Notes

1 Though Burke often analyzes systems, he does not use the term with any frequency except in the phrase "symbol system," which is apparently synonymous with language and is not used in any specific technical sense (i.e., "language" could be substituted without any loss of precision, though Burke is clearly aware of the systemic nature of language). Naturally Burke does have many terms for systems (e.g., network, cluster, culture, mind, text, Poetry Exchange) and many terms for systemic behaviors (equation, linkage, compensation, identification, dissociation, transformation, redemption, consubstantiation) as demonstrated in Chapters Three and Four.

2 An important part of Burke's project to account for symbolic action is the reclamation of rhetoric, and the study of metaphor has always been a central concern of rhetoric. Metaphor has been under scientistic attack since the seventeenth century beginnings of modern science (The ultimate product of classical science, Logical Positivism cannot deal with metaphor, since it is by its very nature not testable by truth conditions). The history of the scientistic attack on metaphor is summarized in Chapter Six, but a more explicit account can be found in the appendix.

While mentioning Eco, we should consider semiotics and deconstruction. Burke and semioticians do share some common ground: both are concerned with the systematic study signs as social forces, and study anything that can be used to lie, tell the truth or gossip. In practice, however, perhaps because of the influence of structuralism, semiotics tends to concern itself more with langue , whereas rhetoric is interested in effects of discourse ( parole ). Umberto Eco, for example, spends a great deal of effort to explaining how metaphor is produced, but almost nothing on how or why it is used. He also attempts to subsume rhetoric to semiotics by misreading Aristotle, and reduces rhetoric to a "semiotics of conversational interaction." Rhetoricians have not obliged him, however, and continue to extend the scope of the discipline to include many kinds of texts (e.g., commercials, news conferences etc.)

Burke anticipates not only semiotics and structuralism, but also deconstruction in a number of respects. Burke understands that there is no one-to-one relation between words and things, that language is a dynamic system, and his Perspective by Incongruity (or temporizing of essence) is precisely the same strategy that Jacques Derrida uses in stating that writing is prior to speaking. Derrida attacks Logical Positivism, as had Burke, though by the time Derrida gets around to it, it is something of a straw man. Both exercise freeplay ("joycing") but for Burke the goal is new perspectives, whereas Derrida strives for a paralytic aporia. Moreover, Burke holds that language is action ("equipment for living)," and that we use language (though it does at times "make our bodies hop in peculiar ways"), whereas Derrida holds that language is a closed, selfcontained and self-referential system (i.e., language uses us); writing is about writing. For Derrida meaning is impossible; for Burke, it is virtually inevitable.

3 Burke shows the reductive nature of General Semantics and the stimulus-response psychology of the day. He also continues his defense of analogical thought, arguing that the only way to test a metaphor such as "New York City is in Iowa" is to apply it; there is no formal procedure, much less applying positivism's truth conditions (1973 144). Finally, Burke dismisses scientistic objectivity because it relies on a static one-to-one relationship between words and things, which can never exist. Such stasis would make symbolic action impossible.

In The Philosophy of Literary Form is one of Burke's most important and well known essays of political analysis, "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle.'" For our purposes this essay is important because Burke is documenting what happens to a cultural/ideological system which is failing. We have already noted that the mind is a classification system to evaluate and fix entities with minimal disruption of system. Hitler provided a comprehensive and comprehensible world view for people who had seen it piecemeal i.e., Hitler repaired the ideological system after an epistemological crisis (or he provided an alternative system when the first one failed).

4 We have noted that the ultimate purpose of the collective frame of acceptance and rejection, the quality space, is evaluation. Because of the power of the negative, we see differences in entities--we can discriminate. In this respect "all living things are critics," classifying entities as one kind of thing or another (1984 5). But although all organisms make distinctions, only human beings make them based on symbol systems. Because of ideology, human bodies "hop around in peculiar ways," that is, in ways that animals without language would not (1966 6). A worldview or ideology is a classification system (the quality space) that humans replicate from their culture which must be capable of change, just as any map must be altered to reflect changing circumstances. Explanations for how these changes occur are to be found in Burke's concepts of transformation, which are rooted in the paradox of substance, treated in Chapter Four.

5 The symbol system has transformational powers because, according to Burke, all distinctions "arise out of a great central moltenness where all is merged" (1969a xix). These distinctions are thrown up and reabsorbed so that A can become not-A, but not by a leap from one to the other but by returning to a point where the two are consubstantial. So "substance" can come to mean nothing (just as "sanction" can mean both something permitted and forbidden). Burke demonstrates that terms can be stretched to cover different cases, which increases the overlap between terms. These overlaps make alchemic transformation possible; for example, pirates can call themselves purveyors in an attempt to reposition themselves in the quality space (i.e., the pirates return to a level of generality at which there is no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate transportation of goods).

6 Semantics appears much less systematic, "a hornet's nest of bizarre and arbitrary usages." However, we are now evolving new ideas about what constitutes system and proof. Chaos Theory, for example, has radically altered our ideas about order. Chaos theorists have found random behavior in simple systems (e.g., a swinging pendulum) and order in phenomenon considered chaotic, such as turbulence. The latter gives us encouragement to assume that "the hornet's nest" is, in principle, understandable. Chaos Theory also states that complex behavior can come from simple origins (for example, a simple equation repeated many times and plotted will create an image of a fern recognizable by botanists).

The related study of self-organizing systems also provides models for how simple systems can jump to a higher level of complexity with new emergent properties. Catastrophe Theory provides the mathematics to account for such phenomena. All of these theories share many attributes with Burke and GST (e.g., anti-reductionist, teleological, and interdisciplinary), not the least of which is discarding linear, mechanistic assumptions.

7 Metaphor appears essential to recategorization. Burke asserts that man is the classifying animal (though all organisms discriminate, only humans do it based on verbal categories). Eric Lenneberg confirms that all animals can categorize to a degree (e.g., a frog will strike at any object that moves like food), but only the higher primates can categorize things which have little physical resemblance (11-12). Human beings alone categorize based on schemas, so no physical resemblance is required at all. Humans can associate things based on function (e.g., nylons can be used as a fan belt), the feelings we have about two objects (a faithful dog and VW bug) or resemblance of words (the joy of six[-pack]).

8 Bertalanffy and others have suggested that in the East the I Ching , the Upanishads and the Gita suggest a systemic approach.

9 Heraclitus, a contemporary of Anaxagoras, also has some ideas that suggest a systemic approach: panta rhei (all in flux), structure is the result of function, and an organism is more like a flame than a crystal. (This last statement is a rather remarkable observation in that Bertalanffy identifies flames and rivers as the simplest kinds of open system.) Heraclitus also held that sense impressions are relative, but there is an underlying unity of all things. He was opposed by the Eleatics whose ideas influenced both subsequent materialist (mechanism/atomism) and idealistic thinking, including Plato and Aristotle (Bertalanffy 1972 21-22).

10 Aristotle's holistic and teleological worldview was eclipsed by the Scientific Revolution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Aristotle's conception that the celestial was fundamentally different from the terrestrial was overthrown, and the forces observed at work here were applied there, leading to Newton. At the same time the deductive-theoretical approach was displaced by Bacon's inductive-empirical one, and analysis replaced analogy and synthesis. But this is not to say that Aristotle did not do empirical studies as well. His former pupil Alexander the Great equipped and staffed a laboratory, and sent him species from his travels for dissection, over five hundred in all. Aristotle's anatomy text was unsurpassed for two thousand years. Nevertheless, Aristotle was a favorite target of seventeenth century scientists, who eliminated act, one of the fundamental categories in his philosophy. However, act has recently been reintroduced in communication theory, the New Physics, and it has always been central to Burke (Bertalanffy 1975b 22).

11 Another medieval scholar, Ibn-Kaldun, produced some rather modern ideas. One of the greatest of the medieval historians, Ibn-Kaldun is also cited by Bertalanffy as a forerunner of General Systems Theory (1975b 32). His systemic approach is evident in his studies of group dynamics and the laws of social change. He is sometimes referred to as the founder of sociology and the philosophy of history. He was translated into French in the 1860's and more recently into English. He is in a long line of historians with a cyclical conception of history: Vico, Spengler, Toynbee who undoubtedly influenced Burke's thinking on the systemic nature of culture.

12 In the most recent cycle, Marx theorizes, the rise of a proletariate recapitulates the rise of the bourgeoisie, though each phase has what a systems theorist would call emergent properties that earlier stages do not possess. In this case, quantitative changes (disequilibrium and its resulting social tension), will build up until revolution breaks out, which if successful will bring about qualitative changes. In Marx's scenario the state and religions will wither away like an appendix, and society will become classless--the worker's paradise.

13 The concept of telos is rather impoverished in Freud's notion of life and death instincts. The thanatos instinct is the desire for life to return to a state of inorganic matter (in the beginning, according to Freud, inorganic matter is briefly stimulated into life, a state from which it seeks to regress as quickly as possible). Life viewed as an irritating detour back to death does not make much sense. This view (albeit oversimplified here) is especially odd when contrasted with Freud's rather sophisticated understanding of mental development, which must have been influenced by an understanding of biological development (and parallels Bertalanffy's work rather closely): over time a system becomes progressively differentiated, integrated, controlled and stabilized. However, under the sway of the mechanical metaphor, Freud sees the mature system as a machine aiming for efficiency and stasis. Still, trying to make psychoanalysis scientifically respectable no doubt made his pro-scientistic and anti-vitalistic stance necessary, particularly given the hostile reception to his work over much of his career.

14 Freud's tripartite division is too well known to rehearse here, but in the context of systems theory, it is interesting to note that his system parallels the hierarchy of GST: the id is the biological, amorphous, and undifferentiated. The ego is a mediator, and requires memory and language. The super-ego shares with the ego a control function which leads to systemic and social stability. The super-ego strives for perfection (which could be seen as sneaking telos in the back door; however, if the super-ego is simply trying to reduce tension by forcing behavior that is socially acceptable, then it is not much different than instinctively eating to reduce hunger).

15 The development of the organism leads to questions of the development of species. The ability of systems to evolve was of great interest to Burke and Bertalanffy: if survival is really of the fittest, there should have been no evolution beyond the microbe. Similarly Burke once asked, if elements should not be duplicated beyond necessity, where would you be? Both Burke and Bertalanffy were influenced by French philosopher Henri Bergson, whose Creative Evolution (1907) held that evolution is a vital impulse that continually creates new biological forms (Davidson 92).

16 Burke makes a fundamental distinction between action and motion, though he frequently adds that action is grounded in motion. The distinction is implied in his work from the beginning (cf. "practical" vs. aesthetic in Counter-Statement ), but doesn't really emerge until The Rhetoric of Religion (1961). It appears explicitly in Language As Symbolic Action (1966) and becomes the basis of an article in 1978. There Burke states that symbolic action depends "wholly on the realm of physiological motion" . . . .But "symbolic action is not reducible to terms of sheer motion. (Symbolicity involves not just a difference in degree, but a motivational difference in kind.)" (1978 814). Both Burke and Bertalanffy emphasize that language is the fundamental difference between humans and animals, yet both understand that higher levels of complexity are grounded in lower levels, just as calculus is grounded in arithmetic.

17 Hans Driesch, a biologist, found at the turn of the century that if a sea urchin is split sufficiently early enough, it will grow into two complete, though slightly undersized adults. Another experiment showed that an eye cell of a salamander could be moved and still become functional (or if moved so far away that connection was impossible, it would simply become skin tissue). Since entelechy was an outlawed concept, he tried to explain such phenomena by borrowing acceptable language of the hard sciences: "force." Still, the idea wasn't accepted (Vickers 22).

18 Before leaving our discussion of systems levels, we should note that, with each higher level, information, learning, memory, complexity, survivability and law increase, while chance decreases. It must also be emphasized that definite emergent properties come into being at each level which make undeniable and important differences. Though many systems theorists have carved up the levels into different numbers or emphasized different ends of the rubric (e.g., the social scientist is not much interested in the low end), no one alters the hierarchy in any way.

19 Eventually he will substitute several terms for art, the most inclusive of which is symbolic action, which involves more than literature.

20 "Metabiology" is not an entirely clear term (he does not use it in subsequent works), but it is closely aligned with Burke's emphasis on entelechy, an idea crucial to systems theory. He claims that "each biological organism has 'purposes' intrinsic to its nature" (168). Burke notes that some philosophers tried to reintroduce telos , but that when science shifted the emphasis from Creator (a teleological process) to creation as a fait accompli , the wheels were set in motion for seeing everything as a machine (217-8).

21 I.e., the symbol system is permanent, at least as long as there are human beings, while change within that system is constant. (Cf. Cook on stability and flexibility as the essence of systems.)

22 How metaphor is fundamental to symbolic action requires some explanation, which is supplied in Chapter Six. Provisionally, however, the symbol system is made up of clusters of associations, arranged hierarchically. Within this system, a term can rise by being associated with terms occupying a high position, or fall by being associated with terms low in the system (which would also mean that they would be dissociated from high concepts). For example, democracy can be associated with other God-terms, including God. But Hitler associated democracy with pointless harangues and squabbles, thus paralysis and death. Hence "A" can become "Non-A," and light can become darkness. This is precisely the kind of "discounting" with which Logical Positivism cannot cope.

23 Burke's increasing refinement of his theory of system may be indicated in his terminological shift from "orientations" to "frames of acceptance." The terms appear synonymous, but "frame" implies a structuralist conception which "orientation" lacks. He defines frames of acceptance as "the more or less organized system of meanings by which a thinking man gauges the historical situation and adopts a role with relation to it" (5). There are two crucial concepts emerging here. The first is the idea of evaluation (discussed below). The second is adopting a role, which is another structuralist idea (e.g., the 8:02 train is not a thing but a function). Here Burke appears to be thinking along the same lines as Ferdinand de Saussure, that meaning comes from interrelationships in a system, not from substance. The simplest example is a social role: human beings' actions are constrained by the role adopted. This shift from substance to function is the crucial twentieth century development: field and system theory, e.g., Whitehead, Einstein, Picasso, de Saussure etc.

Because of the affinity pointed out above, one may wonder if there was any influence. There is no evidence of any. While de Saussure has been enormously influential in Continental thought (which, not unlike Burke, synthesized Freudian and Marxist theories), his influence in North America is relatively recent and indirect (via structuralism, initially). Though the first of Claude Levi-Strauss's structuralist works appeared in France in 1949, the first reference I find in Burke to him is in his personal correspondence in 1972 (wherein he notes some parallels between Levi-Strauss and his own earlier work). Furthermore, de Saussure would not have been of much use or interest to Burke since the former in concerned with langue whereas the latter is devoted to understanding parole .

24 If paradoxes and anomalies in a system remain unresolved, the resulting epistemological crisis will lead to a quest for certainty. Burke points out that these contradictions can be either internal or external. Internal contradictions, as the name suggests, arise within the system itself. For example, a heretical sect emphasizing one aspect of the total system must be eliminated, or the system must alter to compensate for the new emphasis. Or the contradiction can be external; e.g., when a complete Aristotelian view of the world was discovered, it threatened Church teachings. Presumably in such conflicts, one system is going to suppress the other, or the two will be synthesized.

25 For example, Freud explains that a psychic economy compensates for losses. Burke asserts that a social system will compensate for the loss of reasonableness with an increase in sensuality (217). Compensation is transformative or metaphorical because it replaces one kind of thing with another kind (one compensates for lack of food with prayer, whereas one substitutes broccoli for asparagus). So great are the compensatory resources of this system that even the loss of being tricked out of material goods can be converted to a compensatory gain of experience (171).

26 The Royal Society history is summarized in the first appendix.

27 While he states that Korzybski makes some worthwhile observations as far as he goes, Burke is suspicious of any effort to reduce action to motion. Burke feels it is no accident that General Semantics had produced no poetics, because poetry is action. Burke feels that Korzybski needs a systematic concern with dialectic (239), by which perhaps he means that General Semantics notes but cannot account for transformation in word meaning. The General Semanticist strategy of numbering or dating words to account for multiple references and changes over time is not terribly practical, but at least it acknowledges that such differences exist. (However, Burke feels that any attempt to stabilize language change is doomed; moreover, simply numbering different senses of a word does not account for metaphor, a primary transformational device.)

28 This argument can be seen as a dodge, not unlike Burke's stealing the term "statistical" years earlier; it is not unlike arguing that unicorns are real because the word "unicorn" exists. This tactic does, however, give Burke room to maneuver. The strategy also seems legitimate, particularly in the present context, since Burke's major interest is in what language does ; nowhere is language more powerful than in its political and theological uses.

29 Such reduction is, of course, essential if human beings are to function. So Burke has no problem with reduction, but only with over-reduction. For example, the phenomenon of transference, which behaviorists want to make mechanical, is in fact very complex in human beings because humans can make multiple and purely abstract or linguistic connections.

30 Burke (1966) will later observe that ideology "makes our bodies hop" in peculiar ways (6); this is a reference to the fact that so much human behavior cannot be accounted for from a purely biological point of view since symbol systems make symbolically inspired behavior possible. Symbol systems give rise to psychological and sociological systems, hence to "unnatural behavior" such as sacrifice. While an animal sacrificing itself to save its young could be explained as instinctual programming designed to perpetuate the species, why would a policeman risk his life to prevent the suicide of an elderly stranger? Such ethical behavior is an emergent property of highly complex systems.

31 With no "resistance" of real-world necessity, the perfect formal structure does not have to make any concessions to the material world. To use one of Burke's examples to differentiate the two realms, cutting down wood for heat is a real-world necessity, whereas cutting down a tree as symbolic revenge upon one's father is symbolic. Resistance to the symbolic act might take the form of a dull ax or an ordinance against amateur lumberjacks.

32 Not only does Burke study analogy, he uses it. So not only would Burke's theological subject matter be regarded as nonsensical or scandalous by positivists, but his methodology would be as well ("fruitful analogies" might be regarded as an oxymoron, but as we have seen previously, for Burke explanatory or heuristic power is the only test of an analogy). For Burke the test of a metaphor is not Does this term refer to a real-word object (the positivist touchstone), but rather Is it useful? To use another of his examples, the square root of minus one does not exist in nature, but it is useful for solving certain kinds of problems (18). Similarly, whether God or free will really exist, they do exist and thus have a function in a theological system; since Burke wants to understand the functioning of such systems, the epistemological status of God is irrelevant.

33 The more complex the system, the greater the number, types, and complexity of transformations possible within it. Melting ice is about the simplest example, and perhaps does not even merit the term transformation, since it is merely the speed and distance between the molecules changing. Quartz turning into soil is not much more complicated. Much more complex changes are found in living systems (e.g., the proverbial caterpillar into butterfly). But even that spectacular transformation pales compared to those in the human brain, and consequently in symbolic systems.

34 In Language as Symbolic Action Burke also returns to the old problem of what makes an apt representative anecdote or model for Dramatism. Because of the tenacity of scientistic assumptions and the progress of "thinking machines," it has remained popular to see humans in terms of machines. Burke asserts, however, that no matter how complex computers become, they are not a good model because they do not feel pleasure and pain. Animals do, in a rudimentary sense, "but animals are too poor in symbolicity, and humans are too poor in animality" to make the analogy apt (64). Since a machine cannot participate in a human dialogue, by sizing up its "drift," i.e., cannot perform symbolic action, Burke asserts that a computer is restricted to motion (63).

Thus neither machines nor animals are apt models for studying symbolic action. He does say that if computers become adept enough at symbolic manipulation, he may have to rethink his position. That time may nearly have arrived with the rather ambiguous outcome of a recent trial of the Turing Test in which some computers were thought to be human, and vice versa, though in the main it was fairly easy to distinguish between the two. And is mimicking a conversation the same as having one? Can a machine really prefer the later Shakespearean tragedies, as one machine professed? The ramifications of recent AI advances will be considered in the concluding chapter.

35 Burke chooses an example of the most utilitarian, presumably descriptive utterances (stripped of context, the-cat-on-the-mat variety to which the most positivistic approaches to language restrict themselves): "The man walked down the street" (1966 361). Burke claims that even this rather straight-forward utterance could not be illustrated. Burke's point is this: words entitle a complex non-verbal situation; there is not really a one-to-one correlation. Usually language gets at the essence. It is a summing up, an evaluation of a situation, rather than a mechanical labelling of a thing. The validity of such an assertion is not so much dependant on the accuracy of the correlation between word and thing as the accuracy of the interpretation of the situation.

The thesis of this essay reminds us of Burke quoting T. S. Eliot earlier that "we have no objects without language" (61). This does not make much sense unless we realize that reality is built up from our symbol system, so that real things become "inspirited" (162). Thus a pair of tennis shoes is not simply some matter one puts on to protect the feet but a statement: "I am like my sport hero: victorious, famous, sought after, powerful." So a word is not so much a label for an object as an abbreviated title for a situation (294). The status of a title derives from its position and its interrelations in a system.

We have noted that Burke's central objection to scientism is its reductionism. The terministic screen imposed by its vocabulary leads to its being blind to the systemic attributes of its subject matter. Burke makes this observation specifically with reference to "bold, bad behaviorism" (49). Though behaviorism can afford information about very rudimentary kinds of learning, Burke holds that the use of words as words transcends the conditioned reflex (455). Though the distinction between people and things can be hard to make precisely, Burke points out that even behaviorists treat their colleagues as persons.

Burke further asserts that the empiricist approaches reality in terms of physicality (as an animal approaches a highway) without concern or awareness of rules (i.e., that these cars are not just objects of mass and motion, but are part of a system which can be understood and predicted). Burke says that consequently the empirical approach to reality is close to the perception of an animal just before it is run over. But Burke's attack might be a bit unfair: is not science trying for descriptions of behavior too? Does not science seek to codify rules that help us understand and eventually predict behavior? Yes, but science goes for the simplest model, short cause-and-effect chains, e.g., isolating aggression centers in the brain as the cause of violence. So Burke objects more to the method than to the general aim of classical science.

36 Human action is, after all, grounded in a very complex system; and systems can become dysfunctional. For example, what is more systematic than an obsession? Moreover, if someone is operating in an alien system, that person's behavior will seem bizarre.

37 GST can also give us some important insights into why Burke's career unfolded as it did. We have already observed that Burke's initial goal of understanding the rhetorical strategies in Shakespearean drama set him on the systems path. But we can now see why Burke was susceptible to the influences that he was, and why in particular he needed an organic model to make any progress. Granting this, it is easy to see why Burke was so taken with Woodger's biology (informed by Bertalanffy): here was a system of ideas that he needed: hierarchy, telos, evolution, compensation etc. So important are these ideas that Burke calls his work a "metabiology." Moreover, seeing Bertalanffy's continual attacks on mechanism answer the question about why Burke must carry on a lifelong battle as well: the mechanistic metaphor must be displaced in order for any systemic approach to be taken seriously.

38 In the preface to the second edition of Counter-Statement Burke admits that Spengler scared him, but doesn't say precisely why. He does say that Spengler "pictured an invader already here, from within (an invader derived from mankind's best logic, mankind's best genius)" (xiv). Presumably the invader Burke is referring to is the mechanization or regimentation of human beings that Spengler forecast. In addition, Spengler's assertion that our civilization is in decline and his corresponding aesthetic defeatism would have disturbed Burke.

39 Increasingly the role of metaphor in this process is being investigated. Cognitive psychologist Allen Pavio says that we need metaphor to convert continuous experiential information into discrete symbol systems (Ortony 1978). Linguist Elizabeth Traugott also feels that metaphors organize and interpret experience, usually based on an underlying cultural or conceptual schema (Dirven 49). The role of classification will be investigated in the final chapter.

40 "Quantum jump" is a bit of a misnomer, as it strictly speaking refers to an electron suddenly making a transition from one stable orbit to another. However, since science does not put much credence in jumps from one level of organization to a higher level, it does not provide a term for the phenomenon (except for the rather obscure and equally misleading term "symmetry break," which will be explained below). "Quantum jump" in its common metaphorical usage is relatively close to the phenomenon referred to here. It is not an accident that the term derives from the branch of the "hard" sciences which the mechanical model was first found to be inadequate, and which must resort to such poetic terms as "strange" and "charmed" quarks.

41 Both Burke and Bertalanffy also opposed the Behaviorist approach on political grounds as well. They objected to people being turned into robots in order to make the mechanical culture function more smoothly (Bertalanffy 1968 211, Burke 1968 passim).

42 Burke has examined many different types of systems, including biological and ecological. We have also observed that he used economic systems as analogical model for quality space. He is also interested in mental, cultural, and symbol systems. He even approaches texts as systems. As we saw in our examination of Counter-Statement , it was his attempt to describe what was happening in a text which led him to consider the social setting and psychological effect on the audience. He is also interested in political and theological systems.

43 Another possibility for incompatibility might arise when we recall the statement that GST seeks laws that are true of all systems, which appears to contradict Burke's assertion that rhetoric and metaphor are beyond the realm of true-false (Such a move was a not uncommon attempt to protect literature and rhetoric from scientistic attack). This is only a problem if we are logical positivists who confuse truth with truth conditions (Even logical positivists, however, have long since abandoned the verificationist principle since it was itself unverifiable). According to Burke, a major problem with logical positivism is that it can't deal with metaphor. For example, Burke asserts that "New York City is in Iowa" is literally false but metaphorically true (1973 144). Burke and Bertalanffy agree that a metaphor, like a scientific model, is as good/valid/true as the heuristic distance it takes us (Davidson 162). Bertalanffy began with an empirical basis, looking at biological systems, but found that isomorphisms existed in minds and languages. Thus what is "true" of biological systems is true (to a degree) of psychological and linguistic systems.

44 The most efficient and effective way to name a complex situation is to employ a metaphor, since a metaphor imposes a schema--a sort of template--over the amorphous set of features presented by the situation being considered (i.e., a metaphor structures our perceptions). For example when President Reagan called the death of the Shuttle astronauts the inevitable sacrifice of pioneers, he displaced other interpretations of the situation, e.g., that America had lost its technological dominance, or that bureaucrats thought their schedule more important than safety.

45 Chaos Theory came about in very much the same way as GST did: people in a number of different fields were working with irregularities and seeing similar kinds of irregularity in different systems: economics, weather, turbulence, heartbeats. One of the earliest discoveries of chaotic phenomena was by Edward Lorenz, who (in tinkering with a computer weather model) found that a very small change in input created a dramatic change in output. As similar phenomena were discovered everywhere, a paradigm shift was set in motion. The old mechanistic assumptions were altered radically; in fact, they were reversed: the idea that simple systems behave in simple ways, complex ones in complex ways, and different system behave differently gave way to the idea that simple systems were complex (i.e, had chaotic attributes), complex phenomena can come from simple origins, and very different systems can behave in the same way (the last two assertions being, of course, central tenets of GST).

Chaos Theory has significant parallels with GST and Burke: it looks at wholes, is anti-reductionist, includes notions of hierarchy and telos , favors a process approach over state, and is interdisciplinary. Chaos Theory seconds GST's assertion that disequilibrium is normal and leads to increased complexity; although uncomfortable with anthropomorphic language, clearly chaos theorists recognize teleology: e.g., flow "wants" to realize itself. Chaos theorists also wonder how "a purposeless flow of energy can wash life and consciousness into the world" (Gleick 308). Even more "mystical," though widely accepted, is the Gaia Hypothesis--the conditions for life are created by life itself in a self-regulating feedback process. Its proponents, James E. Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, have created a computer model of the dynamic, a daisy world in which white daisies want warm weather and reflect light, whereas black daisies reflect light and want cooler weather. When the model is set in motion on a computer it demonstrates why the earth maintains a temperature suitable for life.

Chaos Theory is particularly relevant to Burkean theory because it shows that phenomena such as turbulence once considered random are in fact orderly. This is encouraging to those such as Burke who seek to map language, which (aside from syntax and phonology) presents what Edward Sapir called "a perfect hornet's nest of bizarre and seemingly arbitrary usage." Chaos Theory is also relevant to the present context because it finally displaces the mechanism that Burke and Bertalanffy struggled against all their lives.

46 It is interesting to compare self-organizing structures to Burke's idea of how symbol systems develop: concepts become associated, these form clusters, then networks. When the network attains sufficient size and complexity, it constitutes a model of the world. The shared model of the world (a supermodel) by a group of people (superentity) is a culture.

47 In fact, as a language decays it undergoes what a physicist might recognize as a kind of graceful degradation (that is, difficult, odd and unusual features of the language will be discarded first). Language also resembles biological systems in that they can combine to form hybrids called pidgins, which can evolve into languages in their own right. Without a great deal of imagination, we can see that a language has many of the attributes of living systems: it exchanges information with its environment (at least its host does), maintains a steady state of negentropy, repairs breakdowns, integrates subsystems, regulates itself and has purposes and goals (at least in the limited sense that it develops preferred states.

48 Prof. Rueckert, the dean of Burke scholarship, shows that Burke uses the term "symbolic action" in three different senses, which is a bit disconcerting for a central term. None of Burke's definitions are very satisfactory, and elsewhere he defines symbolic action even more broadly to include sculpture and dance. Clearly Burke often uses the term "symbolic action," and he does study it, but that doesn't mean that he defines it. Although there seems to be little debate about what Burke means by the term, a number of scholars do in fact feel the need to clarify and/or define the term (e.g., Henderson 31-4).

Moreover, Burke does not offer a definition for symbolic action which in any way resembles his exemplary definition of human (though he asks that we treat even it as tentative), and asserts that a definition "should so sum things up that all the properties attributed to a thing can be as though 'derived' from the definition" (3). Burke never does this.

Perhaps the lack of a concise and precise definition of symbolic action will not seem so strange when we reflect that no consensus exists for one of poetry or literature, and that Jacques Derrida prides himself on coining key terms which resist definition. Burke may have had similarly strategic reasons for keeping the term vague.

49 In the first chapter we traced the gradual dismantling of Aristotle's full context theory of metaphor. The nadir occurred when the early empirical scientists attacked metaphor and tried to establish a one-to-one relationship between words and things. The model that informed early science was the machine. These ideas show up in John Locke who held that the mind is a passive recorder (the metaphors for this changed with technology: wax tablet, phonograph, telephone switchboard, digital computer). At the turn of the century the scientistic ideas culminated in Logical Positivism. (Neo-Kantians state that there is no ultimate reality, so reality became equated with the external world) Logical Positivism was an attempt to ground philosophy in empiricism; it was radically anti-metaphysical and had little interest in metaphor. According to Logical Positivism, metaphor could have an emotive meaning, but no cognitive meaning (since it flouts truth conditions).

Metaphor could thus be dismissed as a pseudo-problem. That metaphor had to be marginalized becomes apparent when we see how logical positivism defined meaning: the meaning of a sentence is its method of verification (i.e., a statement is true if and only if it is verifiable). This verificationist principle became something of a problem when it was realized that it was itself unverifiable. Thus the principle had to be weakened to state that a proposition is meaningful only if it is possible (at least in principle) to confirm it. Then interest shifted from formal languages to ordinary language; this shift is apparent in the later works of L. Wittgenstein, who urged that we not "look for the meaning, look for the use" (Kittay 8). Despite this shift in philosophy, formal logic continued to inform linguistic studies. One attempt to expand it was possible worlds; George Lakoff thought in the early 1970's that possible world semantics would lead to a natural logic, but he soon came to the conclusion that it is a dead-end if wedded to objectivist philosophy (1987 217).

Then began the creation of a climate in which metaphor study could revive. This shift was assisted by Mary Hesse's demonstration that metaphor was essential to science. Somewhat paradoxically, metaphor study was revived by the analytical philosophy that was closest to logical positivism and thus most hostile to metaphor. Philosopher Max Black took I.A. Richards' ideas and made them intellectually respectable.

50 This new paradigm is confirming many of Burke's assertions about symbolic action; e.g., that symbolic action is grounded in a system. This system grows through analogical extension, accumulating schemas which act as filters for evaluating a given situation. As this system becomes more complex, emergent properties appear (e.g., language, consciousness, purpose).

51 Lakoff claims that both metaphor and categorization are essential, and that both lead to rational thought. He claims that categories are essential to functioning, indispensable to both perception and thought (5-6). A schema is made up of a network of nodes and links, each node being a conceptual category. Schemas in turn can combine to form cognitive models. Concepts are (or have) corresponding categories.

52 Burke anticipates this idea when he noted that a "terministic screen" leads to a given perception, which in turn leads to an attitude and thus to an act. Burke also anticipates schema theory in his work on form. He notes that forms are biological or learned (Lakoff and Turner would say embodied or cultural). Moreover, Burke anticipates by half a century the assertion of the centrality of analogical thought that Lakoff and Johnson espouse.

53 Neural networks are good at classification because a small piece of a pattern can elicit the whole pattern. The search for a metaphorical match is also constrained by centrality: the search will begin with default assumptions and core associations. Previous use of metaphors can also limit search (with a frozen metaphor there is no inference required since the metaphor is "precomputed"). Context will limit the search as well. In short, a good interpretation will be the most parsimonious, coherent and specific, i.e., the most useful (Birnbaum 180-1).

54 Politics is commonly metaphorically portrayed as war, sport or journey. Nicholas Howe examines the pervasive use of metaphors in government and finds that its most common metaphors "are systematically derived from sports and war," the two metaphors having a good deal of overlap. Sports metaphors are useful in describing a rule-bound contest between two opponents, in which one side can lose but cannot be eradicated. TEAM, as in "Ehrlichman can be trusted, he's a team-player," is a good example. Political strategy is often discussed in football metaphors (e.g., carry the ball, have running room, end run, blind side). Baseball can also be used to a limited extent for tactics (especially hardball vs. softball, but Howe finds that it is more often used to assess performance: e.g., big leagues, a long ball, the Babe Ruth of deficits).

We have noted that metaphor creates a perspective which leads to certain information and thus actions being seen and others obscured. Donald Schön has specifically examined the role of metaphor in policy-formation and problem-solving. He argues that this process begins with a narrative, which often engenders a metaphor that will account for the situation. For example, in discussing the shortcomings of social services, coordination is often proposed as a remedy for fragmentation (note the enthymematic basis here; that which is whole and orderly is good). Not surprisingly, the proposed solution will very often reflect the metaphor used in naming the problem. For example, Schön examines the two competing metaphors used to discuss urban renewal. The first sees a slum as a blight or disease which needs to be removed and replaced with new "healthy" buildings. The second metaphor views the neighborhood as a healthy, functional community, which merely needs upgraded housing. Clearly these two different models lead to very different methods (and attitudes); unfortunately, the government adopted the first model, which led to enormous waste.

55 It is interesting to employ Charles Osgood's tri-dimensional system for determining the position (in what we are calling quality space) of a term based on evaluation, potency, and activity; an ineffectual social club would rate rather low on all three criteria. Also intriguing in this context is A. Luria's claim that he can measure the distance between semantic domains.

56 The term metaphor itself means "carrying across," but what was carried and from what to what has only recently been begun to be understood. Aristotle knew that metaphor was the principle of transference itself. Chaim Perelman also devotes considerable space to transfers of value deriving from structure. Probably it is not features that are transferred so much as slots for features which are instantiated with features from the target domain.

57 In his reorientation of "extremist," King displays a similar strategy of "verbal atom-cracking" (as Burke likes to call it) when he uses two God-terms to split another: one can be either an extremist for love or hate. However, he also demonstrates that he is not really an extremist because his is a moderate between the blacks who submit to injustice and those that want to oppose it with force. His grabbing of the term moderate is a bit odd, since he demotes or demonizes white moderates as ineffectual, cowardly fence-sitters who do more damage than his outright opponents. When we understand King's overall strategy, however, this does not seem paradoxical.

It is instructive to examine how King breaks the linkage between law and justice. Essentially, this is the inverse strategy of making associations. He subclassifies laws into just, moral, democratic laws which it is our legal and moral duty to follow, and unjust laws which it is our moral duty to break. King's efforts to break such a strong linkage requires the full rhetorical arsenal: logic, quasi-logic, enthymemes, God-terms, orientational metaphors, identification etc. An full analysis is not possible here, but can be readily accomplished employing the terms and concepts enumerated in this chapter.

Not only can King split classes which appear indivisible, he can unite entities which are separated in quality space. For example, he rather skillfully equates blacks with American destiny (enthymeme: if two are one, what harms one harms both).

58 These God-terms were distilled out of a study of presidential speeches. Though no formal quantification was involved, it is very probably that anyone examining the same texts would extract the same God-terms, and nearly as probable that given an arbitrary number of categories, would come up with similar categories. What is much more certain is that these categories would align with Lakoff and Johnson's UP metaphors (15-17).

History of Metaphor

Applications to Literary Criticism Pedagogy

What was the act : an exercise in etiquette gone wrong? Marlow keeping his word to Kurtz? Or purging himself of Kurtz (he wanted to "...surrender personally all that remained of him with me to that oblivion which is the last word of our common fate"). A cowardly failure to release her from her thralldom? A laudable sacrifice?

What is the agency : (i.e., by what means was this act committed?) Words? A lie (An easy retreat into chivalry? A difficult upholding of principle?)? The truth (She is the embodiment of European civilization, of self-deception, and thus of the horror?)?

Who is the agent : Marlow? ("culture shock," feverish?) Kurtz? The Intended?

What is the scene : back in the "whited sepulchre," civilization, in the funeral house of the Intended (massive chiaroscuro). Scene for Burke includes time, which in this case would be more than a year after Kurtz's death and Marlow's return. We might also want to consider that the story is set at the end of the Victorian era, during which the missionary efforts to aid "our little brown brothers" were exalted.

What is the purpose : To save her, to save himself, to keep his word, custom, curiosity, or the desire to remain loyal to Kurtz to the end?