Spencer Heath Archive

Item 426

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath.

No date

This is a rational universe whether we know it or not, and we are potentially rational because we are specific or particular products of the universal environment. We do not consciously create rationality of language in its syn­tactical structure. We create it empirically and afterwards discover its rationality. Language seems to evolve by departures from its syntactical rules. But this is only because it is functioning in new ways not comprehended under the old rules. It will be found to be rational upon dis­covery of the new or extended rationale that was implicit in its empirical extension just as the old rules were so discovered.

     So we will have to tell your mother when she chides me for speaking ungrammatically that we are creating new rules of grammar. But I should not say that I am creating them. I am only practicing unconsciously some of the rationality implicit in the cosmos.

     Did you like this thought? Are you disposed to give me some excellent credit for originating it? If so, your thinking is inadequate because you are failing to realize that all action is reciprocal — a conflux of influences. You your­self played a part in this creation of thought no less essen­tial than mine, because without the stimulus of your thought and attendant circumstances my mind could not have functioned alone in the creative manner that it did. We are disposed to give credit, so to speak, to that which for the moment is highest in our consciousnesses, or our conception, disregard­ing other necessary elements or factors. It was because you were more conscious of me than you were of yourself that you were disposed to attribute the thought excellence /?/ to me. IF you were — as I only supposed.