Overview

Previous books in Jacques Chevalier's The 3D Mind trilogy dealt with the horizontal and vertical planes of brain science and their relevance for a better understanding of signs in culture and language. Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time brings the trilogy onto a third and final plane, the associative fibers that connect the rear lobes to the anterior regions of the brain. This is the coronal plane that governs the weavings of remembrance and anticipation, recollections of the past and expectations of the future. Chevalier shows that while brain and sign processing caters to events that succeed in attracting our attention, it also provides means to produce silence where unawareness is called for. Some inattention to things that are no longer or not yet is a requirement of the plotting of signs of hope and apprehension folding and unfolding in narrative time. The end result is a complex calculus of recollection, anticipation, and hope combined with traces of deferment, forgetfulness, and fear. This intricate ""time-machine"" built into language and the brain governs the ""working memory system, an active memory operating by necessity in the present tense. Chevalier explores these issues in light of what philosophers such as St. Augustine, Kant, Heidegger, and Lvi-Strauss have said about memory and the nature of time. Arguing against all static and apocalyptic conceptions of time, Chevalier applies his own blending of ""neurosemiotics"" and Ricoeurian hermeneutics to the interpretive analysis of narrative plots ranging from a cat drawn by a child to intriguing speculations on the hot and the cold in Mexican Nahua agriculture. Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time also looks at prophecies of demonic scorpions in the Book of Revelation, and signs of the End heralded by the tragedy of Ground Zero.

Full Product Details

9780773523593

Table of Contents

Reviews

What a marvelous trilogy this is - a crackerjack, up-to-date study of neuropsychology blending in with semiotic and philosophical analyses at their best. Chevalier demonstrates, with great clarity, and at times eloquence and a sense of humour, that his neuropsychological/semiotic model can help us understand science, literature, myth, history, philosophy, and religion. Brilliant analyses are found in each of the three books. Chevalier has laid out in a clear, indeed spell-binding, way in concrete form the theory Charles Peirce and future semioticians such as Thomas Sebeok and John Deely have postulated: the unity of experience through semiotic understanding. William Pencak, Department of History, Penn State University This is a highly ambitious work, which is destined to lay the foundation for a whole new branch of semiotics - neurosemiotics. Chevalier demonstrates an impressive mastery of each of the disciplines (from anthropology to philosophy by way of neuropsychology) he has brought together in The 3D Mind. The originality of this trilogy lies in the way its author uses concepts drawn from neuropsychology to frame and then dissolve debates in the humanities and social sciences over such things as representation, identity construction, moral regulation, simulation, and eroticism, to name but a few of the controversies Chevalier considers from the unique standpoint he has developed. David Howes, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University

"What a marvelous trilogy this is - a crackerjack, up-to-date study of neuropsychology blending in with semiotic and philosophical analyses at their best. Chevalier demonstrates, with great clarity, and at times eloquence and a sense of humour, that his neuropsychological/semiotic model can help us understand science, literature, myth, history, philosophy, and religion. Brilliant analyses are found in each of the three books. Chevalier has laid out in a clear, indeed spell-binding, way in concrete form the theory Charles Peirce and future semioticians such as Thomas Sebeok and John Deely have postulated: the unity of experience through semiotic understanding. William Pencak, Department of History, Penn State University ""This is a highly ambitious work, which is destined to lay the foundation for a whole new branch of semiotics - neurosemiotics. Chevalier demonstrates an impressive mastery of each of the disciplines (from anthropology to philosophy by way of neuropsychology) he has brought together in The 3D Mind. The originality of this trilogy lies in the way its author uses concepts drawn from neuropsychology to frame and then dissolve debates in the humanities and social sciences over such things as representation, identity construction, moral regulation, simulation, and eroticism, to name but a few of the controversies Chevalier considers from the unique standpoint he has developed."" David Howes, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University"

Author Information

CA

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available