"Alfred Korzybski, the father of general semantics, described man as 'a time-binding animal.' Our minds join past, present, and future in a way unique upon this planet, impossible and inconceivable to any of the beings that share it with us." (p. 184)
We have just seen this in Anderson's "The Little Monster." The Piths have already had an Old, then a New, Testament:
first, Old Father;
more recently, the stranger who was sent by or is Old Father and who has given them a holy fire that they must never let die.
Anderson describes his own "...small, helter-skelter museum of time-binding...," (ibid.) a shelf that holds:
a Paleolithic hand ax;
a reconstructed stone spearhead and arrowhead;
a plastic-handled obsidian knife sold to tourists in Mexico;
copies of a Pharaonic scarab and Horus falcon;
comic Viking figures above part of an oyster shell from a Viking site in York;
an archeosaur coprolith;
a letter opener presented to Anderson's grandfather on his 1905 retirement as a sea captain between Denmark and Greenland;
a new Greek coin showing Democritus and an atom;
a statuette of a Diomedean.
After all that prehistory and history, that list just had to go into the future and how could it do that except into one of Poul Anderson's fictional futures?
I have thought of two examples of linguistic time-binding. First, Pope John Paul II was named after his predecessor who was named after his two predecessors who were named after authors of the New Testament, one of whom was named after the first King of Israel.
Secondly, when Duncan Hallas began a talk by saying, "In the beginning was the Deed...," he was quoting Goethe's Faust who was deliberately misquoting and "correcting" the opening verse of John's Gospel which quotes the opening verse of Genesis and links it to a Greek philosophical concept.
All that history and thought in just a few words.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I was interested to note how a fan of Anderson gave him that statuette based on the Diomedeans we see in THE MAN WHO COUNTS. I so seldom see any really satisfactory depictions of Anderson's non human characters that this item in your list stood out.
I keep a few items on my desk which might make up an analogous list: a paperweight containing seven coins from New Testament tines (such as a denarius of Tiberius and a lepton of Pilate), a small plastic Christ Child of Prague statuette, a desk clock (because mechanical clocks were invented circa AD 1200), etc.
Ad astra! Sean
I think some other mammals can do time-binding in a simple, elementary fashion. My cat is very attached to habits established in her kittenhood -- times to eat, to play, to go to bed. She gets upset if they're altered.
And bright out the cat-carrier used for trips to the vet, and there are no limits to rage and despair.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Amusing, what you said about your cat! Many humans have similar reactions to going to the dentist, and often procrastinate and put off doing so. Until the pain from a toothache or other dental problems becomes intolerable.
Ad astra! Sean
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