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If this didn`t get to the list first time round, then here it is. If it did, then you don`t need to read this. I`ve taken the liberty of removing the `las` from `Douglas`, despite amputating the accidental reference to GLAS in the process. Dear Doug, Thanks for your fascinating post. I`m no expert in any of the fields you examine, I`m not even an amateur, so please excuse the naivety of the following suggestions... >h)...take the mind in the action of becoming aware: that too is accompanied >by a miniscule biological process, and is therefore open to quantum level >phenomena. The Black Hole mathematician, Penrose, has latterly been claiming >that the fact of consciousness, of mind, can't be explained without examining >the quantum level - and he is convinced that there's a new mathematics to be >invented which will resolve the Schroedinger equation and bridge across from >the probability wave, the cat alive and dead, to the single resolution of it >in real life, alive or dead. Doug, you are incomparably more familiar with this stuff than I am. I speed-read the occasional review in the TLS et al and that`s all. But Derrida might argue (and I`m aware of how stupid I`m sounding when that I say) that your "miniscule biological process" can only relate to some other element in its immediate past, and another in its immediate future: that this relation would create the "present" moment of becoming aware in its connection to a lack of awareness and an already-awareness. The "miniscule biological process" would then itself be divided by its extension in space, whether at a quantum level or not. And you could argue that your example is not an arbitrary one (not that you argued that it was) as it represents the invention of the self-presence of presence in its self-awareness, the, or one, cornerstone of metaphysics. Penrose`s argument could be said to suppose "that, prior to the sign and outside it, excluding any trace and any differance, something like consciousness is possible. And that consciousness, before distributing its signs in space and in the world, can gather itself into its presence." (Derrida, "Differance") And perhaps Penrose`s interminably patient vigil for a math-to-come is a stalling exercise; the math-to-come would, it is hoped, explain consciousness without recourse to explaining it as "an effect or a determination" because Penrose has decided that`s not what it is without being able to explain why. The inability to locate or define consciousness, which he readily admits, is perfectly adequately explained by Derrida`s differance. Stephen Hawking criticises Penrose for an excessive attachment to "reality" or to a particular definition of it or to a wish to define it (I`m not too clear on this sort of thing.), an excessive attachment to the reality of reality in its self-presence, hence the need (not felt by Hawking) to diagnose the cat. Re: "two axes of linguistics". Can a working linguistic theory afford to do away with these yet? Prynne`s own William Matthews lectures explain why literary criticism routinely transgresses Saussure`s doctrine of the arbitrary nature of the sign, but, it seems to me, does so on the basis of a necessary retention of the two axes. Lit. Crit`s (and Lit. Lang`s) transgressions are founded upon exploitation of the ladder of the paradigmatic or vertical axis. These are no more than tentative forays, and there is much in your post that I don`t feel qualified to comment upon. The elucidation of Prynne`s poetry by reference to the advanced sciences was of great interest to me and I hope you can be persuaded to enlarge upon the subject. all best robin %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%