Essay by Henry P. Mills
Percy's brilliance as a philosopher and scientist of language (in contrast to his achievements as an artist) has in many ways been overlooked and underappreciated by many of the thinkers who have treated him. The following will attempt to rectify this situation by presenting a distilled, yet thorough consideration of his primary reflections upon language and mankind. Throughout these writings, Percy argues for the unusual, unprecedented nature of human language, knowing, and being. Indeed, Percy's synthesis of ideas and fields is unusually rich, if not wholly original, and as such deserves careful consideration, drawing as he does from science, philosophy, and semiotics. Each helped shape a vision that is as singular as are its claims.
As a brief introit, Percy believed that we must begin with language in any exploration seeking to come to terms with the nature of mankind and its relationship to the world within which it exists and participates. For as "symbol-mongerers," he would offer, the species homo sapiens has a peculiar relationship to and role in the cosmos, which together stand curiously unaccompanied. Rather than beginning with biology alone, therefore, he believed we must begin with language, because it, after all, is what allows us to conceive of "biology." More to the point, he suggests that the strange ability to manipulate symbols demarcates for mankind an odd scenario relative to other organisms, one wherein humans must face the twin predicaments of "meaning" and of "self," as well as their related crises.
Consequently, in Percy's vision, nothing less than a thorough consideration of the "singularity" that is language would lead us then, he argued, to an encompassing viewpoint upon the human species in all its unusual, enigmatic complexity, and his ideas serve to clarify lucidly and rigorously just exactly why human existence is distinctive (if not also problematic). In addition, given that he sets his model of language in a cosmological context as seen from the twin vantage points of both science and philosophy-rather than one or the other alone-Percy's ideas have an unusual substance to them, wherever one eventually decides to take them, and despite any errors he may have committed along the way. But creative thought such as his requires nothing less than such risk, and some of humanity's boldest advances are indebted to attempts like his by individuals who, like him, strive to think in new ways, strive to develop a new vocabulary by which to define and envision the world.
The Goal of this Essay
The following essay introduces the reader to the fundamentals underlying Percy's perspective as found primarily in his Message in the
Bottle (1975) and takes the following route: As it is within the universe in which we exist, we will first look to isolate and analyze
the phenomenon of language and consciousness in such a context. After more fully defining language as an intentional "triadic"
event, we then will consider the disparate relationship between human experience and that of other organisms. In particular, we
will be interested in identifying the unusual manner by which language forces us to confront the world.
Next, we will proceed to consider mankind's ability to share consciousness and our leap into the realm of "meaning," among
other significant features and products of both consciousness and language as they relate to science. In terms of this last subject,
we will explore the relationship between science and language in detail. This portion will include a careful analysis of scientific
methodology and demonstrate where it is unable to account for language.
Overall, then, some of the specific questions we will consider are the following: What is language? What is its relationship as a phenomenon among other phenomena? What exactly does it enable us as a species to do? How does it "orient" us to the universe? What kind of relationship does it establish between its users? And where does language elude science even as the latter is dependent upon it?
As we begin our inquiry into Percy's thoughts on language, to be direct about the matter of "language" is about all we can do in any desire to explain it (for reasons soon to be made apparent), so we must begin with a direct question and ask, What is language? But of course, the reader will recognize that such a question is not easily answerable, for implicit within the question is language itself, which is no small problem! [1]
As Percy explains, the problem is one of looking "at" rather than "through" language, for it is language that allows us the ability to conceive of "language." For instance, in one of his many essays on the subject, Percy the philosopher offers that "trying to penetrate the act of naming [i.e. language] is like trying to see a mirror while standing in front of it. Since symbolization is the very condition of our knowing anything, trying to get hold of it is like trying to get hold of the means by which we get hold of everything else." [2]
We are from the start, then, caught within a circle of sorts, trying to objectify the means by which we conceive, to make external that which is inviolably internal. In fact, you might say that we are trying to come to terms with that which gives us our terms! A strange predicament indeed. Yet this is merely the first problematic of many which we will consider throughout the following exploration of language and its relationship to consciousness. Let us, however, temporarily suspend this first complexity for the moment by situating language in another context, by making an attempt to understand it via comparison.
Let us modify our question, then, to the following: What is language as a phenomenon compared to other phenomena in the universe? (No doubt, this context is the most encompassing one we readily can admit). This particular question, indeed, is precisely what Percy has meditated upon at great length in his considerations of language and mankind. And perhaps most interesting of all is that his perspective, moreover--as will be demonstrated--is one that is empirical (scientific), even as it is philosophical.
By attempting to consider language from an extra-linguistic vantage point--to whatever extent we actually are able to do this--as a singular phenomenon alongside other phenomena, we can thus attempt to sidestep our immersion in language. With any good fortune, we then will be able to gain a better view upon mankind's capacity to manipulate language. So as our first task, let us, therefore, consider the more general phenomena of the universe before returning to language--that is, establish the context in which to discuss it.

Despite all its manifold complexity and vastness, the universe and all known phenomena within it, Percy tells us, may be accurately described according to one term: dyadic["dy-" fr. Gk dyo, meaning "pair" or "two"]. This is to say more specifically that all the numerous physical systems of the universe can be comprehended as events in which one given force or entity is acted upon by another in a cause-and-effect relationship as represented by the following equation: A --> B, or vice versa. For example, such typical spacetime events as particle combinations, energy exchanges, gravity attractions, field forces, etc., all may be understood as dyadic, cause-and-effect occurrences. [3]
The Horsehead Nebula
Whether we are talking about such individual events, then, as white dwarfs, red giants, or supernovas, or in turn the larger galactic systems of which these individual spacetime events are but parts, each system is comprised of "dyadic" interactions. Even with the multiplication of all these various phenomena together as they embody a given (larger) system, they nevertheless can all be comprehended as dyadic cause-and-effect relationships, for all such events may be understood functionally as one variable (A) as influenced by or made a product of another (B) and so on. See diagrams 1 and 2.
Variable A --> Variable B --> Variable C
which in turn creates
Event A --> Event B --> and so on
Diagram 1 illustrates the manner in which smaller scale dyadic sequences combine to form larger spacetime events, systems, etc.

Diagram 2 illustrates how even a system as inconceivably vast as the universe itself can be understood as a dyadic system. Source: LC, 87.
Here on the Earth, this understanding about the dyadicity of the universe is likewise true for organisms and the biology of which they are composed. For example, whether an internal biological exchange involving chemical reactions, cell transactions or any other bodily processes, or whether an exchange that is external (such as feeding, breathing, or reproducing) each biological activity/exchange is dyadic in nature. For instance, we might note that reproduction for all higher organisms involves the interaction of two differentially-sexed members of a given species. The combination of the sperm of the male with the ovum of the female forms a new organism, whose own body will in turn develop in accord to the dyadic systems model. Whether directed at internal homeostasis, then, or at satisfying environmental needs, all biological interactions of the living biological organism are dyadic. See diagram 3.

Diagram 3 illustrates the interactions of an organism within itself (A-B), between itself and other members of its species (C-D), and with the environment (E-F).
Thus, in sum, the entire cosmos (both the inorganic and the organic) can be explained as one huge dyadic system comprised of smaller dyadic systems, all of which operate according to the cause-effect formula--that is, with one exception: SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE. Let us consider how this is so by returning to our reformulated question; that is, What is language as a phenomenon compared to other phenomena in the universe?
In answer to our question, Percy offers that human language, unlike the known cosmos, is not reduceable to the level of a dyadic relationship and instead must be understood as a triadic phenomenon standing in marked contrast to the context in which it is found ["tri-" fr. Gk tri-, meaning "three"]. In particular, this is true because human language involves the manipulation of "signs," another term we may use for symbols.
To explain in more detail: "triadic" is Percy's term for describing the unparalleled spacetime event that occurs between the three-part relationship of the "sign-using self," the "sign," and the "object/referent" of that sign--all of which together comprise the act of "symbolization."[4]
For instance, we might take the example of the sign "book." The four letters which comprise this sign signify to the willing reader or hearer the object which is known by that sign, namely a hand-held, square object that binds together multiple pages inscribed with text. Thus as "sign-users," we each agree that the sign "book" stands for the "object" known by that name. This pairing may be termed as a symbol-meaning relationship. See diagram 4.

Diagram 4 illustrates the three-part relationship between the sign-user, sign, and its object/referent. The association between the sign (or symbol) and its referent may be understood as a symbol-meaning relationship that is "imputed," as defined below.In regard to our example of "book" above, we might further note also that the text of a book is itself comprised of chains of signs (in the form of sentences) that signify meaning to the reader, just as for instance this sentence is comprised of multiple signs that you are reading now. In fact, though it is not readily perceptible, with some thought the reader will observe that human existence is permeated through and through with signs (just as in a book), for whenever and wherever one looks, even as one looks, he or she is using language to make sense of "what" is being seen. One might even go so far as to say that we are virtually bombarded by signs, sometimes more than we care for.
For example, certainly, a prime benefit of returning home at the end of a day for all of us is that, in such a closed environment, we have greater control over the amount and kinds of signs that enter; for instance, we choose when and whether or not to answer the phone, to watch television, to read, or to "log-on," etc. Indeed, as for this latter, it may be that the Internet itself is the greatest and most densely concentrated battery of signs that humanity has ever been exposed to for both the quantity of information available and the rapidity by which it may be had! Who among us Internet users does not know the effects of what might be called the "brain-data oversaturation effect" from our having spent too many hours focused solely on the screen of our computer. And certainly, this writer himself downloads far more text than he will ever have a chance to skim, let alone read!
Be these things as they may, let us return to the thought that our main concern now is to recognize that all these signs (however they enter our minds and our homes) may be understood according to the triadic model we have here initially proposed. (In the next section we will be examining the mechanics of this model and the symbol-meaning relationship more closely.)
Thus, to conclude, I wish directly to assert what has been identified about symbolic language: namely that, as a triadic occurrence in a dyadic universe, the "language event" is a wholly unique, unprecedented phenomenon! Moreover, as far as we know, there is no other equivalent coalescence of elements within the universe that in any close degree approximates mankind's singular fascination and obsession with language. As Percy describes us, we are nothing less than "symbol-mongering" organisms. Indeed, evidence that language is such a significant feature of our existence as a species is clearly indicated when we note that estimates place the number of distinct human languages in excess of 4000.[5]
In addition, as a final example affirming the qualitative uniqueness of language as a phenomenon, let us note that is only through the "triad" that we are able to conceive of the "dyad." For as we have already noted in the examples of books (and the Internet), all recorded knowledge is indebted to the symbolic triangle. This capacity for manipulation of a triadic system is what Percy calls the DELTA FACTOR, a term he uses to signify mankind's unmatched level of relationship to and interaction with the cosmos. [In Greek the letter delta is represented as a triangle].[6]
Thus, as a first insight into
consciousness, we can understand that is it woven through and through with
triadic symbolization in the form of signs, as symbolization allows us to
assign names to the phenomena of the natural world and oneself. (How
successful we fully do either, is an issue we will not presently engage). Let
us now take a closer look at the nature of the symbol-meaning relationship at
the heart of the "triad" and the "delta factor." From there, we will move on to
consider how language assists the human organism relative to other organisms.
The sun may be understood as a dyadic phenomenon;
the sentence stating so may not.
Let us ask, What is the nature of the symbol-meaning relationship which leads the triadic langauge event to supersede the dyadic event? As we are about to see, the answer to this question will lead us directly to another unusual property at the core of consciousness.
The answer is that the symbol-meaning relationship established between the sign and its referent involves an act of intentionality by the sign-user. For instance, as described above, the sign "book" is selectively intended by the English-thinking mind as meaning, as standing in place of, the object it represents. Thus when we encounter a new word we do not know, we ask, "What do you mean (or intend) by that term?" Given the answer, we then can incorporate the term [or sign] into our larger pool of vocabulary.
The same principle holds true when we encounter a new phenomenon which we don't recognize as a part of our broader field of experience. For example, say you are a continental denizen of the late 19th century, and you are interested in identifying a new stylistic trend in the art world characterized by a "dissolved, blurred sense of form," a "subtle, yet pure use of color," and an "overall mood of sensual immediacy" as associated with the work of Monet, Renoir, and the like. Once revealed as the art school known as "Impressionism," you can readily identify with the trend and respond to it more fully, for it has then become a part of your "world" (more about this last term below).
So it is, then, that in any situation like the above we frequently long to have a name for a given unidentified phenomenon in order that it may be integrated into our larger system of conscious knowledge. Such, in fact, is the primary characteristic (and perhaps burden) of being a conscious, symbol-using being: we have an overwhelming need to structure our experience through the act of "naming." And naming is, as has just been suggested, inherently an act of intentionality in relationship to the phenomenon being named (i.e., the triadic event) and to the community in which the "name" is meaningful.
In Percy's words, "the act of consciousness is the intending of the object as being what it is for both of us under the auspices of the symbol [or sign].[7] Thereby does the given object or phenomenon become "focused" for us by the perceiving mind, ready for future use. For instance, to refer back to the example concerning "impressionism," the art viewer now has a completely new tool by which to identify tendencies in the art world as well as by which to communicate his or her own thoughts about that trend to others who share an (intentional) understanding of the term themselves.
It is of course pertinent to note here that, except in the case of onomatopoeia (e.g., spatter, slice, boom, etc.), there is no "real-world" relationship between the sign and its referent. (For this reason, the line between the two is dotted and described as "imputed" in Diagram 4 above). The association between the two is purely conventional, as for instance what is known by the sign "book" in English is known by the sign livre in French, libro in Spanish, etc. All symbolic language thus may be understood to operate by the tacit mechanism of intentionality, whether we are aware of it or not. In short, to identify a symbol-meaning relationship is to intend it.
Let us now, however, take one more step closer to the symbol-meaning relationship we have identified as an intentional, imputed bond, asking, What is the connector or mediator of this relation? The reply to this question will help focus our understanding of why we identify this bond as intentional, rather than as dyadic in the form of a more plain stimulus-response sequence (for example, a dog who, at his master's utterance "ball," goes to look for the round object).
The answer to our question is as simple as it is elegant, though in its simplicity, its powers should not be underestimated. The connector that makes the symbol-meaning relationship possible is the copula "is": the sign "book" in our respective minds is its referent. (We can't even avoid the copula in our answer!) That is to say, "book" stands for the object known by that name, which both you and I have agreed to accept as a meaningful relationship. But the four-letter sign "book" doesn't just point to the object it refers to: it names it in what must be seen as a denotative relationship, not one that is simply stimulatory.
For instance, we will all agree that words (signs) have both denotations and connotations, the latter being a deviation of meaning from the former's more direct one-to-one relationship with its referent. In fact, we might observe that the connotative value of language is of particular importance to poetry. The more imaginative and suggestive a poet's use of connotative language is (e.g. metaphor), the more complex will the poem's signification value be, the more "meaning" will the poem be said to have. However, such complex signification processes as are present in a poem, though of a higher degree, are in kind generically the same as what is present in the "naming act" (or the act of simple denotation) we have identified as so fundamental to human existence. And all is made possible by the mind's implicit manipulation of the "is" copula.
For this reason, therefore, words can be said to have "meaning" rather simply be described as a stimulus-response (dyadic) sequence. As Percy phrases it, "in its essence the making and the receiving of the naming act consist in a coupling, an apposition of two real entities, the uttered name and the object. It is this pairing which is unique and unprecedented" as an event, a pairing made possible solely by the human capacity to intend relationships via the copula "is." [8] Let's take one other example to illustrate the uniqueness of the symbol-meaning pairing as a triadic event involving an intended copula.
There is a qualitative difference between say, an individual's flight response to the sign-utterance "Fire!" when it is yelled out in a crowded theater, and the situation in which a father tells a child that this phenomenon before him of leaping light and scorching heat is "fire." The individual's response in the theater is essentially the same as the dog's response at the command "ball." There is need for little conscious thought for what to do at such a cue. Yet there is a world of difference for the scenario involving the child, for he comes to learn (through the intentional act) that this odd little sound means the dancing flame he is watching. For him, a new symbol-meaning bond has been forged to remain an enduring part of his mind's repertoire of symbols.
As an experiment in witness to the symbol-meaning transformation of the sign as it comes to "mean" its referent, as in the child's case with "fire," one needs only repeat steadily out loud a sign such as "apple" as many times as possible in as short a time as you can. Such an exercise will split the fused symbol-meaning relationship to expose the sign for the drab little vocable (or sound) it is. Try it. In a parallel fashion, we might note that the more use a term has in a given cultural population at any particular time, the more "watered-down" the term's meaning will become.
Thus, we may understand that signs, based in the copula "is," don't simply point to their referents, they in a certain sense are their referents as made possible by the intending, imputing mind. See Diagram 5.
Diagram 5 illustrates the intentional relationship between the sign and its referent which is an imputed association involving both denotation and connotation.
To conclude this section, let us affirm our second insight into the nature of consciousness, that it involves a property of intentionality as manifest in symbolic language. For thereby we enable ourselves to establish symbol-meaning relationships that can be manipulated in the abstract within discourse as signs. And what a wonderful quality this is, as it lies behind all representations of language: song, poetry, literature, mathematics, etc. The symbol-meaning relationship in essence cannot be escaped, coming at us in all directions, from both within and without! This is one of the prime reasons I have specified that language is the structure of consciousness as that vehicle which establishes relationship between signs and their referents. In Percy's words, "a being is affirmed as being what it is through its denotation by symbol...by laying something else alongside [it]: the symbol."[9] In short, to name is to affirm the existence of a being.[10]
We will be returning to discuss other dimensions of the symbol-meaning relationship later in the essay, but with the above explication of the way in which the triadic language event is formed, let us now turn our attention to a more pragmatic look at language.
Ontology and the Welt
Let us ask, What specifically does language enable the human organism to do? In simplest terms, language is a means of representation, the unique ability to translate experience into thought as embodied by symbols, or signs. In Percy's terms, though, what language specifically creates for the human organism is a "world" (or Welt), which forms the mind. This "world" stands in contrast to the "environment" (or Umwelt), the realm of our and other organisms' physical/biological existence. Let us explore these terms more fully, by asking, What is the central difference between the two?
A major difference between humans and other organisms is that the former exists simultaneously in the (triadic) realm of symbols even as we exist biologically. In contrast, the experiences of other organisms are limited to existence merely within the (dyadic) realm of biology alone. For example, while as symbolic creatures we might meditate upon what we might like to have for supper or where we might want to eat, the lion or tiger merely responds to his biological craving for food and goes in search of whatever meal he may happen upon or where habitually he has found food before. There is no symbolic deliberation on his part, merely behavioral response to the internal stimulus of his hunger. But let us push this difference further, asking, What are the results of existence within a Welt?
The human possession of a Welt (or world) has radical implications, for our experience is as a result generically different from the experience of all other organisms. They can be described as merely existing in an "environment" (Umwelt), with little or no recognition of this "existing," while we are inescapably aware of our lives and their mortal quality. Indeed, the precise issue is one of re-cognition, of the ability to transcend mere biological existence and enter into the realm of the "ontological" via the symbol. The term ontology denotes here a state of being wherein the existing entity has the capacity for conscious awareness of its own existence, that is, recognition of its being. Of course, hand in hand with a recognition of the full limits of one's being requires an awareness of death, of non-being. Perhaps this is why victims of natural catastrophes often proclaim themselves to have a renewed appreciation for their lives, because they have directly encountered their ontological state by facing a near-death experience. We might say they thereby became intent upon the sign "life," particularly as its definition applies to themselves. An intense meditation upon "death," inaugurated through suffering, cannot help but better define "life."
Thus, we learn next that another property of consciousness is the awareness of one's awareness, the conscious knowledge that "I exist." In a word, this may be captured via the term ontology. (This term should not be confused with that of "ontogeny," which means the course of development of an individual organism). Though on some level we might say that all living things have a degree of consciousness-for instance, a plant responding to the sun might loosely be called a kind of "consciousness" of the sun-it is important that we recognize such as dyadic and hence qualitatively the lesser in contrast to the ontology of triadic consciousness. The same holds true for any organism's biological awareness between what is inside and outside as it makes its way through and responds to its environment. In Percy's terms, then, the difference between symbol-using organisms and other organisms is that the former "are no longer oriented solely pragmatically toward their environment but ontologically as its co-knowers and co-celebrants."[11] The symbolic world is ontological by definition.
For example, we may say that humans are ontological creatures, navigating experience via symbols, whereas birds are not, even though they interact with other birds via calls or signals. We asks questions about meaning; they do not. We make plans about and anticipate the future; they do not. Let us consider, though, another example to illustrate further the nature of the leap into ontology, into the realm of "meaning."
Percy states in one essay that the "greatest difference between the environment (Umwelt) of a sign[al]-using organism and the world (Welt) of the speaking organism is that there are gaps in the former but none in the latter. The nonspeaking organism only notices what is relevant biologically; the speaking organism disposes of the entire horizon symbolically."[12]
To put this in other words, the "gaps" in the horizon of the speaking organism (i.e. humans) are identified by the symbol/sign "gaps," or the sign "unknown," and these terms serve to make the entire field of mental vision complete. What is not known or perceived thus simply falls under the simulacrum of the sign "unknown," just, for instance, as the reader's knowledge of what is to come in the following pages of this book (assuming this is his or her first reading) would fall under the auspices of the same sign. The material ahead is "unknown" to the new reader. The author's challenge, of course, is to make this horizon as appealing as possible, so as to entice the reader along. Let us hope no quagmires lie beyond our present trail, for all writing is discovery for both reader and writer alike!
Future hazards be where they may, at our present step, let us ask another question: What, then, can we understand about the relationship between the "world" that is experienced as consciousness and the "environment" of the physical organism who accesses it via symbolic language? The point is simple, yet nonetheless profound: the mind has the ability to encompass or subsume the "environment" within itself. In other words, the (triadic) Welt encircles the (dyadic) Umwelt even though it is within the Umwelt that the Welt finds itself to be, just as the mind resides in the body. Such a domain is worth remarking, in more ways than one.
To this unusual state of affairs, we might add, of course, that the "world" of the human mind also might be said to have an "environment" of its own, that is, the field of mental experience that exists only within the realm of the abstract, the realm of human cognition. Thus not only does the Welt create a new "space" or realm within the universe, it also can envelop the "space" of the universe within itself! Indeed, this realization leads us to a renewed appreciation for the famous statement made by the grandfather of modern American poetry who proclaimed himself: "Walt Whitman, a cosmos...."[13]
Despite this unusual situation wherein one is subsumed by the other, let us leave this section, nevertheless, with the firm distinction in mind that the Welt is not the Umwelt. This should be clearly evident in that it is a given that any particular "sign" is intended to designate a "referent" that is not itself, just as for instance, the sign "book," which we considered earlier, is not the object that goes by that name, merely the name for it.
In sum, then, the "world" or Welt of the human mind is that space alone unique to the human species wherein understanding and consciousness are experienced, both being segmented by and composed of symbolic language. In contrast to other organisms, at its most fundamental level the language of the Welt thus gives us the ability to re-present our (biological) experience in the "environment" or Umwelt and to re-create it in our minds, alongside a host of other ontological issues concerning the need for meaning.
As we leave this section, let us therefore acknowledge a third important property of consciousness we have realized, the immersion in ontology, which is a human characteristic of no small, mean significance. But the consequences of language do not stop here. Let us see how it inherently creates community.[14]
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