Miner notes

Language

Language as ground of thinking, literature (from rhetoric to language's relation to the world and the mind).

"Let it be said that our problem is not the indeterminacy of language. Language is irresistibly predicative, given to claim and determination even in conditional and subjunctive moods. The constraints oflanguage allow me no more freedom than they do the next person." (4)

"I would go farther than that sentence alone suggests and claim that language is inescapably referential and predicative, predicative in the sense of constantly entering truth claims. (Special signs or conventions are necessary for us to know that a fiction is implied, a very different, less definitive predication.)" (17)

Binaries:

It stood out to me how binaries work in Miner's first chapter, how he creates a dynamic between them and undoes (or does not undo) them.

implicit -- explicit

theoretical -- practical

universal -- particular

originative -- derivative

original -- translation

familiar -- outlandish

free -- constrained / free -- contaminated

imitation -- motivation

Knowledge:

literary -- nonliterary knowledge

art -- knowledge

Information (14):

"Once a culture is advanced in writing, and certainly once it has means to duplicate what has been composed, the products can and, so people believe, must be ordered and stored. The old libraries of Alexandria and China, like the modern ones of our universi ties, reflect in their intellectual ordering autonomies of kinds of knowl edge. It is clearly significant that the major classification used (when the information is available)"

Scale: universal, "largeness" (4) 

Code (16): reading as decoding

"The differences are physical in terms of coding but cognitive in respect to the person doing the knowing."

coded reading (implicit/explicit as mode of reading? layers of text? "patterns" of reading and of production? (16) 

"In addition to the physical coding, a text may be taken as the main body of writing as opposed to interlinears, notes, or indexes and other appendages. In an edition, the text is opposed to the commentary." (16) [commentary in Chinese tradition?]

"There are, however, telltale signs that may be arbitrary as semioticians say. They are not neutral. One need only read or listen like a sentinel alert on the passwords." (26)

Metaphor as comparison: 

"Also, "sphere" is metaphorical, whereas the terms set forth are of the literal kind we do well to pursue so that they may be more readilyjudged for their truth or falsehood, or at least for their utility or inutility. (18)

production (16):

literary factor(ie)s

The existence of a poem (poet, poem, production) (6. 16) 

Art -- science

"These considerations are rudimentary. But the art (not to mention the Wissenschaft) of comparison has a long way to go before clear canons are provided us." (22)

*What makes a "tradition"?

*mimesis/antimimesis/unmimesis