Bostic St Clair & Grinder

The following exerpts are from Whispering in the Wind (see www.whisperinginthewind.com)

"Neurology and language – those two great sets of transforms that both
separate us from, and connect us to, the world around us." p. 10.

"We propose that it is essential to distinguishe between neurological transforms (all the mappings that occur between stimulus/receptor contact and the point at whcih we gain first access to experience) and all the transfroms that occur subsequently--referred to here as linguistic transforms." p. 11.

FIRST ACCESS

"Under normal circumstances what we as individuals refer to as our experience of the world is actually a set of events that have already been significantly transformed with respect to the world. We name these sets of events First Access (FA)." p. 11.

"The events presented to us at First Access (FA) are the product of a set of neurological transforms beginning at the point where our receptors and the external world of actual stimuli collide and terminating at their respective cortical projections. Linking the receptors and the cortex are a series of neurological structures whose functions we will call neurological transforms.

"For example, photons (electromagnetic energy) of wavelengths between 400 and 700 nanometers strike receptors in the retina of the eye. All wave lengths above and below this range pass as a whisper on the wind, wholly undetected and undetectable directly by us. Those photons within the specified narrow range are detected by our receptors, general or specialized, and are transformed into electric impulses that begin their extended journey along the optic nerve. These impulses will pass through a number of larger complex structures (e.g., distinct nerves, the lateral geniculate body, the hypothalamus…) and the ensuing portions of the neurological network leading to the occipital lobes. At each stage of this complex process, the news of difference from the world is subject to mappings by the neurological processes such as summation, lateral inhibition...

"The optic nerve is a jungle of hundreds of thousands of cells, arranged in complex connections and combinations that transform the input data in ways that are not yet understood. The structural arrangement of these neurons as well as the biochemical conditions found at each of linked connections (the synaptic junctions) determine whether this data stream will pass and in what specific form." p. 13.

TWO General Limitations on Data Streaming to FA

"What is the relationship between the events in the world and the representation of those events at FA?

"There are two marked limitations that we encounter when we attempt to answer the question stated immediately above: first, the vast majority of the events that are occurring around us in the sea of electromagnetic movement are simply NEVER detected by us as they fail to fall outside the narrow bands of access that we call our sensory channels;secondly, those sharply reduced sets of events that do fall within our sensory limitations are processed by a set of neurological transforms whose specific operations are as yet not well defined – we simply do NOT know how the processing mechanisms influence the data stream that they manage." p. 15.

SECOND SET OF TRANSFORMS

"We are now at the point in our description of the processing of the incoming data stream where we apply a second set of transforms; the transforms of natural language and some of the derivative forms of language - formal systems such as logic, algebra, geometry, automata theory... We hasten to clarify: we are NOT proposing that the set of formal systems mentione3d are in any cureetn sense dependent on language--we are well aware that mathmeaticians, physicists and logicians as well as architects are perfectly capaale of and indeed, do spend significant portions of their professional life thinking visually in effective and creative ways without the use of natural language... What we are proposing here is that natural language was historically the first subsystem within the human neurology to develop what we now refer to as finite recursive rule systems." pp. 23, 24.

"We turn now to an exploration of how these natural language transforms further shape our already transformed representations of what is around us. This second mapping, the function called language, is in principle freed of all constraints except utility... Does it work? In other words, does the way that we use language to carve up the transformed world as presented to us at FA lead to a relatively effective ability to manipulate the perceived world to achieve our objectives? Does this utilitarian way of linguistically segmenting the perceived world at FA - the product of the set of neurological transforms - serve us well? Note that we are applying these imposed categories NOT to the world but to a set of transforms of the world (FA).

"We believe it important to emphasize that there is no commitment to truth (whatever that might mean) in this linguistic mapping exercise – no necessary correspondence between the way we divide up our perceived experience (FA) and the actual structure of the world, no isomorphic mapping between the world and the first point at which we gain access to it – FA. Further there is no isomorphic mapping between the representation called FA and the linguistic coding of them." p. 25.

"Under such circumstances, driven by feedback, we reorganize our model – our assignment of linguistic categories to the world as perceived. In this sense, our languages and the structures they impose on our primary experience (FA) are statements about a long evolutionary process of trial and error in carving up the perceived world with language. As such, these mappings between FA and the linguistic categories of our languages represent the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors and a summary statement of what they have historically found useful in their manipulations of the perceived world through language." p. 26.

"Thus, we organize these linguistic transforms in ways that are in principal relatively free of whatever structure is presented at FA – itself some poorly understood representation of whatever structure there may be in the world plus whatever contributions the structure of the processing mechanism themselves induce.

We incessantly order and re-order the products of the neurological transforms with language structures, operating by a logic wholly independent of whatever actual structures (if any) the original events in the real world may have originally expressed." pp. 26-27.

The Naming Function

"What is the difference between a weed and a flower, a freedom fighter and a terrorist, noise and music ?

"We are inviting you to recognize that language is an additional layer of distortion in perception. It is another illusion –an apparently uniquely human transform layered on top of the neurological transforms we have been discussing." p. 27.

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