Research that begins by asking how language, culture, and society are related and determine the nature of mind and man are usually either prolegomena on the future of social science or epitaphs for careers. In either case, the ease of asking belies the difficulty of answering, and perhaps it is the refractory nature of the problem that has led to the creation of so many opposed camps, each striving to reduce the discourse of the others by translation, usurpation, or dismissal. In the study of mind, the debate surfaces between the "rigor" of "scientific" methodologies and the "softness" of mentalism. The epitome of the natural science dismissal of mentalism is probably the work of the philosopher Quine, who in his preference for austere landscapes populated only by those things allowable by logic, sees mentalist discourse as akin to talk of witches. The debate runs deep, ranging from the nature and existence of propositions, intentions and intensions, to the very role of mathematical theories of truth in articulating the structure of language and thought.

The natural science onslaught within anthropology views culture as a sophisticated means for ensuring the survival or dominance of humans as a species. The principles that determine cultural and social evolution, particularly kinship systems, are merely biological evolutionary principles writ large, as if society itself had a genetic code ensuring its own reproduction. However, for something to be subject to various laws does not necessarily mean that those laws explain it. To understand the biological processes underlying writing a novel is not to understand what that act is, just as an accurate phonetic transcription of a conversation does not let us understand what it is about. What is clearly at issue is the problem of meaning, whether it be the target of the behaviorist's dismissal or the humanist's embrace.

Click here to order a copy from the author.