Log24

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Sinner or Saint?

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:31 am

As noted here yesterday, Claude Levi-Strauss may have died on Devil's Night, on Halloween, or on All Saints' Day. He was apparently a myth-transformer to the end.

The Independent says today he died on Sunday, All Saints' Day. Its eulogy, by Adam Kuper, is well-written, noting that linguist Roman Jakobson was a source of Levi-Strauss's theory of oppositions in myth, and observing that

"… binary oppositions tend to accumulate to form structures…."

Yes, they do. Examples:

I. The structures in the Diamond Puzzle

Adam and God (Sistine Chapel), with Jungian Self-Symbol and Ojo de Dios (The Diamond Puzzle)

Click on image for Jungian background.

II: The structure on a recent cover of Semiotica

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/091103-SemioticaSm.jpg

Click to enlarge.

The Semiotica article by mathematical linguist Solomon Marcus is a defense of the Levi-Strauss canonic formula mentioned here yesterday.

It is available online for $40.

A less expensive, and possibly more informative, look at oppositions in linguistics is available for free online in a 1984 master's thesis (pdf, 8+ mb)–

"Language, Linguistics, and Philosophy: A Comparison of the Work of Roman Jakobson and the Later Wittgenstein, with Some Attention to the Philosophy of Charles Saunders Peirce," by Miles Spencer Kimball.

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