Intangible Materialism: The Body, Scientific Knowledge, and the Power of Language

Acknowledgments

ix In chapter 2 of this book, I cite Stephen Jay Gould’s remarkable description of the encyclopedic procedure of Darwin’s work. “Whenever he introduces a major subject,” Gould writes, “Darwin fires a volley of disparate facts, all related to the argument at hand—usually the claim that a particular phenomenon originated as a product of history. . . . Darwin’s greatest intellectual strength lay in his ability to forge connections and perceive webs of implication (that more conventional thinking in linear order might miss). When Darwin could not cite direct evidence for actual stages in an evolutionary sequence, he relied upon consilience—and sunk enough roots in enough directions to provide adequate support for a single sturdy trunk of explanation.” The varied roots Darwin sinks are beyond the ability of most people, and the rest of us have to depend on the patience and wisdom of our friends and colleagues in order to support the branches of explanation we pursue. More than usual, I think, I have benefited from such people in order to gather my argument and organize my thinking. Chief among my helpers on this project have been my sons, Benjamin and Cyrus, to whom I dedicate this book. Ben, who studies neuroscience, read through many parts of the manuscript and kept me from many (though I fear not all) mistakes about science. His interest in the neurological bases of music—and also, I hope, his joyful sense of experience—can be seen throughout this book. Cy works in the sociology of religion; much of chapter 5 benefited from his thoughtful ecumenical sense of the place and power of religion in people’s lives, and the whole has benefited from his generous ability to comprehend and respect what others hold dear. It’s a great pleasure Acknowledgments x Acknowledgments to learn from our children—and even greater to share in common pursuits with them. A good deal of the fun and fulfillment of working on Intangible Materialism stems from the three of us sharing our different interests concerning many of the issues examined in this book. Many others shared thoughts about these and other issues. James Hawthorne is chief among my supportive friends on this project: his knowledge of philosophy of mind helped guide early chapters, and his generous personal correspondences, which I have liberally called on throughout this book (even when we didn’t agree), and his careful emendations have repeatedly made the organization of my argument clearer. Tania Venediktova helped me devise the current title, which replaced an unspeakable earlier title I mention in chapter 1; Robert Markley’s conversation and friendship enriched and continues to enrich my thinking, keeping me precise and also lively; I appreciate Daniel Cottom’s general goodwill and precision for details of argument; Russell Reising’s imagination and excitement make work fun; and the intelligent good cheer of Nancy West benefits all around her. Still others who contributed to this work include my colleagues at the University of Oklahoma—Susan Kates, Alan Velie, Eve Bannet, Vince Leitch, Tim Murphy, Peter Barker, Ellen Greene, Henry McDonald, Francesca Sawaya, Jonathan Stalling, Christopher Carter, and Lawrence Frank, all of whom often contributed to my sense of the shape of my argument without their knowing. On the other hand, the director of the University of Minnesota Press, Doug Armato, seemed to know better than I did, encouraging this project to completion with remarkably consistent and patient support . Intangible Materialism benefited greatly from the readers he chose, Andrzej Warminski and another anonymous reader, whose thoughtful and sympathetic criticism clarified and enlarged my vision . Finally, friends and coauthors Sheila Crow, Robert Con Davis, J. L. Jacobs, Daniele McDowell, Nancy Mergler, Jerry Vannatta, Alan Velie, and Nancy West contributed in substantial ways to this project. They have done so because much of the working out of the argument of this book is built on—though I hope in no “reductionist” way—and developed from various intellectual pursuits I have undertaken both seemingly by myself and explicitly with others over many years. My interest in semiotics began with the translation (with Daniele McDowell and Alan Velie) of A. J. Greimas’s Structural Semantics and my subsequent book on Greimassian semiotics, A. J. Greimas and the Nature of Meaning. Greimas marks important mo- Acknowledgments xi ments in the present argument. The situation of semiotics as a science is further elaborated in Culture and Cognition, which I coauthored with...