0138 Now, I consider chapters three and four (C3 and C4) in earnest.

0139 Do humans depend on things (C2)?

Archaeology, unlike many of the contemporary humanities, must reach out to the empirical (or “natural” or “physical and biological”) sciences in order to figure out how humans convert stuff_2am into artifacts_2af  in the normal context of structure_3a, operating on the potential of ‘the dispositions of things’_1a.

0140 Humans depend on things_2a to structure_3a their lives_3b (identities_3b).

0141 This dependence has a deep evolutionary history.  Unfortunately… or some would say… fortunately, stone tools serve as archaeological evidence for human entanglement with things. 

Stone tools are the tip of an iceberg of adaptive tool-use.

If Michael Tomasello is on target in saying that our genus evolves under conditions of obligatory collaborative foraging (especially in the span from bipedalism to the domestication of fire), followed by adding obligatory social-circle harmonizing (from the domestication of fire to say… 8800 years ago), then there are two social circles strongly concerned with things.  These social circles are the team (15) and the community (150).

0142 Razie Mah’s two-part e-book, Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) serves as a reference.

0143 Our ancestors adapt, not to “things themselves”, but to the category-based nested forms that treat things_2a as {matter [substantiating] form}_2a.

0144 Hodder’s great insight is that things entangle humans in mutual dependencies (C4).

This includes the fact that one thing_2a, such as a composite tool made of stone and wood, may depend on many things (C3).  A thing may depend on the sequence in which it is made.  There is an art to structuring_3a a thing_2a according to the dispositions of its ingredients_1a.

0145 Structure_3a is situated by the power_1b to do something based on a principle of unity_2bm.  That unity_2bm substantiates the embodiment of a composite tool_2bf.  The form_2bf“formalizes” an identity_3b.  Identity_3b also applies to the person_3b affiliated with the tool_2bf.

0146 In order to portray the idea that things depend on things (as well as their dispositions_1a), the author presents Figure 3.2, containing a network of things_2a and qualities_1a associated with wall plaster in the houses at Catal Hoyuk.  Here is my reproduction of a portion.

0147 My selection of items emphasizes that one of the functions of plaster as a wall outer layer is to support paint that turns the wall white, allowing daylight and moonlight to illuminate living spaces.  Each of these items associate to one of the six elements in the two-level interscope of structure_3a and identity_3b.

0148 The two-level interscope is a sensible construction.  Sensible construction presumes that a perspective level applies, even though one cannot articulate what the perspective-level may be.

Sensible construction resolves a content-level entanglement.

0149 I want to add two points (O and P).

0150 First (O), the sensible construction involves only implicit abstraction, as opposed to explicit abstraction.  Razie Mah’s Primer on Implicit and Explicit Abstraction applies here.  Implicit abstraction is an adaptation that exploits two of Peirce’s three natural signs: icon and index.

All signs are triadic relations where a sign-vehicle (SV) stands for a sign-object (SO) in regards to a sign-interpretant (SI).  Icons are natural signs where the sign-object (SO) is based on imagery, similarity, pantomime, and so forth.  Indexes are natural signs where the sign-object is based on contiguity, indication, pointing, and so forth.  Icons and indexes associate to implicit abstraction because their sign-vehicles appear to image and indicate their referents, even after routinization (which is where the third natural sign, symbol, comes into play.  Symbols are natural signs where the sign-object is based on habit, agreement, convention and so on.)

0151 Second, Latin Age scholastics were interested in distinguishing ens reale (mind-independent being, associated with things) and ens rationis (mind-dependent being, associated with humans).  Only in the 1600s, after over three centuries of debate, do the scholastics (who are now labeled “Baroque”, because, like late-modern Spain, they ended up “broke”) come up with the definition of the sign as a triadic relation.  Charles Peirce figures out his definition from reading the Baroque scholastics.

The scholastics are of interest because they explicitly distinguished two of the three sign-relations that are contained within a three-level interscope.  In particular, the specifying sign-relation (technically called “specificative extrinsic or intrinsic formal causality”) associates to sensible construction in the following manner.

0152 The reference is Razie Mah’s blog for October 2023, titled Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal”.

0153 For the ongoing example, for the households of Catal Hoyuk, plaster and paint_2af (SV_s) stands for the light of the sun and moon entering the home_2bm (SO_s) in regards to the identity of the home_3a operating on ‘the power of the surfacing to scatter light through its whiteness’_1b (SI_s).

0154 This connection is crucial, because it shows that Hodder’s thesis has evolutionary roots as deep as hand talk.  Hand talk is an adaptation to team activities, particularly in the span from the start of bipedalism to the domestication of fire.  This early stage is pre-linguistic because it only allows sensible construction.  It operates solely on the basis of specifying sign-relations.

0155 The supposition that words picture or point to their referents is so deeply ingrained in the human evolutionary experience, that today, when an inquirer hears the word, “entanglement”, the presumption is that the form of the spoken term_2af (SV_s) stands for a principle that gives unity_2bm to a real embodiment_2bf (SO_s) in regards to the word’s identity_3a operating on the potential of ‘the power of the spoken word’_1b (SI_s).

0156 Specifically, the forms of HT, TH, TT and HH dependencies_2af (SV_s) stand for entanglement as a principle of unity_2bm (SO_s) in regards to hominin identity_3a operating on the potential of ‘human powers_1b (SI_s).

0157 Chapter three (C3) concludes with a set-aside description of the archaeological site (anglicized to) Catal Hoyuk, located in central Anatolia (Turkey).  The site flourished between 7400 and 6000 BC.  An adjacent site (Catal Hoyuk West) started around 6000 BC and ended around 5500 BC.  At its peak, the settlement is very large, but it has no streets.  People traveled to their homes by walking on roof tops.

0158 Dr. Hodder was in charge of the excavation for many years.  His publications on this topic span from 1996 to 2022.

0159 Catal Hoyuk consists of houses with refuse or midden sandwiched between them.  There are no public administrative centers.  There are no ceremonial platforms.  There is plenty of evidence for a spiritual dimension in the people, because they buried their ancestors beneath their floors and adorned their walls with bones of bulls.

0160 In terms of the archaeological periods for the Levant, Catal Hoyuk corresponds to the pre-pottery B and C periods as well as the Pottery Neolithic. Radiocarbon-14 dating has been used to establish a time frame for twelve levels and four “pre-levels”.

0161 A distinct change occurs with respect to pottery.  Levels XII through X (say, 7100-6700 BC) contain little pottery, even though clay balls are used for cooking.  Levels IX and VIII are difficult to assess.  Cooking pottery is apparent in level VII (around 6610-6520 BC).  At the same time, there is a shift in building material (to sandier bricks).

The site seems to prosper in levels VII and VI, reaching its greatest density and house packing.  Then, there is a break, followed by the building of more elaborate houses, with areas devoted to storage and production.  Stamp seals are found.  The range of pottery types expands.  After level V (say, 6300 BC) there is evidence for the domestication of cattle (definitely for Catal Hoyuk West) along with more intensive use of the secondary products (milk and wool) of sheep and goats.

0162 The placement of the special section on Catal Hoyuk is interesting.

It comes after chapter two (C2, “Humans Depend on Things”) and at the end of chapter three (C3, “Things Depend of Other Things”).

It comes before chapter four (C4, “Things Depend of Humans”) and chapter five (C5, “Human-Human Entanglement”).

0163 Does the author unwittingly signal a transition in the human Lebenswelt, from a Lebenswelt that is evolutionarily ancient (marked by implicit abstraction) to a Lebenswelt that is technically novel (marked by explicit abstraction)?

0164 I think so.

Here is my breakdown of the levels at Catal Hoyuk, estimating the (radiocarbon) dates from the figures in C3.

0165 Why do I suggest this possibility?

Where do these emissaries from our current Lebenswelt come from?

0166 The scientific proposal is found in Razie Mah’s e-work, The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.  A dramatic exposition is found in An Archaeology of the Fall.

0167 Nonetheless, I offer a brief synopsis.

The hypothesis of the first singularity has two parts (P and Q).

0168 First (P), fully linguistic hand talk evolves after the domestication of fire, around 600kyr (thousands of years ago).  It is an adaptation to the social circle of the community, the team of teams.  See Razie Mah’s e-works The Human Niche (plus attendant reviews) as well as the two-part Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019).   These were placed on sale in 2018 and 2024, respectively.

0169 Speech is added to hand talk with the evolution of our species, Homo sapiens, around 300kyr.  The voice is initially added to hand-talk as an adornment.  Then, speech begins to take on a life of its own, because the semiotic qualities of speech are significantly different than hand-talk.  By the time when animal and plant domestication begins (maybe 15kyr), speech talk and hand talk are two complementary modes for talking.  I call this “hand-speech talk”.  The use of voice or manual-brachial gesture depends on tradition.

For a reference, consider Razie Mah’s e-work Synaesthesia and the Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution, editing Mah’s blogs from October and November, 2025.

0170 By 10kyr, all human cultures practice hand-speech talk and have been doing so for as hundreds of thousands of years.  These cultures belong to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Hand-speech talk exhibits the semiotic qualities of icons and indexes and facilitates implicit, rather than explicit, abstraction.

0171 Crucially, hand-talk words are not labels.  They are images and indications.  Therefore, the referent precedes the hand-talk word in such a fashion that its attributes enter into word meaning.  For example, the hand-talk word, [image RAVEN], may indicate a type of bird or the color black, depending on the context.  The linguistic dynamics of hand-speech talk have not been investigated because… well… all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.  Only a few monographs have been published on the (last remaining and maybe already dead) hand-speech languages of the North American Plains Indians and the Australian Aborigines.

0172 I am still on the first point (P).

In contrast, speech-alone talk is fully symbolic.  It cannot picture or point to its referents.  So, humans in our current Lebenswelt have followed a script, based on their phenotypic expectations about the nature of reference in hand talk.  If a spoken word exists, then there must be a referent.  This is precisely the expectation that phenomenology relies on, when someone (such as Ian Hodder) proposes a word, such as “entanglement”, as a label for the form of four dependencies: HT, TT, TH and HH.

0173 Here is a picture of the difference between the Lebenswelt that we evolved in and our current Lebenswelt.

0174 Second (Q), the cultural transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk must have an “initial moment”, so to speak.  No one thinks, “Why do we keep practicing the hand-component of our hand-speech talk?”, because every important word in that question is an explicit abstraction.

0175 Razie Mah identifies the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia on the basis of a sequence of speculations.  One culture forms from two hand-speech talking cultures originally living in the dry land of what is now called the… um… “Arabian”… or is it “Persian”?… Gulf.  That dry land is flooded with the rise of the seas, with a nominal date around 6800 B.C.  The two cultures, forced into the same territory, on the edges of the rapidly expanding Gulf, fuse, creating a pidgin, then a creole, the Sumerian language.  This creole is the first language based on speech-alone talk.

The Sumerian language is called an “isolate”, because it is unrelated to any family of languages.  This is what one expects for a creole.

0176 Now, I can jump to Dr. Hodder’s research, because the crucial transition starting in level VII occurs only 200 years after the fastest rise of the sea levels that, for Mah’s hypothesis, marks the constellation of the speech-alone talking Ubaid culture.

0177 Level VII may indicate first contact with speech-alone talking emissaries from a culture that is already more wealthy (from labor specialization) and more powerful (from social specialization) than the hand-speech talking culture of Catal Hoyuk.  Plus, they bring pottery.  They want to spread the word, along with a few recipes.

0204 Chapter 2 through 5 enact a subtle transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.

0205 The Lebenswelt that we evolved in associates to the lowest levels of the excavation at Catal Hoyuk.  From the earliest levels of XII to level VIII, there are many indications that these hand-speech talking people contextualized their identities_2b with responsibility_1c.  Teams_3c, rather than individuals_3b, were specialized.  Families and friends volunteered to work in teams.  Foraging and other activities were conducted by teams.  The community was a team of teams.  Social harmonization was obligatory.

0206 Levels XII through VIII may be labeled, “old school”.

Chapters two and three (C2 and C3) draws from the lessons of excavation levels XII through VIII.

0207 The “new school” shows up in level VII and associates to a material change from cooking with clay balls to cooking with pottery.  This is not the only change. After level VII, labor and social specialization becomes more evident, culminating in the adoption of metallurgy (copper smelting), secondary product processing (wool and skin production) and cylinder seals (stylized declarations of ownership or product).

Chapters four and five (C4 and C5) draw from the lessons of excavation levels VII to I.

0208 The Lebenswelt that we evolved in practices hand- (before humans) and hand-speech talk (with humans), manifests implicit abstraction, and lives in a world of constrained social complexity. This is a world where words are not lies, as noted in chapter 2B of Razie Mah’s fiction, An Archaeology of the Fall.

Our current Lebenswelt practices speech-alone talk, engages in explicit abstraction, and lives in a world of unconstrained social complexity.  This is a world were words are lies, as noted in chapter 2A of the same novel.

0209 Chapter five (C5) completes Hodder’s subtle transition.  The section titles tell a story.  S2C5 is labeled (more or less) “Inequality, Power and Entrapment”.  S3C5 discusses “Poverty Traps”.  S4C5 explores “Emotional Bondage”. Of course, I adjusted the titles (ever so slightly) in order to bring out the true value of the labels.  My bad.

0210 The lesson is clear.

Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

Humans depend on humans (C5) implicitly.

0211 The social circles tell the tale.

My reference is Razie Mah’s e-works, Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) as well as The Human Niche.  The first contains two parts (2024).  The second presents the hypothesis that the human niche consists of the potential of triadic relations (2018).

0212 Family and friends (5) is the social circle under the greatest selective pressure from the separation of our lineage from the chimpanzees to the start of bipedalism (roughly, 7 to 3.5 Myr).  During this era, male-female pair-bonding with male provisioning may have co-evolved with bipedalism.

The walking “southern apes” evolve by 3.5 Myr..

0213 The team (15) is the social circle under intense selective pressure from the start of bipedalism to the domestication of fire (roughly, 3.5 to 0.6 Myr).  This is the era of obligatory collaborative foraging.  Hand talk serves as an adaption to the team.  This is clear in Razie Mah’s Comments on Steven Mithen’s Book (1996) Prehistory of the Mind.  Hand talk is prelinguistic, in so far as team members perform only sensible construction (two-level interscopes, specifying sign relation).

During this time, the Homo genus first appears around 1.8 Myr.

0214 The community (150) is the social circle under critical selective pressure from the domestication of fire to the first singularity (roughly, 0.6 to 0.009Myr).  This is the era of obligatory social harmonizing.  Cooking with fire empowers more teams.  More teams yield and larger groups.  The community may be regarded as the team of teams.  Hand talk becomes fully linguistic, capable of counterintuitive, yet fully referential, statements, such as the name of the character, [image RAVEN][image-MAN].

0216 Social construction creates cognitive spaces for communal belonging.  It does through by intentionally activating implicit exemplar sign-processing.  Counter-intuitive statements cannot be sensibly regarded (so, they are not appropriate for team actions).  At the same time, they channel exemplar sign-processes towards the potentials of transcendentals (truth, beauty, goodness) and virtues (responsibility, honesty, and so forth).  Exemplar sign-processing adapts to obligatory social harmonizing.

0217 During this time, Homo sapiens appears, around 300kyr, with the voice added to hand-talk as an adornment. See Razie Mah’s e-work, Synaesthesia and the Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution (2025).  Over the next three-hundred thousand years, the voice extends from adornment to a fully linguistic complementary mode of talking.  Razie Mah applies the label, “hand-speech talk”.

Paleolithic art and tools may be regarded from the stance of a millennia long exploration of the semiotics of hand-speech talk.  The semiotic qualities of hand-speech talk are rooted in the iconicity and indexality of hand talk and branch into the purely symbolic nature of speech talk.

0218 The twist to human evolution arrives with the constellation of a speech-alone talking culture.  Rising sea-levels force two unrelated hand-speech talking cultures, one dwelling in the coast and ravine of the channel of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the other settled on the surrounding dry land.  One Neolithic and one Mesolithic culture are forced into proximity, leading to the familiar sequence of pidgin, then creole, formation.  The only difference is that this creole, the Sumerian language, consists of speech-alone talk.

0219 The technical reference is Razie Mah’s The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.  The dramatic referral is An Archaeology of the Fall.

0236 Now that the reader is introduced to entanglement (C2-C5), then how does that change the construction of scientific anthropological models (C6-C11)?

Chapters six through eight (C6-C8) aim to develop the concept.

Chapters nine though eleven (C9-C11) focus on methodology.

0237 Chapter six (C6) is titled “Exploring Entanglement”.

An inquirer can look at the evolution of the Homo lineage in terms of entanglements.

0238 So far, I have shown that “entanglement” belongs to the philosophical construction of “a confounding” and may resolve into two-adjacent levels of a three-level interscope (as well as a sign-relation identified by Latin Age scholastics).  Consequently, I cover the same territory using this alternative to Hodder’s sociological construction.

0239 Oldowan stone tools provide an example.

Our bipedal ancestors are on the lookout for food that is (seasonally) available (at specific locations) and ignored by other species (due to some processing issue).  Oldowan stone tools provide a clue.  Consider a partially scavenged carcass of a large animal.  Other scavengers have already eaten most of the dead beast. However, they cannot get to the marrow fat in the long bones.  A rock cleft in order to reveal a sharp edge will do the trick to getting that marrow fat.

0240 Since this trick works well, a team (remember the term, obligatory collaborative foraging) turns this success into a habit that lasts for generations.  The team that makes Oldowan stone tools is one of many teams.  Once a clever way to get food, without placing the team in great danger, is habitually pursued, then the team’s success enhances the reproductive success of team members.  Over generations, the cognitive and physiological processes that go into a successful team become more and more… hmmm… “natural”.  Our ancestors adapt to the team’s success.

0241 Razie Mah’s proposal is that team activities may be diagrammed using category-based nested forms.  This serves as evidence that our lineage adapts to the potential of triadic relations.

0242 Here is a diagram of a three-level interscope for obtaining fat from scavenged long-bones.

0243 The thingness of the long-bone_2a becomes salient in the normal context of a hand-held tool_3a having the ‘hardness to crack what no teeth can break’_1a.

The normal context of identity_3b brings the actuality of {a stone-tool can crack a long-bone_2bm [substantiating by way of flow] getting marrow fat out_2bf}_2b into relation with the possibility that ‘an intentionally altered stone has a sharp hard edge‘_1b.

Finally, the obtained fat_2bf has the perspective-level potential of ‘food for the team’_1c.  Each member of the team has family and friends_3c, so of course they_3c will scavenge as much as they can_2cm in order to share_2cf upon returning to the band.

0244 The three-level interscope contains specifying and exemplar sign relations.  The sign-vehicles and sign-objects belong to the realm of actuality₂.

0245 Hodder’s sociological approach to entanglement adds a third layer corresponding to the philosophical apparatus of confounding, as shown below.

0246 Chapter six (C6) parallels the notion that the above diagrams associate to a noumenon.

Phenomena are the observable and measurable facets of their noumenon.

Observations and measurements of phenomena support the construction of models based on a specific disciplinary language.

This is how the empirio-schematic judgment works.

0247 Chapter seven (C7) discusses entanglements and affordances.  These topics do not come to mind when considering the dig at Catal Hoyuk.

Spoken words are a little quirky.

I suppose that there are nuanced differences between “dig” and “excavation”.

One must not dismiss the sensitivities (and the vocabulary) of others.

0248 The author (S2C7) recalls an episode in a book by art historian and critic, Ernst H. Gombrich (1909-2001). The “H.” is for Hans Josef.  Trained in art history at the University of Vienna, he held academic appointments at Oxford University, Harvard and Cornell, while working at the Wahrburg Institute until his retirement in 1976.  His most popular book is a text, published in 1950, titled, The Story of Art.

0249 Another book, The Sense of Order, contains the episode, where an expert sums up the shift of artistic expression during dynastic Egypt as trending from “tactile” to “optic”.  In a similar way, after the Middle Ages, the art of the West trends from “religious” to “decorative”.  Gombrich wonders whether the same laws of stylistic development apply to these two observations?

I ask, “Was there a change in artistic dispositions_1a?”

0250 If so, a change of artistic disposition would not influence content-level matter_2am as much as the content-level form_2af.

0251 Gombrich mentions another art critic who distinguishes Renaissance from Baroque styles of art on the basis of how each made him “inwardly dance”. 

0252 To me, this art critic has processed so many works of art_2cm, that he constituted a perspective level form_2cf (SV_i) that stands for an inward matter_2am (SO_i) in regards to assessing a historical work of art_3a operating on his potential of ‘being disposed to dance’_1a (SI_i).

0253 In this example, the interventional sign-relation manifests.  The sign-vehicle is the perspective-level form_2cf.  The sign-object is content-level matter_2am.  The sign-interpretant is the content-level normal context_3a (structure_3a) operating on its potential (dispositions_1a).

The interventional sign concludes one three-level interscope and initiates another.  Perspective-level form_2cf “writes” content-level matter_2am by… how?.. precipitating an appropriate normal context_3a and potential_1a?

0254 Here is another way to diagram the interventional sign-relation.

0255 In S4C7, Hodder discusses burials in the floors of the houses and the recovery of (some, not all) heads for plastering and display.  The honored skulls uphold the walls of the house (so to speak).

0256 Here is a picture of the associated interventional sign-relation.

0257 The reconstitution of the head long after burial_2cf (SV_i) stands for the ancestor as matter_2am (SO_i) in regards to the structure of a display_3a operating on the potential that ‘the ancestor is disposed to bless the family’_1a (SI_s).

The interventional sign resolves a confounding. The perspective-level thing is {recovery_2cm [substantiates by way of affordance] the reconstitution of a deceased’s head_2cf}_2c.  Plus, the form of reconstitution_2cf [entangles] the ancestor as matter_2am.

0258 Let me step back and present the perspective-level thing_2c from point of view of its three-level interscope.

The reconstituted head_2cf entangles the ancestors as matter.

0259 The associations in the above figures are not fixed.  They are not models.  They are guesses as to what the noumenon must be.

If the above figures represent the noumenon of the handling of the dead in Catal Hoyuk, then do the observed phenomena allow one to build an archaeological model that makes sense?

0260 Chapter 8 (C8) offers two examples regarding the onset of domestication in China and the Middle East.  The reviewed research covers radiocarbon dates prior to 6800BC.  These dates do not cover the strangest entanglement of all: the semiotic transition that starts with the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

Consider Razie Mah’s four blogs, Looking at Melinda A. Zeder’s Article (2025) “Unpacking the Neolithic”, published on January 1, 2026.

0276 Chapter nine (C9) is on method. Chapter ten (C10) considers an “entangled string theory” as well as other approaches.  Chapter 11 (C11) draws a short conclusion.

All these chapters deal with the issue of what the noumenon must be, in order to conduct the most informative archaeological inquiry.

0277 In this examination, I conclude that the conceptual apparatus of entanglement corresponds to a phenomenological presentation of what the noumenon of archaeology must be.

0278 The basis for such a conclusion is found in Razie Mah’s four part e-work Biosemiotics as Noumenon (2025).

0279 Here is a picture of the Positivist’s judgment, which ground natural scientific inquiry.

0280 A judgment brings what ought to be into relation with what is.   The three elements are what is, what ought to be, and relation.  In the above figure, the positivist intellect belongs to the relation (and the relation is imbued with the category of thirdness). The empirio-schematic judgment belongs to what ought to be (and is imbued with the category of secondness).  The dyad of the noumenon and its phenomena belongs to what is (and is imbued with the category of firstness).

0281 From this, I would expect a benefit from a robust conceptualization of the noumenon.

Otherwise, the noumenon is simply the thing that must be responsible for the phenomena.

But, what does that imply?

Obviously, one wonders whether what one is measuring really corresponds to phenomena of a real noumenon or an imaginary one.

0282 In other words, Hodder’ entanglement is relevant because it reveals what the noumenon must be.

Here is my picture of his theory as an exercise in thingness, flowness and affordance.

0283 Chapter 9 discusses methods as if the noumenon is not under question.  He mentions tanglegrams (S2C9), formal networks (S3C9), sequencing concerns (S4C9) and other diachronic aspects (S5C9), as well as other interpretations (S6C9) without mentioning that… well… what exactly is the thing itself?

0284 I wonder whether all the other approaches elucidated in chapter ten (C10) confront the conundrum that I am trying to articulate.

If scientific appreciation of what the noumenon must be stands within the Overton window of Hegel’s and Marx’s things, then what if that is not enough?

0044 Chapter 3 of Dr. D. Basak’s book concerns the invention of writing.

A grand cognitive leap takes three steps (E, F and G).

0045 At first (E), cuneiform ideograms, incised onto carefully prepared clay tablets, reported transactions, not unlike journal papers.  Indeed, some early modern journals take the label “transactions”, such as the “Transactions of the Philological Society”. An ideogram presents an icon of its referent.

0046 According to Charles Peirce (1839-1914), an “icon” is a sign-relation whose sign-object is based on the principle of similarity, imagery and so forth.  An “index” is a sign-relation whose sign-object is based on the principle of contiguity, pointing, indication and so forth.  A “symbol” is a sign-relation whose sign-object is based on the principle of habit, convention, rules, law and so forth.

0047 Later (F), the ideograms become indexes for spoken-word sounds.  In comparison, journal publications become indexes of scholarly productivity to academic deans, whose appointments represent an elite standing above the tenured (or tenure-track) scholar.

0048 Beck et al.’s sections 3, 4 and 5 (Publishing Dynamics in North America, Publishing Pathways, and Publishing Dynamics in Latin America) discuss the transition from journal article as an icon (of research content) to an index (of academic productivity).

Was the transition inevitable?

Once the bureaucrat (like the cuneiform-writing scribe) realizes the indexal principle, then there is no return to the original configuration.  Journal articles as indexes usurp (maybe, “re-organize”) journal articles as icons.  Rules and guidelines abound in the use of indexes to grant tenure.

Finally (G), the icon and index are repackaged as a symbol representing a public good.

0049 Here is a diagram.

0050 Surely, the above comparison is not so far fetched.

The comparison says that both cuneiform and journal articles pass through distinct historical unfoldings.  First and foremost, they are pictures of content.  Then, they become indications, bound by rules and guidelines.  Finally, these pictures (meanings) and indicators (presences) support a symbol (message).  The unfolding engages content, situation and perspective.

0051 The progression calls to my mind the category-based nested form corresponding to the definition of a spoken word, as presented at the opening of Razie Mah’s e-book, How To Define The Word “Religion”.

The normal context of definition₃ brings the actuality of a spoken word₂ into relation with the potential of ‘meaning (content), presence (situation) and message (perspective)’₁.

0052 For chapter 3 of Dr. D. Basak’s book, the spoken term₂ is “cuneiform writing”.

For sections 3, 4 and 5 of Beck et al., the spoken term₂ is “journal article”.

0053 The comparison between the early chapters of a (potentially AI-generated) book and a cry from the heart of professional archaeologists early in their careers tells me that the emergence of new specializations during the Ubaid, Uruk and Early Dynastic periods in Sumer are similar to the historical emergence of professional archaeologists in modernity.

0054 I wonder whether the emergence of civilization in the land between the rivers millennia ago is really due to the opportunities and the dangers of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Could it be due to a dynamic still unfolding in history in the present day?

0055 Consider the two confoundings that seem to be embedded within the potential that underlies a definition of a spoken term₁.

I take Basak’s treatment of cuneiform as the example.  The reader can translate this into Beck et al.’s treatment of journal articles.

0056 A first confounding will resolve into the content and the situation levels of an interscope (a category-based nested form composed of category-based nested forms).

For the following hylomorphe, various things (as matter) substantiate cuneiform ideograms (as form).  At the same time, the spoken words associated to the names of things (as form) entangle the rebus principle (as matter).

0057 A second confounding will resolve into the situation and the perspective levels of an interscope.

Again, the hylomorphe corresponds to the two real elements that characterize Peirce’s category of secondness.

For the following hylomorphe, the word-sound (in speech-alone talk) indicates the presence of ‘something’ (as matter) that substantiates the situation realness of a transaction (as form).  Spoken words as content that are expected to be situated as transactions.  Then, that situation-based transaction (as form) entangles a perspective-based message pertaining to the transaction that has taken place (as matter).

0058 For Beck et al. these confoundings indicate how vulnerable their occupations are, given what is stated in their own article.  Not only are young experts in archaeology being crushed by competition within their own disciple (a publication arms-race corresponds to the situational transaction), but they also face the challenges of a new technology (represented by an individual or a special-interest using AI) that may harvest their articles in the privatization of a “public good”.