material layers which localize its singularization: a
characterization which is circumscribed by the relationship
between concealment and unconcealment which informs it.
The philosopher Martin Heidegger devoted much
thought to the relationship holding between concealment
and unconcealment. He found that the concept of
unconcealment had a very special meaning for the ancient
Greeks; and that this was expressed through their word
aletheia.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
In the centuries that followed these early Greek
philosophers, and through the translations of their words
which ensued, their use of the word aletheia would come to
take on a slightly more generalized meaning: that of truth.
Page 127-128
Ordinarily we speak of letting be whenever,
for example, we forgo some enterprise that has
been planned. We let something be means
we do not touch it again, we have nothing more
to do with it. To let something be has here the
negative sense of letting it alone, of renouncing
it, of indifference and even neglect.
However, the phrase required now - to let beings
be - does not refer to neglect and indifference
but rather the opposite. To let to be is to engage
oneself with beings. On the other hand, to be
sure, this is not to be understood only as the
mere management, preservation, tending, and
planning of the beings in each case encountered
or sought out. To let be - that is, to let beings be
as the beings which they are - means to engage
oneself with the open region and its openness
into which every being comes to stand, bringing
that openness, as it were, along with itself.
Western thinking in its beginning conceived this
open region as ta alethea, the unconcealed. If
we translate aletheia as unconcealment rather
than truth, this translation is not merely more
literal; it contains the directive to rethink the
ordinary concept of truth in the sense of the
correctness of statements and to think it back
to that still uncomprehended disclosedness and
disclosure of beings. To engage oneself with the
disclosedness of beings is not to lose oneself in
them; rather, such engagement withdraws in
the face of beings in order that they might reveal
themselves with respect to what and how they are
and in order that presentative correspondence
might take its standard from them.
271
Martin Heidegger, On the Essence of Truth;
in Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell;
English translation copyright 1977 by Harper and
Row, Publishers Inc. New York NY.
We must take notice of the fact that the relationship of
immanence articulated through inscription, as an in
between of the material consistencies being inscribed during
the production of anametric image writing, is circumscribed
by a relationship between concealment and unconcealment.
It should come as no surprise to us that Heideggers view of
truths essence is entirely coincident (within the same lighted
opening where truth shows itself) with the traditional
perspective held by the First Nations regarding the nature of
being that attends their interactions within their traditional
territories.
This is the sense in which it is an epistemological difference
- a difference in how what can be said to be true comes
to be established - that constitutes the essential difference
between anametric image writing and phonetic writing.
This essential difference is also at the root of a divergence
between traditional First Nations and Western realizations
of knowledge concerning how the being of things is
thought. Both approaches have their own epistemological
grounds; however, Western epistemologies of knowledge
simply discount as necessarily false anything which is not
coincidence with its epistemological definition of truth.
The epistemological basis of this Western conception of
truth is, as Derrida has asserted, that of correspondence; and
it is grounded in the functional nature of phonetic writing,
wherein words correspond to objects through the linguistic
process of signification.
Yet even in Western thought, at the very beginning of its
philosophic tradition, we find that the essence of truth occurs
as something which is entirely consistent with the origins
of anametric image writing, as used by the First Nations to
preserve knowledge about their traditional territories.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
This epistemological determination concerning the
nature of truth as unconcealment also ultimately grounds
Western epistemologies; and so we have yet another reason
to suspect that anametric image writing may well have
been the ultimate point-of-origin for the phonetic forms of
writing which arose in the Middle East: because we would
be completely justified in saying, phonetic writing can be
called true writing only within the context of that truth-as-
unconcealment which is initially established with anametric
image writing.
>>>
Which is not to say, of course, that the sense of
unconcealment which grounds Western philosophy as
truth is the essence of truth which we encounter throughout
anametric image writing. As we have noted with regard to
Derridas deconstruction of Western metaphysics, Heideggers
philosophy is still caught within (although at the very outer
edge of) the Western metaphysical tradition which defines
being in terms of presence/the present, in which the same
occurs as the same in the same. Throughout our analysis of
anametric image writing, we consistently encountered what
Derrida calls The Trace of Differance; so, we know that we
are not encountering the unconcealment of being here: we
are instead seeing an unconcealment of differences-in-kind.
And while the truth that we encounter here is conceptually
that of unconcealment, Deleuze and Guattari place its
ultimate origin in a very territorial process:
Page 39-40
It is essential not to confuse the plane of
immanence and the concepts that occupy
it. Although the same elements may appear
twice over, on the plane and in the concept, it
will not be in the same guise, even when they
are expressed in the same verbs and words.
We have seen this for being, thought, and one:
they enter into the concepts components and
272
are themselves concepts, but they belong to the
plane quite differently as image or substance.
Conversely, truth can only be defined on the plane
by a turning toward or by that toward which
thought turns; but this does not provide us with
a concept of truth. If error itself is an element that
by right forms part of the plane, then it consists
simply in taking the false for the true (falling
[falling into error, a very slippery slope - JM]);
but it only receives a concept if we determine its
components (according to Descartes, for example,
the two components of a finite understanding
and an infinite will). Movements or elements of
the plane, therefore, will seem to be only nominal
definitions in relation to concepts so long as
we disregard the difference in nature between
plane and concepts. But in reality, elements of
the plane are diagrammatic features, whereas
concepts are intensive features. The former are
movements of the infinite, whereas the latter
are intensive ordinates of these movements, like
original sections or differential positions: finite
movements in which the infinite is now only
speed and each of which constitutes a surface or
a volume, an irregular contour marking a halt
in the degree of proliferation. The former are
directions that are fractal in nature, whereas
the latter are absolute dimensions, intensively
defined, always fragmentary surfaces or
volumes. The former are intuitions and the
latter are intensions. The grandiose Leibnizian
or Bergsonian perspective that every philosophy
depends upon an intuition that its concepts
constantly developed through slight differences
of intensity is justified if intuition is thought of
as the envelopment of infinite movements of
thought that constantly pass through a plane of
immanence. Of course, we should not conclude
from this that concepts are deduced from the
plane: concepts require a special construction
distinct from that of the plane, which is why
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
concepts must be created just as the plane
must be set up. Intensive features are never
the consequence of diagrammatic features,
and intensive ordinates are not deduced from
movements or directions. Their correspondence
goes beyond even simple resonances and
introduces instances adjunct to the creation of
concepts, namely, conceptual personae.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
What Is Philosophy?
It is thus a turning toward and that toward which
thought turns which, we must say, modulates truth: it is with
this turning toward that thought is compelled to form. If
this turning toward were not in essence of truth itself, then
there would be no biological advantage to thinking; and
thought would never have evolved within a context of being
truth.
It is only in a turning toward that truth can form as
unconcealment; and it is only in its unconcealment that truth
can become a concept.
We might say: only differences we turn toward can establish
truth (as an instituted trace).
>>>
Within a linguistic context, we note that the concepts
which form within anametric image writing, do so between
those consistencies of structure which define sedimentary
layers, in that type of stone where symbolic schema are first
forming, as signs exhibiting essentially grammatological
interrelationships. We note that the abstract machine which
produces the diagrammatic feature of inscription is itself a
very specific turning toward, which establishes a state of
immanence between consistencies characterizing the surface
and lower layers in this type of stone: a turning toward
which becomes unconcealment through difference.
273
We should also note: these material consistencies are not
motivational in the formation of concepts; the events of this
earth which compelled thinking do that.
These consistencies are not modifying the thoughts
which are being so compelled: that is something which
consciousness-of-self effects, in its use of these signs as tools.
The material consistencies through which the abstract
machine of inscription functions are modulating the
formation of concepts. This is true of the differential layers in
sedimentary stone; and of the interconnected ring patterns
which support the First Nations traditional system of survey
and mapping; and of applied layers of plaster we saw being
used on The Ottawa Fish Tail Stone; and of the differential
consistency seen in the grain pattern of granite that is
characteristically used as a substrate for anametric image
writing throughout the Third Material Epoch of First Nations
culture.
As modulating the formation of anametric image writing,
these material consistencies are determining modalities: the
reality status accorded to or claimed by a sign, text, or genre.
(Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics; Second edition;
copyright 2002, 2007 by Daniel Chandler. Published by
Routledge, Oxon, UK).
The reality status of linguistic constructs, which is to say
their epistemological function, is a form of modulation. In
anametric image writing, this becomes established through
a turning toward of inscription which occurs as an in
between of concealment and unconcealment. This is what
we call truth; and in anametric image writing, this occurs
through the singularization of differences-in-kind: that is, in
signs which articulate events as concepts.
Why would this not be called true writing?
Lets find out.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
>>>
Having a better sense of exactly what we have established
through composing our plane of consistency, we can now
consider a little more closely the other two points through
which this plane was composed. Since the vector which
defines the slope of our plane leads from North America, to
China, and on to the Middle East, we shall first consider the
earliest form of writing that has been documented in China.
The nature of the vector which formed upon our plane
of consistency seems to indicate the possibility of writing,
having first originated with the First Nations of North
America, then disseminating throughout Eurasia.
Jared Diamond has described the basic dynamics of such
dissemination:
Page 224-225
The spread of writing has occurred by either
of two contrasting methods, which find parallels
throughout the history of technology and ideas.
Someone invents something and puts it to use.
How do you, another would-be user, then design
something similar for your own use, knowing
that other people have already got their own
model built and working?
Such transmission of inventions assumes
a whole spectrum of forms. At one end lies
blueprint copying, when you copy or modify
an available detailed blueprint. At the opposite
end lies idea diffusion, when you receive little
more than the basic idea and have to reinvent the
details. Knowing that it can be done stimulates
you to try to do it yourself, but your eventual
specific solution may or may not resemble that
of the first inventor.
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Copyright 1999, 1997 by Jared Diamond.
274
Published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
New York NY.
We shall therefore consider that the vector which defines
the slope of our plane of consistency might produce
indications of writings dissemination from a North American
point-of-origin, in the form of conceptual decenterings that
occur on a spectrum extending between blueprint copying
and idea diffusion.
To be more specific, with reference to Deleuze and Guattari,
such decenterings will occur along a stratic vector through
which abstract machines, as machinic assemblages,
differentiate[s] a form of expression (from the standpoint of
which it appears as a collective assemblage of enunciation)
from a form of content (from the standpoint of which it
appears as a machinic assemblage of bodies); [it] fits one
form to the other, one manifestation to the other, placing
them in reciprocal presupposition.
In composing a stratic vector, it is important to remember
that the individual vectors forming within strata at each
position upon this new plane of consistency are NOT
themselves the stratic vector that defines the slope of this
plane.
The points which defined this new plane of consistency are
all characteristically composed of strata; and we do know
a slope of this plane, as established by the initial vector we
found forming from our analysis of diagrammatic features.
However, we must expect that the local curvatures of our
new plane will be extreme; the intensive ordinates which
localize this stratic vector will themselves define vectors
that can form from strata which are very different than
those found at the initial point upon this new plane of
consistency: the stratic relationship between concealment
and unconcealment actualized through the anametric image
writing of the First Nations of North America.
Since we also know that our plane of consistency is defined
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
by an abstract machine which produces the diagrammatic
feature of inscription; and that it is conceptual personae who
differentiate this diagrammatic feature from the conceptual
formations produced of the intensive ordinates which form
through inscription: we will be particularly interested in any
conceptual personae we may encounter in this stage of our
inquiry.
To begin, though, we should consider what we know about
the formation of concepts within the context of anametric
image writing. We have already found that, in this form of
writing, signs articulate the formation of concepts as events.
We know that it is the endoconsistency and exoconsistency
of concepts which are being articulated in this way. First, we
will consider the exoconsistencies which attended the origin
of anametric image writing.
We know that anametric image writing was used to
compose event-maps of the First Nations traditional
territories. We know that the invention of the system of
survey/mapping which was used to this end was inspired
by an encounter with the abstract machine of patterned
ground. We know that the circular arrangements of stones
which characterizes patterned ground was conceptualized
with reference to the pattern of bone plates found on the shell
of turtles; that this system of survey/mapping used distant
mountains as points of common relative reference; that the
position of the sun at midday on either equinox could be used
to establish the latitude and therefore an absolute position
of any permanent Medicine Wheel from which localized
mappings might proceed; and that the image composites
which form anametric image writing were conceptualized
with reference to star patterns inferred in the night sky.
Can we find any traces of these exoconsistent components
associated with what we know of the earliest form of writing
found in China?
The first thing we can take note of is that the earliest form
of Chinese writing occurs on tortoise shells. Judging from
a rather small and not particularly detailed photograph of
these tortoise shells, that writing was inscribed on individual
275
bone plates around the edge of the tortoise shells. This
immediately suggests a possible relationship with the concept
of event-mapping, as derived from an initial encounter with
patterned ground.
We can next note that these tortoise shells were found along
with a collection of small stones. The explanation offered
for this is that the tortoise shells were rattles; but I find that
a rather simplistic determination to make of people who
were as cognitively endowed as we are today; particularly
when we are talking about such an early use of writing. If
the idea which underlies this tortoise shell/writing-small
stone assemblage was derived from a diffusion of knowledge
related to the survey/mapping system of the First Nations of
North America, then it seems more likely these components
formed an abstract machine that was designed to produce
some form of event-mapping.
We must expect that this particular abstract machine
would not function as the First Nations system of survey-
mapping did: if just the idea of that system was copied, or
even if an example of an event-map had been available,
we must expect that any interpretation based upon an
example or basic idea would be divergent from the original
functionality. Here, we might expect to find the next
component for our stratic vector, occurring as some very
distinct variance in the articulation of concealment and
unconcealment.
One thing is certain: such a system of survey-mapping
would tend to disseminate very far, simply in being utilized
by nomadic people who themselves tended to regularly
travel great distances. We have seen how this form of event-
mapping was carried throughout North America; it can be
expected that it would have ended up anywhere that people
were able to travel.
If we look at later aspects of Chinese culture, we do find
numerous examples of practices which might indicate
something of the functional nature of this early tortoise shell/
writing-small stone assemblage. Two particular practices
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
stand out: that of geomancy (fung shui), and its use of special
compasses consisting of rotating, inscribed rings; and that of
divination through the I Ying, whereby bundles of inscribed
sticks are shaken until one stick randomly drops out to
indicate which character in the I Ying best describes a current
state of affairs.
Having a close look at the small stones which form part of
this abstract machine would no doubt prove very insightful;
but even without whatever information might be so gleaned,
I would hazard the guess that this tortoise shell/writing-small
stone assemblage functioned through divination to produce
event-map kinds of information: that is, to produce
differential events which would then be interpreted within a
localized context.
Perhaps the small stones, which were in some way
significant, were placed within the tortoise shells; the shells
might then be spun until stones rolled out the openings. Once
a shell had stopped spinning (or perhaps, had been reversed
in direction, causing the stones to roll out), it could be flipped
over in place; then, the relative positions of the stones could
be correlated with the glyphs along the edge of the shell; and
a territorial event-narrative could be composed by reading
the relationship between the stones and the glyphs. Such a
process would correspond with another very old and well
know Chinese motif, that of the taiji (yin/yang) symbol;
which shows a circular flow, and two small, reversed dots
mirrored upon contrasting backgrounds.
This explanation is conjecture; but such an abstract
machine of divination would indicate the kind of fascination
with random composition that one would expect to see in a
situation where people (paradoxically) knew how to read
but, not how to write: in other words, where they had access
to the image writing of an event language which was not
of their own making. Such an abstract machine would
certainly produce differance with every use; and it would
also function through concealment / unconcealment, in the
emergence of the stones from inside the tortoise shell. In such
a case, we would say that the stratic vector we are looking for
276
would begin to form in connecting: the abstract machine of
inscription, as originally occurring through an in between
of concealment and unconcealment in anametric image
writing; to, an in between of divination, functioning
through an abstract machine that conceals and unconceals
the small stones associated with the tortoise shells.
However, we should also expect to see some aspect of
absence clearly evident here; as well as the role of a
conceptual persona, who would be responsible for the
formation of concepts in some consistent and characteristic
way.
We can perhaps find both, together in the one component
of this machinic assemblage which has never been found:
the head of the person which belongs with the body that the
tortoise shells and stones were buried with. Presumably, that
was the person who was divining the results of the auguries
produced by this abstract machine, in composing the
singular in betweens that formed of the randomly placed
stones and the arrangement of written symbols around the
edge of the tortoise shells.
As Deleuze and Guattari noted, truth first arises as a
turning toward; but this can as easily be a turning toward
the false: either case of which would offer an explanation
as to why that persons head is missing, contingent upon
whether it was removed before or after death.
It isnt until much later in Chinese history that writing was,
in legend, invented; allegedly, by Fu Xi, who looked upward
and contemplated the images in the heavens, and looked
downward and contemplated the occurrences on earth; or
who, it might be supposed, compared star patterns with the
events around him and then invented writing.
This is said to have occurred around 4,800 years ago.
Fu Xi is also said to have discovered the trigrams (bagua)
of the I Ying, which were revealed to him in markings on the
back of a mythical dragon-horse (sometimes said to be a
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
turtle); a discovery that is also said to have been the origin of
calligraphy.
By approximately 4,200 years ago, the Chinese were using a
system of survey, navigation, and mapping which relied upon
the use of mountain peaks as reference points:
Chapter XII
Geographers and historians alike
acknowledge the Shan Hai King to be the
worlds oldest geography... The Chinese say
that the record was compiled by the great Yu,
at the time when he himself was minister under
the Emperor Shun - prior to the time when he
himself was Emperor (estimated to be a period
around 2,205 BC)...As stated earlier, there
were originally 32 books, and, of the 32 only 18
remain...The material itself is complicated by the
fact that there is no beginning or ending to any
book - each record as we now have it, starts on
a mountain peak, wanders from peak to peak,
covering 2,000 miles, and winds up on another
peak - with no possible way of determining
where, on the face of the globe, that first peak
may have been located...Two of the descriptive
accounts began their recordings on an unknown
mountain top, traveling 2,000 miles from north
to south, finding a peak every one hundred
miles, and wound up on another peak - but, in
those 2,000 miles, that person definitely was
somewhere, and he alone knew where.
Henriette Mertz,
Pale Ink; copyright 1953 by Henriette Mertz.
http://www.sacred_texts.com/earth/pi/pi03.htm
Although our consideration of the earliest know instance
of Chinese writing offers no compelling proof of an origin in
anametric image writing, this at least seems possible; indeed,
as Leibniz would say, it is compossible, with no evident
contradictions with what is know to be the case appearing.
277
Such an explanation is consistent with what we might expect
to occur if knowledge of anametric image writing spread
beyond the culture in which it was produced and understood.
>>>
The next point upon our plane of consistency is Egypt,
where the situation surrounding the earliest know instance
of writing found there is much better documented. Here, the
relationship between concealment and unconcealment, in
which writing originally formed as the figural, is much easier
to discern.
The most obvious consistency evident of this early form
of Egyptian writing is once again a material one: it is the
relative uniformity of size found in the small clay tablets
upon which this form of writing was incised. This, coupled
with the subject matter of the writing found on these tablets,
immediately suggests their use: in all probability, they were
used to label goods which were contained in some way.
By placing a signifying tablet upon a sealed container of
goods, the contents could be clearly indicated; there would
be no need to repeatedly open and reseal the containers to
ascertain their contents. That these small marker tokens also
display the names of institutions suggests that they were
sometimes used for allocating resources, a function oddly
consistent with a size described in terms of modern postage
stamps.
This provides us with another point upon our stratic
vector: it gives us a clear example of concealment and
unconcealment, in which an abstract machine of inscription
is functionally localized. Judging by what we found in North
America and China, we should expect to find here another
distinct conceptual persona; but we must not expect to find
any specific individual who might have traveled from North
America to Egypt
Egypt is a long way from North America; a distance all
the more forbidding at that early point in history. Yet, the
timeline suggested by the initial vector which formed from
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
our plane of consistencys slope is certainly extended enough
that a non-perishable object such as a stone could have
been passed, hand-to-hand and culture to culture, over that
great of a distance. And similarities between Egyptian and
Mesoamerican cultures have long been noted, although
generally this is attributed to coincidence:
Page 222-224
All these parallels between Mesoamerican
and ancient western European writing testify to
the underlying universality of human creativity.
While Sumerian and Mesoamerican languages
bear no special relation to each other among
the worlds languages, both raised similar basic
issues in reducing them to writing. The solutions
the Sumerians invented before 3000 B.C. were
reinvented, halfway around the world, by early
Mesoamerican Indians before 600 B.C.
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.
It is very easy to see how anametric image writing provided
the point of origin for many aspects of Mesoamerican culture;
from the forms of writing developed there, to the advanced
knowledge of astronomy and the very accurate calendar of
the Maya, to what was in all probability an advanced system
of mapping referentially centered upon the innumerable
pyramids found throughout Mexico and Central America.
It is interesting to note that both photographs depicting
examples of the early Egyptian form of true writing that
accompany the BBC article on this subject prominently show
a large red-orange sun above, and three stylized mountains
below, the symbolic schema they present as glyphic
compositions. In other words, the variable linguistic aspects
found in these two examples of early Egyptian writing are
contextualized by images of the sun and mountains; which
are, of course, the two geographically relational elements
which enabled interconnecting rings, as derived from an
encounter with patterned ground, to function as a system of
survey and mapping within anametric image writing.
278
Certainly, examples of anametric image writing which
conveyed information concerning the survey/mapping
technologies of North Americas First Nations would have
been of great value to anyone who made their living through
travel and trade; and if artifacts with examples of anametric
image writing upon them were passed by way of trade all the
way to the Middle East, it seems probably that they would
have inevitably gravitated into the hands of early rulers
there. Without a doubt, knowledge of a system for surveying
and mapping would have been of immense value to any ruler
of an agrarian society: simply in enabling agricultural land
to be more effectively surveyed and efficiently subdivided;
that productivity might be increased, and taxes accurately
assessed. The adjunct existence of a form of writing would be
only a secondary concern.
Thus, I do not find it at all strange that writing initially
ended up in the hands of the despotic rulers who claimed
ownership of Middle Eastern lands. Nor do I find it
uncharacteristic that the system of notation associated with
such mapping technologies would have been adopted by
traveling merchants in that area. But at the same time, I
am absolutely certain that writing arose in a much more
pluralistic context: writing, at its true point-of-origin, was a
tool and an ability shared by all.
One must imagine that the result of anametric image
writing arriving in such a distant land would have been an
event that has happened since time immemorial, from the
origin of anametric image writing on: people discussing their
interpretation of what can be seen written on the stone in
their hands.
Except that in this case, as adjunct to the imaging
consciousness of Ice Age Europe which precipitated
consciousness-of-self in that part of the world, the rulers
determinations were the final word. There was no interest in
consensus here: only one mans determination to lead.
One mans words became the meaning of each symbolic
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
schema which resolved into a sign; and phonetic writing was
truly born.
Symbols became words because one man was determining
meaning with absolute authority, in a final determination of
what is true.
And apparently, the only words spoken were those
pertaining to things the ruler possessed, or that were
otherwise directly associated with his rule. This in itself seems
to confirm the speakers identity; not as a conceptual persona
who depicts thought, but as a despotic ruler who dictates: one
who commands that which stands below him, supporting
him, and is thus worthy of his significant attention.
As we noted earlier, the linguistic processes of signification
is that of substantiation; and in this context, it is interesting
to note the dictionary definitions which are associated with
the word from which this term is derived, substance:
1. material: a kind of matter or material.
2. tangible physical matter: physical reality that can be
touched and felt.
3. practical value: real or practical value or importance.
There was nothing of substance in the document.
4. material wealth: wealth in the form of money and
possessions.
5. gist of meaning: the actual or essential meaning of
something said or written
The substance of their argument.
6. philosophy: essence; the unchanging essence of
something.
7. philosophy: something specific; something that is
individual and caused.
In examining these definitions for the word substance,
we can quite clearly see the derivational sequence that led
Derrida toward his critique of the ontotheological basis
of Western philosophic thought. We see its end effects
in philosophy; its prior institution within linguistics; its
determining occurrence within economics; and originally, its
279
manifestation as something that can be touched or felt.
This initial determination is the same one which led to
images being traced and painted on cave walls in Ice Age
Europe. It is the same determination which would lead to
specific image composites being isolated in, and extracted
from, anametric image writing: such that discreet symbols
would be taken as relational to singular and substantive
instances of occurrence, and then be given the designation of
a phonetic name.
None of which diverges significantly from what one might
expect to have happened in most circumstances where a
previously unknown kind of image writing, in the form of
an event-map, had found its way through distant lands into
hands completely unfamiliar with its nature.
What is very significant here is the introduction of
economic considerations into what had initially been an
abstract machine of inscription functioning in between
concealment and unconcealment.
This marks an acute deviation in our stratic vector; and it is
one for which we have seen no previous precedent.
Yet, we can define what has happened here: we know that
a plane of immanence must first be in place; and that this
establishes a form of diagrammatic feature for the abstract
machine of inscription which thus, and subsequently,
appears in the guise of Reason.
Reason in this manifestation becomes a correspondence
of word and symbol: of visible clay marker tokens and
concealed, package goods; and it is now reasonable to
assume the concealed contents of a container are what the
symbols affixed to it say that it is.
We know that, in this way, concepts are formed; and
that this constitutes Understanding: which is to say, the
understanding of how the figural inscriptions on the clay
tablets tell what is concealed in the containers to which
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
they are affixed, or where those containers belong in their
distribution.
We now need only to establish the relationship between
those figural instances of inscription and their occurrence
as signs; that is to say (as we have seen amply demonstrated
by Sartre), the place of Imagination in this process of
inscription and ascription: which is the role played by
conceptual personae.
Thus, when we examine the radical disjunction through
which writing becomes at once both phonetic and
characterized by economies of exchange and circulation, we
must find the source of this divergence (from the precedent
set by anametric image writing) in the form of a specific
conceptual persona: the absolute, dictatorial ruler.
This is a conceptual persona who effects an actualization
of writing which is very different than its pluralistic
roots in anametric image writing. This is, in essence
the epistemological core of phonetic writing: one mans
distinctions being dictated to the group, and thereafter
determining what they believe.
It is the name affixed by royal seal to a container which
conceals its contents; but which none dare open, on pain of
death.
It is the word which appears through the symbol as the
object; but if this is knowledge, it exists simply in the royal
prerogative to break the affixed seal and truly ascertain the
nature of the labeled contents of the concealing container;
for here, understanding is a material determination of
economic consequence concerning that upon which the rule
and authority of the absolute despot is based: the productive
capabilities of those being subjected to the arbitrary
determinations of the despotic regime.
We also clearly see here something else which we had
earlier noted: that the closure of the historical effected by
the epistemological determination of phonetic writing as
280
true is in fact this very same concealment of the sealed
container to which a signifying clay tablet has been affixed
through an essentially despotic authority.
This is not the essence of truth as we understand it: this is
something very different, and it is at best just a caricature of
truth. Yet, as Derrida has noted, this form of truth (which
has its roots firmly planted within an origin that preferences
concealment) continues to provide the epistemological basis
for a phonetic writing, and so for all of the Western cultural
constructs which are based upon phonetic writing: science,
law, economics; everything.
In establishing the slope of our initial plane of consistency,
we were able to determine a directional vector which
suggested that writing disseminated from an initial point-
of-origin in North America, to China, and on to the Middle
East, and Egypt. By examining the conditions which defined
the nature of the diagrammatic feature of inscription at our
point-of-origin, we were then able to compose a stratic vector
that revealed a very interesting variance in the way which
truth itself is conceptualized with reference to writing: as the
unconcealment of difference-in-kind in North America; as the
interpretation of interrelation in ancient China; and as the
absolute, but essentially arbitrary, determinations of early
Egypt.
Although it happened a quarter of a century ago, I
will never forget the time I was walking down a street in
Yellowknife with a friend who had been the elected chief of
a small community in the Northwest Territories; and I asked
him, Why is it that, after all of the things white people have
done to the First Nations, all the members of the First Nations
that I meet always treat me really well? He replied, looking
me straight in the eye: Well, John, our people always judge
others by who they are.
Similarly, anyone who has had the opportunity to study
traditional Chinese thought cannot help but notice how
intricately detailed Taoist philosophy is in its attempt to
survey everything above and below the heavens: the
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
all-encompassing Five Elements theory, in detailing the
transitional interrelations of all things; and the endlessly
repeating patterns of the basic trigrams and recombinant
hexagrams of the I Ying extend into and structure all aspects
of Taoist thought.
We can continue to draw out the conceptual implications
of the Western ideal form of truth, which has fallen back
into a concealment that betrays its essential nature; or, we
can again address the matter at hand through an empirical
encounter with actual examples taken from real situations.
As always, I favor the latter course of action.
>>>
To Western thought, the earth has become a repository of
concealed substances which, being named, are thus made
available for economic circulation: the very presence of these
substances is the logical ground through which they are
equated with terms of currency. Phonetic writing, at its origin
in economic activity, is in fact the defining characteristic of
the central epistm which structures Western culture.
Other ways of conceptualizing the productive interrelations
of traditional territories with which Indigenous Peoples live
are simply discounted out-of-hand: instead, the logic of the
grasp configures itself to whatever it can name; because, that
seems a reasonable approach, and, any protestations over
this course of action are therefore disproportionate to the
situation-at-hand, and thus irrational. Or so we are told, over
and over; much as we are repeatedly told the same old story
of a Middle Eastern origin of writing. Others, however, have a
different opinion on such matters:
Pages 21-22
Being is a spiritual proposition. Gaining is a
material act. Traditionally, American Indians
have always attempted to be the best people
they could. Part of that spiritual process was
and is to give away wealth, to discard wealth in
281
order not to gain. Material gain is an indicator
of false status among traditional people while it
is proof that the system works to Europeans.
Clearly, there are two completely opposing views
at issue here, and Marxism is very far over to the
other side from the American Indian view. But
lets look at a major implication of this; it is not
merely an intellectual debate.
The European materialist tradition of
despiritualizing the universe is very similar to the
mental process which goes into dehumanizing
another person.
In terms of the despiritualization of the
universe, the mental process works so that it
becomes virtuous to destroy the planet. Terms like
progress and development are used as cover
words here the way victory and freedom are
used to justified butchery in the dehumanization
process.
Russell Means, The Same Old Song, in
Marxism and Native Americans, edited
by Ward Churchill; Copyright 1983 by Ward
Churchill. Third Printing, 1992 by South End Press,
Cambridge, MA.
Within the context of writing, we might say: the underlying
goal in anametric image writing is to compose ever better
conceptual personae, which increasingly more people find
themselves in agreement with; and this is a process of
ever increasing social stability. This can, however, become
problematic when collectives are forced to assert their
autonomy in the face of coercive political domination. In
contrast, the underlying goal in phonetic writing is to put
a name on more and more things; particularly, ones own
name. There is thus a tendency for the names being applied
on an individual basis to diverge from common usage;
and this can lead to situations in which, as Foucault says,
language says nothing but itself. Names are at best a
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
tenuous way to establish an understanding of reality; but the
phonetic model of speech ascribes all legitimacy through,
and the very essence of truth to, this process of naming.
This is indeed not a merely intellectual debate: these are
issues which continue to have enormous consequences for
entire societies. To give just one current example, the First
Nations of British Columbia are currently engaged in a life-
and-death struggle to ban commercial salmon farms from the
waters of their traditional territories. These industrial-scale
installations are owned by foreign companies, which have
been restricted in their operations within their own countries;
in response, they have begun a wholesale colonization of
the waters along the coast of British Columbia. The problem
with such fish farms is simple: trapped in containment pens,
these salmon are a breeding ground for a parasite called
sea lice. The fish are contained in their pens; but the sea lice
are not: and when young wild salmon first venture down
from the coastal rivers where they have hatched, they are
swarmed by sea lice which have matured by parasitizing
the fully grown farm salmon. Before the young wild salmon
can even reach the open ocean, they acquire a fatal parasite
load; and each year, the number of wild salmon returning
to spawn in the coastal rivers where they hatched drops ever
closer to the point of extinction. This has been documented
through scientific studies; but apparently the rights of the
companies involved outweigh all other considerations.
Entire runs of wild salmon in what was once one of the most
productive ecosystems on this planet are being extinguished.
First Nations which have relied upon these salmon as a
major food source since time immemorial are watching this
cornerstone of their culture being decimated; and all the
animals which rely on the yearly arrival of the salmon are
being left with nothing: bear, eagle, everything that counts
upon this food source to survive are being deprived of their
lives. Entire species are being put at risk simply so that a few
people can make some easy money.
That is how European knowledge continues to assert
itself in the traditional territories of the First Nations of North
282
America; and such observations can no longer be dismissed
as anecdotal. A recent study conducted in British Columbia
by Harvard Law Schools International Human Rights Clinic
summarizes this situation thus:
Page 7
Rich in mineral resources, the traditional
lands of First Nations in British Columbia (B.C.)
have been targets of Canadas active mining
industry. Mining provides important revenue for
the province, so many people welcome it. It also,
however, frequently interferes with First Nations
use of their traditional lands and significantly
harms the environment to which their culture
is inextricably linked. B.C. mining laws provide
some safeguards for First Nations and the
environment, but they favor the industry they
are intended to regulate and do not adequately
institutionalize the special protections First
Nations are entitled to under international and
domestic law. While some First Nations have
benefited from mining within their boundaries,
in general, First Nations bear an unfair burden
at every point in the mining process, from the
registration of claims to exploration, production,
and abandonment of closed sites. Urgent law
reform is needed to shift at least some of that
burden onto government and industry. Current
law presumes that mining is an acceptable
use of a piece of land, but the presumption
should instead be that aboriginal rights require
heightened scrutiny of mining activities. Reform
should ensure more First Nations involvement
in decision-making, increase environmental and
cultural protection, and balance the potential
benefits among all key stakeholders.
Page 8
The situation is particularly troublesome
given that international and Canadian law
require special protections for First Nations.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
Canada is party to international human rights
and environmental treaties that recognize the
unique connection between indigenous peoples
and the land. First Nations have the right to
self-determination, which includes the right to
decide how their traditional lands and resources
are used. They also have a right to practice their
culture, which requires the use of traditional
lands. Treaty law not only enumerates these rights
but also obligates Canada to ensure First Nations
are able to enjoy them. In addition, Canada has
a duty under international environmental law to
encourage sustainable development and protect
the quality of its environment. The Canadian
Constitution, meanwhile, establishes aboriginal
rights at the domestic level, and a growing body of
Canadian case law, notably the 2004 Haida Nation
v. British Columbia decision, has strengthened
the protection of First Nations by mandating
consultation with and accommodation of the
communities. Consultation and accommodation
by the government mandate good faith efforts
to understand each others concerns and move
to address them.
International and constitutional standards
thus provide a framework for the protection of
First Nations that calls for heightened scrutiny
of projects affecting these indigenous peoples
and the incorporation of aboriginal rights
into domestic mining law. The standards are
designed to give First Nations a voice in decision-
making through consultation and an assurance
that the environment with which they are linked
is healthy. B.C. mining laws on their face and in
their implementation, however, fail to guarantee
either.
Harvard Law Schools International Human
Rights Clinic (IHRC) has based this report on
a field mission to Taklas traditional territory
283
and surrounding areas in September 2009 and
follow-up research through May 2010.
Bearing the Burden The effects of mining on
First Nations in British Columbia.
This report was written by Bonnie Docherty,
lecturer on law and clinical instructor at Harvard
Law Schools International Human Rights Clinic
(IHRC), and by Susannah Knox, JD 10, Lauren
Pappone, JD 11, and Anne Siders, JD 10, all
students in IHRC. Docherty, Knox, and Pappone
conducted field research in British Columbia in
September 2009.
Siders provided additional research after the
mission. Tyler Giannini, director of IHRC and
lecturer on law, edited the report and wrote the
last chapter. Cara Solomon, communications
coordinator for Harvard Law Schools Human
Rights Program, reviewed the report.
>>>
The legitimate concerns raised by the First Nations over the
irrevocable damage being done to their traditional territories
by third party interests who are focused exclusively on
economic exploitation have long been ignored. In this, we
see once again that sense of legitimacy which preferences the
epistemological determinations effected through the process
of substantiation established with the advent of phonetic
writing: which is to say, an ontotheological value system
which originated in despotic absolutism.
As other than the economic interests which drive resource
extraction and exploitation, the concerns and considerations
of the First Nations have long been systematically excluded
from the decision-making processes used to legitimate third-
party incursions into their traditional territories; and this
continues to occur with a despicable consistency, despite
innumerable legal decisions upholding the sovereign rights of
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
the First Nations within their traditional territories.
This is a situation which has been consistently justified
throughout the modern era of European contact by way of a
common knowledge that the First Nations had no form of
writing, and no historical reality before Europeans arrived
in North America: a justification for exploitation which seems
to equate with the supposition that the ascription of identity
within phonetic forms of writing somehow give those who
affix such names a right of ownership over what has thus
been substantiated.
As Scott Watson notes:
Page 93-94
In March, 1991, British Columbia Supreme
Court Judge Alan McEachern handed down his
long-awaited decision on the land claims of the
Gitskan and Wetsuweten. These people, who live
in the northwest of the Province, have been in
court over issues like land and aboriginal rights
for over one hundred years. The judges text
revealed the workings of a mind within a white
supremacist frame of reference. For Canada,
despite the anti-apartheid roll its leaders like
to play on the international stage, like all the
countries of the New World, is founded on acts
of genocide that continue to this day. (South
Africas apartheid system was, in fact, modeled
after Canadas reservation system.) The very
way Canadians conceived the large territory
their nation claims sovereignty over is saturated
with a genocidal intent. Canadians are often
told that the challenge to visualize this territory,
to confront and psychically own the land of
Canada has been the highest task of her writers
and artists. But few question the relation of this
tradition to historical reality.
A key notion in the imaging of Canada is the
ideal of wilderness as empty, uninhabited,
284
unmapped, unnamed territory. The notion is used
in the McEachern judgment to metaphorically
dispossess the Gitskan and Wetsuweten of
land that for them is named, fabled, and criss-
crossed with an economy of use and knowledge.
In dismissing the land claim, McEachern refers
to the territory in question as a vast emptiness.
It was as if no one could be said to own this
emptiness: instead the territory sort of waited
for exploitation and ownership that would fill it
or bring it into a reality it could not yet be said
to participate in. For McEachern, in noticing
how empty the land was, also noted; There
are, unquestionably, immense forestry reserves
throughout the territory which are of great
economic value.
Wilderness denotes a special kind of imaginary
non-economy when thinking of land claims.
As McEachern puts it, It is common when one
thinks of Indian land claims, to think of Indians
living off the land in pristine wilderness. In
other words, McEachern is saying that Indians
are a part of nature. In any event, McEachern
really thinks pre-contact life must have been so
awful that the Gitskan ought to be grateful the
white man arrived and rescued them; it would
not be accurate to assume that even pre-contact
existence in the territory was in the least bit
idyllic. The plaintiffs ancestors had no written
language, no horses or wheeled vehicles, slavery
and starvation was not uncommon, wars with
neighboring peoples were common, and there is
no doubt, to quote Hobbes, that aboriginal life
in the territory was, at best, nasty, brutish and
short.
These characterizations serve as the basis
for McEacherns denial that the Gitskan and
Wetsuweten had sufficient social organization
or social continuity to conceptualize the territory
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
they claim as property. Representations of the
wilderness have been a terrible instrument in
law. They are part of a larger pattern of cultural
genocide. They have also been central to what
one would call the search for an essential-
Canadian in the countrys national literature
and art. These representations are not unlike the
representations in McEachern in that they too
function to erase First Nations presence, polity,
and, finally, humanity.
Scott Watson, Race, Wilderness, Territory and
the Origins of Modern Canadian Landscape
Painting; in Semiotext[e] Canadas. Copyright
1994 by Scott Watson; published in 1994 by
Semiotext[e], Columbia University, New York NY.
In a landmark 1997 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada
voided Judge McEacherns 1991 decision; and the Gitskan and
Wetsuweten were invited to file a new land claim.
As we have seen, the First Nations of North America did
in fact use a form of writing, as well as a system of survey
and mapping; both of which they themselves invented, long
before such techniques and technologies became established
elsewhere in the world.
Anametric image writing functions so very differently than
a phonetic alphabet does that, the very illegibility which
Husserl describes as the silence of prehistoric arcana ceases
to be a valid issue. In point of fact, an image-based form of
writing would by definition function without sound; and it
is only within the interpretive context of a phonetic form of
writing that this silence would equate with illegibility.
This very different approach to cognizing writing, and
that very different approach to thinking compelled by any
encounter with this earth, results in a very different way of
relating to that which surrounds us, that which we spend our
lives immersed within:
285
Page xx
Many non-Western (indigenous, rural,
etc.) populations of the world conceive of the
community and the relationship with nature,
knowledge, historical experience, memory,
time, and space as configuring ways of life that
cannot be reduced to Eurocentric conceptions
and cultures. For instance, the definition of the
identity of peoples in the non-Western world and
of their collective rights tends to be strictly bound
to a notion of territoriality associated with
responsibilities in relation to a territory, which is
defined as a collective of spaces, human groups
(including both the living and their ancestors),
rivers, forests, animals, and plants. Differences
between worldviews become explicit and turn
into sites of struggle when the integrity of these
collectives is threatened by alternative notions of
relationships to territory and knowledge - such
as those that are based on the right to property
- or when the distinction between the respect
for culture and the imperative of development
is used to justify the exploitation of natural
resources by outside forces.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Joao Arriscado
Nunes, and Maria Paula Meneses,
Introduction, in Another Knowledge Is Possible:
Beyond northern epistemologies.
Equating phonetic forms of writing with the rationality
that defines knowledge is an ontotheological determination
known as phonocentrism: a logos of the voice that
substantiates the nature of reality as objective. Truth here
becomes what is named, instead of what is seen to be.
Thus, a phonetically-based equation of silence with
illegibility has also emerged as an additional justification
for completely ignoring the knowledge produced outside
of characteristically European systems of phonetic speech
and writing. Yet as we have seen, the First Nations of North
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing
America have a history of surveying and mapping their
traditional territories which extends back tens of thousands
of years. Theirs is a truly ecological, rather than egological,
approach to the reality of these territories.
Undeniably, the depth of knowledge that the First Nations
have amassed over countless millennia concerning the
intricate interconnectedness of the living beings found within
their traditional territories must be seen to supersede any
economic considerations imposed upon them by outside
interests.
>>>
We began this inquiry looking for the origin of writing; and
we found that. In the course of this inquiry, we endeavored
to investigate the origin of consciousness-of-self in Ice Age
Europe; and we did that. However, I must say I am of the
opinion that, whatever insights might have been gained
in this way into the evolution of our modern human
consciousness, these certainly would not be worth a single
one of the many runs of wild salmon being destroy in British
Columbia by the commercial farming of fish.
We would need one more example in order to establish
another plane of consistency here; which would define an
econoplane of exploitation: but I will leave such points
for my readers to determine, in accordance with their own
specific circumstances.
I suspect, though, that determining the slope of this
particular plane would simply be a matter of seeing whose
pockets money is falling into, and whose traditional
territories it is flowing out of. In that context, stratic vectors
would then become readily apparent; as differences-in-kind
defined in terms of concealment and unconcealment: as
reciprocal relationships holding between what is said, and
what is actually done.
As Derrida has pointed out, a very large part of the problem
we are encountering here is that the line has become a
286
(paradigmatic) model: this is to say, the very basic structural
aspects of phonetic writing, as established at its Middle
Eastern point-of-origin, shape the way in which thinking
proceeds within the dominant culture of Western society.
To put it another way, consciousness-of-self is always
consciousness as itself; and as we have seen, this now forms
in our modern era from a subjectless transcendental field,
of which writing constitutes a very large part. Yet this
process necessarily involves non-conscious processes which,
in articulating with conscious states, invariably play a
fundamental role in how consciousness-of-self comes to be
formed.
As Sartre consistently asserts, consciousness is necessarily
transparent to itself; and as a result, a linear thinking which
proceeds by way of substantiation simply cannot see itself as
such: consciousness constantly forgets the processes through
which it forms.
The structural elements within thought that determine the
ways in which it shapes itself have come to be referred to as
philosophemes: much as individual sounds, as phonemes,
make up the basic structures of phonetic speech and writing,
so philosophemes define basic patterns of thought.
We encountered one very evident example of a
philosopheme when we considered the central role played
by presence/the present in the metaphysics of Western
thought; that is, as a basic rule of how Western thought
conceives time, experience, objectivity, and change.
In this way, such philosophemes define the
epistemological characteristics of thought; and thus ground
the kinds of ontotheological judgments we have necessarily
critiqued in the course of this inquiry.
Such very basic structural components of thought are
extremely difficult to isolate within themselves. As Bergson
noted, it is a characteristic of numerical multiplicities that
they retained their inherent measure in being divided up:
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton 12.0) The Origin of Writing 287

so if we have one length of two meters, and cut it into two

lengths of one meter each, it might seem that we have made
a difference; but in truth, we are still working in terms
of meters. Similarly, the philosophic analysis of thought
has historically proceeded in terms of being; that is, as
conceptualized within a context of presence/the present:
and this is what has been referred to as the closure of
Western metaphysics.

Only temporal distinctions divide by difference-in-kind; and

this requires that the principle of division must come from
outside and be other, that it originate elsewhere than the
situation which is changing.

We saw this clearly when we considered the nature of

concepts, and events: the addition of new components
invariably changed the way in which whatever we were
dealing with came to be formed.

We must conclude, then, that the Eurocentric nature of

Western thought will only ever become aware of its own
inherent structure if and when it is exposed to ways of
thinking which are not those that it habitually employs.
Thinking is by nature compelled of the encounter with this
earth, in turning toward that which gives its existence; yet it
remains unaware of the way in which it turns until a sense of
direction forms from alternative approaches to experiencing
the real.

It is my belief that, in turning toward a consideration of the

First Nations system of anametric image writing, Western
culture might regain at least a modest portion of the essential
nature of truth which was lost to it at the advent of phonetic
writing.

It is my hope that the efforts I have undertaken here will

aid the First Nations in regaining some historical aspects of
their culture which were forcibly taken from them through
the Residential School system.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton Running Bibliography 288

Running Bibliography Ren Descartes

Meditations on First Philosophy
Jacques Derrida (translated by John P. Leavey, Jr.) Translated by Michael Moriarty; copyright 2008 by Michael
Edmund Husserls Origin of Geometry: An Introduction Moriarty.
Copyright 1962 by the Presses Universities de France Published by Oxford University Press.
Translation copyright 1978 by John P. Leavey, Jr.
Published by the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and
London
First Bison Book printing, 1989 Deng Ming-Tao
Chronicles of Tao
Copyright 1993 by Deng Ming-Tao
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind Published by HarperCollins Publications, New York NY
Copyright 1994 by BasicBooks, a division of HarperCollins
Publishers Inc.
Tarthang Tulku
Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga
Ian Tattersall Copyright 1978, 2007 by Dharma Publishing
How we came to be HUMAN Printed, and beautifully bound, by Dharma Press, California
Scientific American magazine; Volume 16, Number 2, 2006:
Special Edition, Becoming Human; pages 66-73.
Jared Diamond
The Third Chimpanzee
Jean-Paul Sartre (translated by Jonathan Webber) Copyright 1992 by Jared Diamond
The Imaginary: A phenomenological psychology of the Published by HarperCollins Publishers, New York NY.
imagination
Translation copyright 2004 by Routledge; reprinted in 2006
Published by Routledge New York NY Henri Bergson
First published in 1940 Matter and Memory
Translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer
Published 1988 by Urzone Inc.; all rights reserved.
Melvyn Goodale and David Milner Zone Books, New York NY.
Sight Unseen
Copyright 2004, 2005 by Goodale and Milner
Published by the Oxford University Press Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
What Is Philosophy?
Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell
Michel Foucault Originally published as Quest que la philosophie? by Les
History of Madness Editions de Minuit, Paris; Translation copyright 1994 by Columbia
English translation copyright 2006, 2009 by Routledge. University Press.
Published by Routledge Published by Columbia University Press, New York NY.
Original edition copyright 1972 by Editions GALLIMARD, Paris.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton Running Bibliography 289

Gilles Deleuze (Translation by Anne Boyman)

Pure Immanence: Essays on a life (first paperback edition) Gilles Deleuze
Copyright 2001 by Urzone, Inc. Bergsonism
Published 2005 by Zone Books, New York NY Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam
Copyright 1988 by Urzone, Inc.
Published1991 by Zone Books, New York NY
Thomas Cleary
The Secret of the Golden Flower;
The Classic Chinese Book of Life. Charles Stivales website
Translated by Thomas Cleary; copyright 1991 by Thomas Cleary. Charles J. Stivale,
Published by HarperCollins Publishers, New York NY. Romance Languages & Literatures, Wayne State University
http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/D-G/ABC1.html

Taoist Meditation: Methods for Cultivating a Healthy Mind and

Body Katherine Milton
Translated and compiled by Thomas Cleary Diet and Primate Evolution
Copyright 2000 by Thomas Cleary Scientific American Vol. 16, No. 2 2006
Published by Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boston, MA. Special Edition: Becoming Human: The Evolution and Rise of
Intelligence.

The Book of Balance and Harmony: A Taoist Handbook

Translated by Thomas Cleary William H. Calvin
Copyright 1989 by Thomas Cleary The Emergence of Intelligence
Published by Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boston, MA. Scientific American Vol. 16, No. 2 2006
Special Edition: Becoming Human: The Evolution and Rise of
Intelligence.
Awaking to the Tao
Liu I-Ming
Translated by Thomas Cleary Felix Guattari
Copyright 1988 by Thomas Cleary The Place of the Signifier ion the Institution
Published by Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boston, MA. translated by Gary Genosko; in
The Guattari Reader; edited by Gary Genosko
Copyright 1996 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford UK
Marcus E, Raichle
The Brains Dark Energy
Scientific American, March 2010 Giorgio Agamben
The Signature of All Things: On Method
Translated by Luca DIsanto and Kevin Attell
Gregory Currie Copyright 2009 by Urzone Inc.
Visual Imagery as the Simulation of Vision published by Zone Books, Brooklyn, NY USA.
in Mind and Language, Vol. 10, No 1/2, March/June 1995.
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton Running Bibliography 290

Georges Bataille Wen Li, Erin Luxenberg, Todd Parrish, and Jay A. Gottfried;
The Accursed Share, Volume 1 Learning to Smell the Roses: Experience-Dependent Plasticity
Translated by Robert Hurley in Human Piriform and Orbitofrontal Cortices.
Copyright 1989 by Urzone Inc. Neuron 52, 1097-1108, Dec. 21, 2006.
Published by Zone Books New York, NY
Originally published as La Part Maudite
Copyright 1967 by Les Editions de Minuit. Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D.
The Olfactory Limbic System: Sex, Emotion, Pheromones,
Learning, Memory, and Limbic System Evolution.
Robert French From: Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, Clinical Neuroscience
The Geometry of Visual Space 3rd Edition, (Academic Press, 2000; New York.
Nous, Vol. 21, no. 2 (June 1987) http://brainmind.com/OlfactoryLimbicSystem.html

Vincent A, Billock and Brian H. Tsou Kate Wong, The Morning of the Modern Mind, in
Seeing Forbidden Colors Scientific American magazine; Volume 16, Number 2, 2006:
Scientific American, February 2010. Special Edition, Becoming Human: Evolution and the Rise of
Intelligence.

Ian Tattersall
How we came to be HUMAN, in L.-R. Nougier
Scientific American Vol. 16, No. 2 2006 Prehistoric Archeology.
Special Edition: Becoming Human: The Evolution and Rise of in Larousse Encyclopedia of Archeology
Intelligence. General editor: Gilbert Charles-Picard
Translated by Anne Ward
English translation copyright 1972 by The Hamlyn Group
Ferrine Spector and Daphne Maurer, Fifth impression published in 1976 by The Hamlyn Publishing
Synesthesia: A New Approach to Understanding the Development Group Ltd.
of Perception. Copyright 1972 by Librairie LAROUSSE and The Hamlyn Group
McMaster University.

Albert Filice
Jay A. Gorrfried and Raymond J. Dolan, Considering the film Solaris
Functional Imaging Laboratory, in Philosophy Now magazine,
Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience. Issue 77, February/March 2010.
The Nose Smells What the Eye Sees:
Crossmodal Visual Facilitation of Human Olfactory Perception.
Neuron, Vol. 39, 375-386, July 17, 2004. Colin Renfrew and Paul Bohn
Copyright 2003 by Cell Press. Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practices, Third Edition.
Copyright 1991, 1996, and 2000 by Thames and Hudson Ltd,
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton Running Bibliography 291

London. Carl Zimmer

Text copyright 1991, 1996, and 2000 by Colin Renfrew and Paul Masters of an Ancient Sky;
Bohn. Discover Magazine
Published by Thames and Hudson Inc. New York NY. February 1994.

James Burke and Robert Ornstein, Dr. John R. Baker

The Axemakers Gift. First Glimpse
Copyright 1995 by James Burke and Robert Ornstein. Internal Arts Magazine
Published by G. P. Putnams Sons, New York NY. Vol. 6, #2, Spring 1991)

Julian Jaynes Edmund T. Rolls

The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The The Rules of Formation of the Olfactory Representations Found
Bicameral Mind in the Orbitofrontal Cortex Olfactory Areas in Primates.
Copyright 1976 by Julian Jaynes Oxford Journal of the Chemical Senses
Published in Canada 1978 by the University of Toronto Press, 26: 595-604, 2001.
Toronto Ontario.

Benjamin Lee Whorf, Selected writings edited by John B. Carroll

Richard Dawkins Language, Thought, & Reality
The God Delusion Copyright 1956 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Copyright 2006 by Richard Dawkins Fourteenth printing 1979 by MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts
Published by Bantam Books, a division of Transworld Publishers;
located, presumably, around the world.
Boavantura de Sousa Santos, editor
Another Knowledge Is Possible: Beyond northern epistemologies
George Bataille Copyright in the collection by Verso, 2008
The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric art and culture. Copyright by individual contributors 2007, 2008
Translated by Michelle Kendall and Stuart Kendall. Printed by Verso, an imprint of New Left Books, London and New
Copyright 2005 by Urzone, Inc. York, NY. Volume 3 in, Reinventing Social Emancipation: Toward
Published 2005 by Zone Books, New York NY New Manifestos

Ward Churchill Jacques Derrida

Kill The Indian, Save The Man: The genocidal impact of American Semiology and Grammatology: an interview with Julia Kristeva;
Indian residential schools. in Positions.
Copyright 2004 by Ward Churchill Translated by Alan Bass; English translation copyright 1981 by The
Published by City Lights Books, San Francisco University of Chicago Press (2004 edition).
The Origin of Writing - copyright 2010 by John Morton
Franz Boas
Indian Myths and Legends from the North Pacific Coast of
America.
Translated from the 1895 edition by Dietrich Bertz.
Copyright 2002 by the B.C. Indian Language Project and Dietrich
Bertz.
Martin Heidegger
On the Essence of Truth; in Basic Writings,
edited by David Farrell Krell;
English translation copyright 1977 by Harper and
Row, Publishers Inc. New York NY.
Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Copyright 1999, 1997 by Jared Diamond.
Published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York NY.
Henriette Mertz,
Pale Ink; copyright 1953 by Henriette Mertz.
http://www.sacred_texts.com/earth/pi/pi03.htm
Russell Means,
The Same Old Song, in
Marxism and Native Americans
Ward Churchill, editor
Copyright 1983 by Ward Churchill
Third Printing, 1992 by South End Press, Cambridge, MA
Scott Watson
Race, Wilderness, Territory and
the Origins of Modern Canadian Landscape
Painting; in Semiotext[e] Canadas.
Copyright 1994 by Scott Watson; published in 1994 by
Semiotext[e], Columbia University, New York NY.
Running Bibliography 292
Traditional Description of Chinese Dragons
Text courtesy US Embassy in Taiwan
http://www.taipei.org/teco/cicc/
Dragons Fighting Tigers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon
Wikipedia
History of Writing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing
General Properties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_systems
Fu Xi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Xi
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission
http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=4
Were Egyptians The First Scribes?
published by BBC Science at 19:38 GMT
Tuesday, December 15, 1998;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/235724.stm
Paul Rincon, BBC Science
Earliest writing found in China.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2956925.stm
Bearing the Burden
The effects of mining on
First Nations in British Columbia.
This report was written by Bonnie Docherty, lecturer on law and
clinical instructor at Harvard Law Schools International Human
Rights Clinic (IHRC), and by Susannah Knox, JD 10, Lauren
Pappone, JD 11, and Anne Siders, JD 10, all students in IHRC.
Docherty, Knox, and Pappone conducted field research in British
Columbia in September 2009.
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