The Message in the Bottle

"The Delta Factor"

"The Delta Factor," first published in January 1975 in the Southern Review, sets out the overall themes of the entire book. Percy begins by asking why modern humans are so sad despite the 20th century's technological innovations and unprecedented levels of comfort. More specifically, he is interested in why humans feel happy in bad situations and sad in good situations (a question also posed in his novel The Last Gentleman). He posits that this overarching sadness is due to contemporary society's position between two ages: the modern age, which is more or less slowly becoming out of date, and a new age, which is dawning but has not yet truly dawned. The anthropological theories of the modern age, according to Percy, "no longer work and the theories of the new age are not yet known" (7). Percy therefore sees his task as coming up with a new theory of humanity, which he chooses to center on language, the human attribute that separates us from the animals; The Message in the Bottle will attempt to explain humans' strange behavior and unexplained sadness by explaining how humans deal with language and symbols.

Percy says that the current theories of humanity make us into a sort of monster, a "centaur organism-plus soul . . . one not different from beasts yet somehow nevertheless possessing 'freedom' and 'dignity' and 'individuality' and 'mind' and such" (9). Modern humanity is, then, the collision of Judeo-Christian ethics and its focus upon individual freedom and scientific behaviorism, which says that humans are no different from the animals—in other words, modern people believe themselves to be no different from animals and yet somehow above them. What's more, no existing research really deals with the question of how language really works, of how human beings use and understand the symbols of linguistics. Percy puts this question into a sort of no-man's land, what he calls a "terra incognita" (17), between linguistics and psychology, the former of which deals with the results of language and the latter of which deals with the way people respond to language.

The Delta Factor, Percy's theory of language, is framed in the context of the story of Helen Keller's learning to say and sign the word water while Annie Sullivan poured water over her hands and repeatedly made the signs for the word into her hand. A behaviorist linguistic reading of this scene might suggest a causal relationship—in other words, Keller felt Sullivan's sign-language stimulus in her hand and in response made a connection in her brain between the signifier and the signified. This is too simplistic a reading, says Percy, because Keller was receiving from both the signifier (the sign for water) and the referent (the water itself). This creates a triangle between water (the word), water (the liquid), and Helen, in which all three corners lead to the other two corners and which Percy says is "absolutely irreducible" (40). This linguistic triangle is thus the building block for all of human intelligence. The moment when this Delta Δ entered the mind of a person—whether this happened via random chance or through the intervention of a deity—that person became human.

"The Loss of the Creature"

"The Loss of the Creature" is an exploration of the way the more or less objective reality of the individual is obscured in and ultimately lost to systems of education and classification. Percy begins by discussing the Grand Canyon—he says that, whereas García López de Cárdenas, who discovered the canyon, was amazed and awed by it, the modern-day sightseer can see it only through the lens of "the symbolic complex which has already been formed in the sightseer's mind" (47). Because of this, the sightseer does not appreciate the Grand Canyon on its own merits; he appreciates it based on how well or poorly it conforms to his preexisting image of the Grand Canyon, formed by the mythology surrounding it. What is more, instead of approaching the site directly, he approaches it by taking photographs, which, Percy says, is not approaching it at all. By these two processes—judging the site on postcards and taking his own pictures of it instead of confronting it himself—the tourist subjugates the present to the past and to the future, respectively.

Percy suggests several ways of getting around this situation, almost all of them involving bypassing the structure of organized approaches—one could go off the beaten path, for example, or be removed from the presence of other tourists by a natural disaster. This bypassing, however, can lead to other problems: Namely, the methods used are not necessarily authentic; "some stratagems obviously serve other purposes than that of providing access to being" (51). Percy gives the example of a pair of tourists who, disgusted with the proliferation of other tourists in the popular areas of Mexico, stumble into a tiny village where a festival is taking place. The couple enjoys themselves and repeatedly tells themselves, "Now we are really living," but Percy judges their experience inauthentic because they are constantly concerned that things may not go perfectly. When they return home, they tell an ethnologist friend of theirs about the festival and how they wish he could have been there. This, says Percy, is their real problem: "They wanted him, not to share their experience, but to certify their experience as genuine" (53).

The layman in modern society, then, surrenders his ownership to the specialist, whom he believes has authority over him in his field. This creates a caste system of sorts between laymen and experts, but Percy says that the worst thing about this system is that the layman does not even realize what it is he has lost.

This is most evident in education. Percy alludes to a metaphor he had used in "The Delta Factor," that of the literature student who cannot read a Shakespearean sonnet that is easily read by a post apocalyptic survivor in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The literature student is blocked from the sonnet by the educational system built around it, what Percy calls its "package." Instead of transmitting the subject of education, education often transmits only itself, and the student does not view the subject as open and delightful, nor does he view himself as sovereign. Percy offers two ways around this, both involving, as did his solution to the problem of the Grand Canyon, an indirect approach. Either the student can suffer some sort of ordeal that opens the text to him in a new way; or else he can be apprenticed to a teacher who takes a very unusual approach to the subject. He suggests that biology students be occasionally taught literature, and vice versa.

"Metaphor as Mistake"

Percy begins "Metaphor as Mistake" (1958) with five metaphors which were misunderstood; these misunderstood metaphors, he says, have nevertheless "resulted in an authentic poetic experience . . . an experience, moreover, which was notably absent before the mistake was made" (65). Metaphor, in Percy's view, is a way of getting at the real nature of a thing by comparing it to something that it does not resemble on the surface. It becomes a tool for ontological exploration.

Existing inquiries have failed to notice this, however, because they either abstract their viewpoints from both effective and ineffective metaphors (this is the path of philosophy) or focus on the individual effects of the individual poet (this is the path of literary criticism). As he does in "The Delta Factor," Percy wishes to seek a middle ground between these two extremes. He makes it clear, however, that the metaphor has scientific, rather than strictly poetic, value for him; he sees metaphor as a method of getting at the way things actually are.

Two qualifications exist for the metaphor as mistake: It must be given by an authority figure, and it must have a certain aura of mystery around it. In this way, the metaphor becomes both right (given by authority) and wrong (not strictly true as a descriptor).

Percy's example is of a boy on a hunting trip who sees a bird and asks what it is. The African-American accompanying him and his father calls the bird a blue dollar, which excites the boy until his father corrects him and tells him the bird is actually a blue darter. The term blue darter may describe what the bird does and what color it is, says Percy, but blue dollar in some mystical way gets at what the bird actually is. When the boy saw the bird, he formed a subjective impression of it—what Percy calls the bird's "apprehended nature" (72)--and in some sense the mistaken name blue dollar gets right at the heart of that apprehended nature.

In this way, the metaphor becomes both science and poetry; it is a sort of subjective science, the ontology of the world as it appears to the individual. Percy says that we can only understand reality through metaphor. We never perceive the world--"We can only conceive being, sidle up to it by laying something else alongside" (72). All language, then, and perhaps all intelligence, are therefore metaphorical. When one person makes a metaphor, the people who hear it hope that it corresponds to their subjective understanding of reality—an understanding they may or may not even be consciously aware of.

"Notes for a Novel About the End of the World"

"A Novel About the End of the World" makes a striking counterpart to Percy's novel Love in the Ruins, subtitled "The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World" and published only four years after the essay. The apocalyptic novel is a form of prophecy, a warning about what will happen if society does not change its ways. This sort of novel is written by a particular type of novelist, one defined not by his quality but by his goals. Percy refers to this novelist as a "religious novelist" but notes that he includes atheists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus in this category because of their "passionate conviction about man's nature, the world, and man's obligation in the world" (103).

The religious novelist, says Percy, has very different concerns than the mainstream of the society in which he lives—so different, in fact, one must decide whether society is blind or whether the novelist is insane or a charlatan. The central difference between the novelist and the rest of society is that the former tends to be pessimistic and the latter tends to be optimistic. The novelist has a "profound disquiet" (106).

The novelist is set off in particular against the scientist and against the "new theologian"—from the former because the novelists insists on the individual while science measures only categories, and from the latter because the novelist still believes in original sin. The Christian novelist in particular recognizes that the problem is not that Christianity is not relevant to modern society but that man's blind acceptance of "the magical aura of science, whose credentials he accepts for all sectors of reality" (113) is changing his consciousness to the point where he can no longer recognize the Gospel.

The novel about the end of the world, then, is an attempt to shock the complacent reader out of his scientism and into the light of the real world.

"The Message in the Bottle"

In The Message in the Bottle, Percy attempts to separate information into two categories: knowledge and news. The essay is built on an extended metaphor of a castaway with amnesia who remembers nothing but the island he washes up on and who creates a new life with the natives of the island. The castaway frequently finds on the beach bottles that have one-sentence messages on the inside, such as "There is fresh water in the next cove," "The British are coming to Concord," or "Lead melts at 330 degrees."

A group of scientists lives on the island, and they separate these messages into two categories: empirical facts and analytic facts. The castaway is disturbed by this classification, however, because it does not take into account the messages' effect on the reader. Thus, he comes up with the categories of knowledge and news. Knowledge belongs to science, to psychology and to the arts; simply put, it is that "which can be arrived at anywhere by anyone and at any time" (125). News, on the other hand, bears directly and immediately on his life. The scientists, because of their commitment to objectivity above all else, cannot recognize the difference between these two categories.

A piece of news is not verified the way a piece of knowledge is—whereas knowledge can be verified empirically, news can be verified empirically only after the hearer has already heeded its call. The castaway must first, however, decide when to heed the call of a piece of news and when to ignore it. Percy sets forth three criteria for the acceptance of a piece of news: (a) its relevance to the hearer's predicament; (b) the trustworthiness of the newsbearer; and (c) its likelihood or possibility. As news depends so heavily on its bearer, the messages in bottles that the castaway finds cannot be sufficient credential in and of themselves. The castaway must know something about the person who wrote them.

The problem with modern society is that too many people attempt to cure their feelings of homelessness by seeking knowledge in the fields of science and art. Their real problem, says Percy, is that their feelings of homelessness come from their being stranded on the island—they should be looking for news from across the seas.

Percy links this distinction between news and knowledge to how the world understands the Christian gospel. He writes that the gospel must be understood as a piece of news and not a piece of knowledge. To Percy, the gospel is news from across the seas.

"Culture: The Antinomy of the Scientific Method"

In this essay, Percy tries to expose the limitation of our present-day science and scientific method when it is applied to human beings, especially to human cultures. Science, for its own completeness, must be able to address humans and our cultures. He attributes the limitation to the fact that science does not take all humans' assertions as valid statements. After proving his point that discarding assertions leads to antinomies, i.e., contradictions between human culture and science, though by themselves each is reasonable, he goes on to propose a radical change to the presumptions of the scientific method. The outline here does not strictly follow the original essay to the letter in the sense that there are references to newer pieces of information, but the essence of the essay is unconditionally maintained. The additional material only bolsters Percy’s point of view.

The culmination of a scientific method is always an assertion. For example, the physical, space-time event of energy exchange happening inside a closed system can be examined carefully, resulting in an assertion that mass cannot be created or destroyed. This can be further asserted concisely with an equation of the form

Σ

M

i

=

Σ

M

f

{\displaystyle \Sigma M_{i}=\Sigma M_{f}}

. Another experiment is, say, we take a mass,

m

{\displaystyle m}

, and convert it into equivalent energy. This is also a physical space-time event, happening right in front of us. The event can be asserted by a scientist as

E

Three types of assertions are recognized

Naming or classificatory assertions

This is grass

Certain plants which bear functional similarities towards each other because of a common phylogenetic origin we agree to designate by the symbol Gramineae

An assertion involving symbolization: This round thing IS (the word) ball

The basic sentence

Water boils at 100 °C

The human heart has four chambers

The basic sentence is of the form

S

{\displaystyle S}

is

P

{\displaystyle P}

The scientific law

Bodies attract each other in direct proportion to the product of their masses and in inverse proportions to square of distance between them

Laws of allometry which relates body parts or processes within or among living organisms, Mendel’s rules

Scientific laws can be represented as

E

=

f

(

C

)

Characteristics of assertions

All assertions concern some real, physical, space-time event

Assertion itself is a pairing of elements, a relation which is not a space-time event but a kind of identity asserted by an assertor

When we hear these assertions, another sequence of space-time events – namely, assertion is uttered, the sound travel through air and hit our tympanum, the waves reach the brain – all of which can be observed and measured happens. But, even if we have the exact knowledge of all the intervening events, they cannot explain how the assertion (e.g., This is grass) is understood

I.e., no space-time event sequence can result in an assertory event such as utterance of “This is grass” to result in a pairing of two elements (the grass with the word grass). To put it colloquially, something magical and mysterious happens in the mind of the persons involved; it is immaterial (as in spiritual, rather than physical), in other words, it is mental.

That which science asserts is not itself as assertion but a real, physical, space-time event

Culture as a subject of the scientific method

Culture is a group of rules, or assertions, accepted by (or imposed on) the local people. Culture is defined as all human inheritance, material as well as cultural and spiritual, propagated via genes and memes. It includes hoes, baskets, manuscripts, monuments, language, myths, art, religions, and even science. Culture is the totality of the different ways in which the human spirit of the local people construes the world and asserts its knowledge and belief. But culture is not just assertory just like how the heart of science is not the paraphernalia of the laboratory; it is the method, the hunch, the theory, the formula or a law which is the final product and can be disseminated. Similarly, the artwork is not the paint on the canvas or the print on the page; it is the moment of creation by the artist and the moment of understanding by the viewer. Assertions are the basic, most elemental means of intersubjective communication (subjective understandings between people) used by humans and carry meanings. Culture is part of our reality which (natural) science, therefore, must explain. The objective of anthropology as a science is to understand culture as a dynamic and lawful process that is happening in our midst. The main reason scientific method has failed, as will be demonstrated later, is that culture is a mental activity which our enlightenment sciences have had problem handling and has artificially bifurcated us humans as made of mind and body. Assertions (which, incidentally, science also uses extensively) carry meaning and must be understood; they cannot be described as just space-time events.

Antinomies of scientific method and culture

Can culture be understood by the scientific method? Can the functional aspects of scientific method be applied to culture, or are there inherent limitations in the scientific method? Percy looks at three examples when the scientific method, when applied to aspects of culture, leads to contradictions – antinomies – and therefore fails.

Jesus walked on water

Rama vanquished the ten-headed Ravana to safeguard dharma

Hunuman jumped at the sun and ate it which is why his cheeks are swollen

What will the scientist think about the above assertions,

S

{\displaystyle S}

is

P

{\displaystyle P}

, when posed to him as a true-or-false claim? He will say the myths are false as they are absurd and impossible, and there is not a shred of evidence to support them, and lots of evidence against them.

What will the scientist think of the assertions when the assertion is itself a phenomenon under investigation by the scientist? I.e., when he studies the effect of the assertion? He is bound to say that myths are necessary for the functioning of a society; that myths influence us (good or bad is not the question) while growing up and even as adults. In that sense, myths are real. Myths are not evaluated based on true of false but based on the degree to which it serves a social or cultural function.

Antinomy: The contradiction is that, as an antidote to certain ills of society, the scientist must recommend some cultural values which he has labeled as false! The scientist’s motto for mental and cultural health is: It may not be true, but you better believe it because it has a tangible and observable effect on the inhabitants of that culture. The functional aspect of the myth – that it influences the society – is true, but the assertion (

Source of the antinomy

In physics, chemistry, and biological sciences (of non-human organisms), when a real, physical space-time event in which a state A results in state B happens, and it is represented by an assertory statement such as

E

=

f

(

C

)

{\displaystyle E=f(C)}

(causes

C

{\displaystyle C}

→ effect

E

{\displaystyle E}

) or a natural law, there is no antinomy observed because the separation between the world event and the intersubjective assertion is not violated. The subject of study – rocks, planets, chemicals, germs, rats, dogs – do not butt in to reinterpret or misinterpret; they do not have a mind of their own, and scientists win.

However, when humans are the subject of study of the scientific method or when the science (science and scientific method) itself is subjected to scientific method, Percy demonstrated how assertory statements of the human organisms (exemplified by the examples of myth, language, and science itself) cannot be recognized as classificatory or functional (

E

=

f

(

C

)

{\displaystyle E=f(C)}

Towards a radical anthropology

While it is perfectly legitimate to study objectively languages, religions, societies, just as we do tools, hunting, warfare, etc., it is not sufficient. The creature himself who makes the culture possible should not be ignored. It is also futile to try to find literal and rational meaning in the assertory statements of myths; it will lead us down a rabbit hole and take us nowhere. Present day ethnological anthropology studies human customs, institutions, artifacts, product of mental exercise, societies, and the “laws” of their development, but – notice – the role of the human being as an active culture member is missing!

Once Percy recognizes that the assertory statements of human beings are the root cause leading to antinomies, he suggests the following radical change in the scientific method when it is applied to study of human beings, i.e., to anthropology.

For this, Percy’s radical proposal is to allow as eligible, all real events, not merely the space-time physical events involving energy exchanges and transformations. It should deal with all assertory statements as such on par. All assertory behavior of humans – mythic or scientific, true or false – must be commensurable with each other. Humans should be scrutinized under the microscope just like we do rats in a maze. It is the scientific method which demands “proof” for assertions, but societal reality is not so. Myths, however absurd they sound, are real and kicking. Language’s symbolic association is, if seen logically, scandalous (how can this round thing be the word ball?) but without this cosmic blunder, humans would not be human! In fact, trying to explain assertory nature of humans using scientific method’s intersubjective assertions is self-referential and is the root cause of the limitation of science in addressing culture.

The societal norm is that each human being falls in a spectral scale of individual sense of right-wrong, truth-falsity, authentic-inauthentic spread. The radical anthropology must include such normative behavior rather than the functional assertions (

E

=

f

(