Here I would like to focus for a moment on the role that intersubjectively constituted conversational development of abductive reasoning plays within in the ontogenesis of children's language, since this ability to `abduct' - to generate the most `trivial', seemingly `necessary and sufficient' hypothesis to try and explain suddenly occurring, highly surprising and unfamiliar phenomena we encounter - underlies any truly innovative thinking, and consequently all qualitatively good habits of scientific investigation).
One of Michael Halliday's more well-known examples, which I have here taken the liberty of appropriating for my own purposes, will be found in one of the articles I mentioned at the beginning of this paper (Halliday 1984). This example illustrates quite well how a child's meaningful other (in this particular case, Halliday as a caring father for his son Nigel) carefully scaffolds and fosters the development of a certain kind of interpersonal communication, and with it, a certain kind of way of thinking and acting. The conversational snippet I have chosen to use here is as follows:
Below, I have attempted to formalise the functional structuring of this interaction by means of a quasi-formal logic:
Nigel, upon observing to his obvious surprise that his plasticine both gets longer p[+l] and thinner p[+t] at the same time as he rolls it out on the table, starts to wonder whether there can be some kind of causal relationship in operation here. He articulates this problem to his father as a Wh-question (N1). His father answers (F1) by first crediting Nigel with his investigatory approach (`That's a good question') and then going on to restate the problem, substituting `it' for the rheme of Nigel's question (`Why does it?).
The interactional focus is thus moved even more strongly to the original theme, i.e. to the issue of the possible existence of a causal relationship. Nigel then forwards what I have chosen to call here a `virtual' hypothesis. He begins to `abduct', i.e. he quickly develops a fairly `trivial' explanation that might reasonably be a necessary and sufficient explanation of what he thinks he has observed (`Because more of it is getting used ùp.').
Essentially, what the child is saying here is that his piece of plasticine appears to be (i.e. `virtually') decreasing in volume over time (`more' of it is getting `used up'). This suggestion falls short of a systemic explanation, since it neglects the fact that its length is increasing at the same time, but it might be termed a `good try at best fit' - i.e. a kind of heuristic device in an intersubjectively constituted process of meaning-making. I would now like to draw attention to the father's response (F2). This consists of just one word `Well', but this word does not have what phoneticians often refer to as `closure'. The final phoneme /l/ is `held' (this is indicated by the three dots after the word in the transcription (`Well...'). It is also accompanied by a doubtful expression on the father's face (MAKH - personal communication). We have thus a `non-conditional, fairly open-ended reply'. The implication for the child of course may be something like a friendly: `Well, OK... (but I still believe that you know better than that..)'.
Formally I have represented this by the symbols [~ T ^ ~ F] (i.e. NOT True AND NOT False). By means of this device, responsibility for further development of the hypothesis is returned to the developing `thinker' (the child), who then goes on alone to produce the `correct' dynamic systemic explanation:
`Because more of it is getting used up to make it lònger, thàt's why', and so it goes thìnner.'
At a higher level of abstraction the child's solution is a propositional representation of the third law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) by reference to experiential observation. The child's personal integrity is well taken care of in this kind of interaction too, since it is apparently able to master the development of the more complex systemic explanation on its own. The adult is present mainly as sympathetic interlocutor or mentor, providing not only emotional, but also cognitive scaffolding; modelling ways of co-constructing meaning from concrete experience together with the child.
David Bohm (1980) has objected that language has a tendency to fragment reality by dividing it up into separate entities; distorting the reality of `undivided wholeness in flowing movement'. He has even suggested that we need a new form of language called the `rheomode', which gives the basic role to the verb, rather than to the noun to describe natural processes. I would tend to agree with Halliday here when he remarks that we do not really need to keep engineering in language in order to change it, since it will change anyway, because that is the only way it can persist. Like any other naturally occurring phenomenon language is destined to change and adapt in order to survive.
This then, brings us round to one very basic question: namely that of what kind of ontology, epistemic grounding and descriptive language we need to use in order to ascribe continuity to our descriptions of reality. We have also added another dimension to this discussion: Is it really necessary to engineer special kinds of language to take care of this aspect of reality? Or are we still rather too ignorant of the true potential of the dynamic open system of language for situating scientific investigation and description within, and in relation to, the phenomenological horizon of the evolutionary and ontogenetic processes inherent in human culture and community, and in the encompassing nature that constitutes the life-world or ground maintaining and nurturing these cultures?
Something that often seems transparently obvious on reading a lot of scientific writing is that many authors do not seem to have sufficient understanding of, nor pay sufficient attention to, what Roman Jakobson termed the `poetic function' of language. To orchestrate and structure meaning for others in an effective and appealing manner by means of (spoken or written) language involves developing a deep understanding of, and a willingness to take consequence of the fact that it is not what you say, but how you say it that counts - and not only that of course, but also who says what to whom, where and when. Good scientific discourse than, needs to be situated, and it also requires an aesthetic component. This line of argument, however, is moving us towards a discussion of quite comprehensive ideas such as context of situation, situation of the utterance, situation of the sentence or more generally, Emil Benveniste's theory of énonciation (Benveniste 1966). I shall not, however, enter into an in-depth discussion of this theory in this particular paper, althought it would be extremely interesting to do so.
Metaphor and the aesthetics of describing continuity
So for the time being let us go back and look a bit more closely at Peirce's discussion of the idea of continuity.[4] Here, I would like to draw your attention to the various kinds of metaphors, and the ways of approaching, encircling and describing phenomena, that Peirce uses in his discussion.
Peirce, in true Socratic fashion asks his reader (with regard to his idea of relational generality):
`How could such a continuum have been derived? Has it for example been put together? Have the separated parts become welded, or what?' [CP 6.191]
His immediate answer to this is that:
`Looking upon the course of logic as a whole we see that it proceeds from the question to the answer - from the vague to the definite. And so likewise all the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite. The indeterminate future becomes the irrevocable past. In Spencer's phrase the undifferentiated differentiates itself. The homogeneous puts on heterogeneity. However it may be in special cases, then we must suppose that as a rule the continuum has been derived from a more general continuum, a continuum of higher generality. From this point of view we must suppose that the existing universe, with all its arbitrary secondness, is an offshoot from, or an arbitrary determination of, a world of ideas, a Platonic world; not that our superior logic has enabled us to reach up to a world of forms to which the real universe, with its feebler logic, was inadequate.'
For Peirce then, the very matter comprising the universe is in some vague way subordinate to some higher world of ideas. This allows him to introduce the notion of Firstness; first in terms of vagueness (he refers to `a vague potentiality'), and later in terms of `sense quality' and `feeling' which is probably one of Peirce's most misunderstood or misinterpreted concepts[5]:
`The sense quality is a feeling. Even if you say it is a slumbering feeling, that does not make it less intense; perhaps the reverse. For it is the absence of reaction - of feeling another - that constitutes slumber, not the absence of the immediate feeling that is all that it is in its immediacy.'
What Peirce is in fact saying here (in giving a metaphorical (`a slumbering feeling'), negatively defined (`absence of reaction') presentation of the idea of Firstness) is that there exists a presemiotic realm of experience, where it is not possible to separate out an independent `self' from the rest of the universe, and where there is a nothing more understandable to us than a vague potential of the reality that we somehow belong to, but yet are not able to experience as separate instants in time. This presemiotic realm is what Peirce refers to as `thatness', `suchness', or more commonly, Firstness. Our human potential for feeling and sensing by virtue of the fact that we are situated in the world of being, correlates then to this ontological Firstness.
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