The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other

6. THE MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE

SUPPOSE A MAN IS a castaway on an island. He is, moreover, a special sort of castaway. He has lost his memory in the shipwreck and has no recollection of where he came from or who he is. All he knows is that one day he finds himself cast up on the beach. But it is a pleasant place and he soon discovers that the island is inhabited. Indeed it turns out that the islanders have a remarkable culture with highly developed social institutions, a good university, first-class science, a flourishing industry and art. The castaway is warmly received. Being a resourceful fellow, he makes the best of the situation, gets a job, builds a house, takes a wife, raises a family, goes to night school, and enjoys the local arts of cinema, music, and literature. He becomes, as the phrase goes, a useful member of the community.

The castaway, who by now is quite well educated and curious about the world, forms the habit of taking a walk on the beach early in the morning. Here he regularly comes upon bottles which have been washed up by the waves. The bottles are tightly corked and each one contains a single piece of paper with a single sentence written on it.

The messages are very diverse in form and subject matter. Naturally he is interested, at first idly, then acutely — when it turns out that some of the messages convey important information. Being an alert, conscientious, and well-informed man who is interested in the advance of science and the arts, and a responsible citizen who has a stake in the welfare of his island society, he is anxious to evaluate the messages properly and so take advantage of the information they convey. The bottles arrive by the thousands and he and his fellow islanders — by now he has told them of the messages and they share his interest — are faced with two questions. One is, Where are the bottles coming from? — a question which does not here concern us; the other is, How shall we go about sorting out the messages? which are important and which are not? which are more important and which less? Some of the messages are obviously trivial or nonsensical. Others are false. Still others state facts and draw conclusions which appear to be significant.

Here are some of the messages, chosen at random:

Lead melts at 330 degrees.

2 +2 = 4.

Chicago, a city, is on Lake Michigan.

Chicago is on the Hudson River or Chicago is not on the Hudson River.*

At 2 p.m., January 4, 1902, at the residence of Manuel Gómez in Matanzas, Cuba, a leaf fell from the banyan tree.

The British are coming.

The market for eggs in Bora Bora [a neighboring island] is very good.

If water John brick is.

Jane will arrive tomorrow.

The pressure of a gas is a function of heat and volume.

Acute myelogenous leukemia may be cured by parenteral administration

of metallic beryllium.

In 1943 the Russians murdered 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest.

A war party is approaching from Bora Bora.

It is possible to predict a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus next month by using the following technique—

The Atman (Self) is the Brahman.

The dream symbol, house with a balcony, usually stands for a woman.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.

Truth is beauty.

Being comprises essence and existence.

As the castaway sets about sorting out these messages, he would, if he followed conventional logical practice, separate them into two large groups. There are those sentences which appear to state empirical facts which can only be arrived at by observation. Such are the sentences

Chicago is on Lake Michigan.

Lead melts at 330 degrees.

Then there are those sentences which seem to refer to a state of affairs implicit in the very nature of reality (or some would say in the very structure of consciousness). Certainly they do not seem to depend on a particular observation. Such are the sentences

Chicago is on the Hudson River or Chicago is not on the Hudson River.

2 + 2 = 4.

These two types of sentences are usually called synthetic and analytic.

For the time being I will pass over the positivist division between sense and nonsense, a criterion which would accept the sentence about the melting point of lead because it can be tested experimentally but would reject the sentences about the dream symbol and the metaphysical and poetic sentences because they cannot be tested. I will also say nothing for the moment about another possible division, that between those synthetic sentences which state repeatable events, like the melting of lead, and those which state nonrepeatable historical events, like the murder of the Polish officers.

It is possible, however, to sort out the messages in an entirely different way. To the islander indeed it must seem that this second way is far more sensible — and far more radical — than the former. The sentences appear to him to fall naturally into two quite different groups.

There are those sentences which are the result of a very special kind of human activity, an activity which the castaway, an ordinary fellow, attributes alike to scientists, scholars, poets, and philosophers. Different as these men are, they are alike in their withdrawal from the ordinary affairs of the island, the trading, farming, manufacturing, playing, gossiping, loving — in order to discover underlying constancies amid the flux of phenomena, in order to take exact measurements, in order to make precise inductions and deductions, in order to arrange words or sounds or colors to express universal human experience. (This extraordinary activity is first known to have appeared in the world more or less simultaneously in Greece, India, and China around 600 B.C., a time which Jaspers calls the axial period in world history.)

In this very large group, which the islander might well call “science” in the broadest sense of knowing, the sense of the German word Wissenschaft, the islander would put both synthetic and analytic sentences, not only those accepted by positive scientists, but the psychoanalytic sentence, the metaphysical sentence, and the lines of poetry. (He might even include paintings as being, in a sense, sentences.) If the physicist protests at finding himself in the company of psychoanalysts, poets, Vedantists, and Scholastics, the islander will reply that he is not saying that all the sentences are true but that their writers appear to him to be engaged in the same sort of activity as the physicist, namely, withdrawal from the ordinary affairs of life to university, laboratory, studio, mountain eyrie, where they write sentences to which other men assent (or refuse assent), saying, Yes, this is indeed how things are. In some sense or other, the sentences can be verified by the readers even if not testable experimentally — as when the psychiatric patient hears his analyst explain a dream symbol and suddenly realizes that this is indeed what his own dream symbol meant.

In the second group the islander would place those sentences which are significant precisely in so far as the reader is caught up in the affairs and in the life of the island and in so far as he has not withdrawn into laboratory or seminar room. Such are the sentences

There is fresh water in the next cove.

A hostile war party is approaching.

The market for eggs in Bora Bora is very good.

These sentences are highly significant to the islander, because he is thirsty, because his island society is threatened, or because he is in the egg business. Such messages he might well call “news.”

It will be seen that the criteria of the logician and the positive scientist are of no use to the islander. They do not distinguish between those messages which are of consequence for life on the island and those messages which are not. The logician would place these two sentences

A hostile war party is approaching.

The British are coming [to Concord].

in the same pigeonhole. But to the islander they are very different. The islander lumps together synthetic and analytic, sense and nonsense (to the positivist) sentences under the group “science.” Nor is the division tidy. Some sentences do not seem to be provided for at all. The islander is fully aware of the importance of the sentence about the melting point of lead and he puts it under “science.” He is fully aware of the importance of the sentence about the hostile war party and he puts it under “news.” But where does he put the sentence about the approach of the British to Concord? He does not really care; he would be happy to put it in the “science” pigeonhole if the scientists want it. All he knows is that it is not news to him or the island.

If the islander was asked to say what was wrong with the first division of the logician and scientist, he might reply that it unconsciously assumes that this very special posture of “science” (including poetry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, etc.) is the only attitude that yields significant sentences. People who discover how to strike this attitude of “science” seem also to decide at the same time that they will only admit as significant those sentences which have been written by others who have struck the same attitude. Yet there are times when they act as if this were not the case. If a group of island logicians are busy in a seminar room sifting through the messages from the bottles and someone ran in crying, “The place is on fire!” the logicians would not be content to classify the message as a protocol sentence. They would also leave the building. The castaway will observe only that their classification does take account of the extraordinary significance which they as men have attributed to the message.

To the castaway it seems obvious that a radical classification of the sentences cannot abstract from the concrete situation in which one finds oneself. He is as interested as the scientist in arriving at a rigorous and valid classification. If the scientist should protest that one can hardly make such a classification when each sentence may have a different significance for every man who hears it, the castaway must agree with him. He must agree, that is, that you cannot classify without abstracting. But he insists that the classification be radical enough to take account of the hearer of the news, of the difference between a true piece of news which is not important and a true piece of news which is important. In order to do this, we do not have to throw away the hard-won objectivity of the scientist. We have only to take a step further back so that we may see objectively not only the sentences but the positive scientist who is examining them. After all, the objective posture of the scientist is in the world and can be studied like anything else in the world.

If the scientist protests that in taking one step back to see the scientist at work, the castaway is starting a game of upstaging which has no end — for why not take still another step back and watch the castaway watching the scientist — the castaway replies simply that this is not so. For if you take a step back to see the castaway classifying the messages, you will only see the same thing he sees as he watches the scientist, a man working objectively.

Then, if the castaway is a serious fellow who wants to do justice both to the scientists and to the news in the bottle, he is obliged to become not less but more objective and to take one step back of the scientist, so that he can see him at work in the laboratory and seminar room — and see the news in the bottle too.

What he will see then is not only that there are two kinds of sentences in the bottles but that there are two kinds of postures from which one reads the sentences, two kinds of verifying procedures by which one acts upon them, and two kinds of responses to the sentences.

The classification of the castaway would be something like this:

The Difference between a Piece of Knowledge

and a Piece of News

(1) The Character of the Sentence

By “piece of knowledge” the castaway means knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. By sub specie aeternitatis he means not what the philosopher usually means but rather knowledge which can be arrived at anywhere by anyone and at any time. The islanders may receive such knowledge in the bottle and be glad to get it — if they have not already gotten it. But getting this knowledge from across the seas is not indispensable. By its very nature the knowledge can also be reached, in principle, by the islander on his island, using his own raw materials, his own scientific, philosophical, and artistic efforts.

Such knowledge would include not only the synthetic and analytic propositions of science and logic but also the philosophical and poetic sentences in the bottle. To the logician the sentence “Lead melts at 330 degrees” seems to be empirical and synthetic. It cannot be deduced from self-evident principles like the analytic sentence “2 + 2 = 4.” It cannot be arrived at by reflection, however strenuous. Yet to the castaway this sentence is knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. It is a property of lead on any island at any time and for anyone.

The following sentences the castaway would consider knowledge sub specie aeternitatis even though they might not have been so considered in the past. Notice that the list includes a mixture of synthetic, analytic, normative, poetic, and metaphysical sentences.

Lead melts at 330 degrees.

Chicago is on the Hudson River or Chicago is not on the Hudson River.

2 +2 = 4.

The pressure of a gas is a function of temperature and volume.

Acute myelogenous leukemia may be cured by parenteral administration of metallic beryllium.

The dream symbol, house and balcony, usually represents a woman.

Men should not kill each other.

Being comprises essence and existence.

He is not saying that all the sentences are true — at least one (the one about leukemia) is probably not. But they are all pieces of knowledge which can be arrived at (or rejected) by anyone on any island at any time. If true they will hold true for anyone on any island at any time. He has no quarrel with the positivist over the admissibility of poetic and metaphysical statements. Admissible or not, it is all the same to him. All he is saying is that this kind of sentence may be arrived at (has in fact been arrived at) independently by people in different places and can be confirmed (or rejected) by people in still other places.

By a “piece of news” the castaway generally means a synthetic sentence expressing a contingent and nonrecurring event or state of affairs which event or state of affairs is peculiarly relevant to the concrete predicament of the hearer of the news.

It is a knowledge which cannot possibly be arrived at by any effort of experimentation or reflection or artistic insight. It may not be arrived at by observation on any island at any time. It may not even be arrived at on this island at any time (since it is a single, nonrecurring event or state of affairs).

Both these sentences are synthetic empirical sentences open to verification by the positive method of the sciences. Yet one is, to the castaway, knowledge sub specie aeternitatis and the other is a piece of news.

Water boils at 100 degrees at sea level.

There is fresh water in the next cove.

The following sentences would qualify as possible news to the castaway.

At 2 p.m., January 4, 1902, at the residence of Manuel Gómez in Matanzas, Cuba, a leaf fell from the banyan tree.

The British are coming.

The market for eggs in Bora Bora [a neighboring island] is very good.

Jane will arrive tomorrow.

In 1943 the Russians murdered 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest.

A war party is approaching from Bora Bora.

There is fresh water in the next cove.

What does the positive scientist think of the sentences which the castaway calls news? Does he reject them as being false or absurd? No, he is perfectly willing to accept them as long as they meet his standard of verification. By the use of the critical historical method he attaches a high degree of probability to the report that the British were approaching Concord. As for the water in the next cove, he goes to see for himself and so confirms the news or rejects it. But what sort of significance does he assign these sentences as he sorts them out in the seminar room? To him they express a few of the almost infinite number of true but random observations which might be made about the world. The murder of the Polish officers may have been a great tragedy, yet in all honesty he cannot assign to it a significance qualitatively different from the sentence about the leaf falling from the banyan tree (nor may the castaway necessarily). This is not to say that these sentences are worthless as scientific data. For example, the presence of water in the next cove might serve as a significant datum for the descriptive science of geography, or as an important clue in geology. This single observation could conceivably be the means of verifying a revolutionary scientific theory — just as the sight of a star on a particular night in a particular place provided dramatic confirmation of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

The sentences about the coming of the British and the murder of the Polish officers might serve as significant data from which, along with other such data, general historical principles might be drawn — just as Toynbee speaks of such and such an event as being a good example of such and such a historical process.

In summary, the castaway will make a distinction between the sentences which assert a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis and the sentences announcing a piece of news which bears directly on his life. The scientist and logician, however, cannot, in so far as they are scientists and logicians, take account of the special character of these news sentences. To them they are empirical observations of a random order and, if significant, they occupy at best the very lowest rung of scientific significance: they are the particular instances from which hypotheses and theories are drawn.

(2) The Posture of the Reader of the Sentence

The significance of the sentences for the reader will depend on the reader’s own mode of existence in the world. To say this is to say nothing about the truth of the sentences. Assuming that they are all true, they will have a qualitatively different significance for the reader according to his own placement in the world.

(a) The posture of objectivity. If the reader has discovered the secret of science, art, and philosophizing, and so has entered the great company of Thales, Lao-tse, Aquinas, Newton, Keats, Whitehead, he will know what it is to stand outside and over against the world as one who sees and thinks and knows and tells. He tells and hears others tell how it is there in the world and what it is to live in the world. In so far as he himself is a scientist, artist, or philosopher, he reads the sentences in the bottles as stating (or coming short of stating) knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. It may be trivial knowledge; it may be knowledge he has already arrived at; it may be knowledge he has not yet arrived at but could arrive at in time; it may be false knowledge which fails to be verified and so is rejected. It cannot be any other kind of knowledge.

(b) The posture of the castaway. The reader of the sentences may or may not be an objective-minded man. But at the moment of finding the bottle on the beach he is, we will say, very far from being objective-minded. He is a man who finds himself in a certain situation. To say this is practically equivalent, life being what it is, to saying that he finds himself in a certain predicament. Let us say his predicament is a simple organic need. He is thirsty. In his predicament the sentence about the water is received not as a datum from which, along with similar data, more general scientific conclusions might be drawn. Nor is it received as stating a universal human experience, even though the announcement were composed by Shakespeare at the height of his powers. The sentence is received as news, news strictly relevant to the predicament in which the hearer of the news finds himself.

So with other kinds of news, ranging from news relevant to the most elementary organic predicament to news of complex cultural significance.

Here are some other examples of news and their attending contexts.

Mackerel here!

(Malinowski’s Trobriand Island fisherman announcing a strike to his fellows)

Jane is home!

(I love Jane and she has been away)

The market is up $2.00.

(I am in the market)

The British are coming!

(I am a Minute Man. The context here is not organic but cultural. I thrive under British rule but I throw in my lot with the Revolution for patriotic reasons)

The light has turned green!

(I have stopped at a red light)

Eisenhower is elected!

(I voted for Stevenson)

News sentences, in short, are drawn from the context of everyday life and indeed to a large extent comprise this context.

Insofar as a man is objective-minded, no sentence is significant as a piece of news. For in order to be objective-minded one must stand outside and over against the world as its knower in one mode or another. As empirical scientists themselves have noticed, one condition of the practice of the objective method of the sciences is the exclusion of oneself from the world of objects one studies.* The absent-minded professor, the inspired poet, the Vedic mystic, is indifferent to news, sometimes even news of high relevance for him, because he is in a very real sense “out of this world.”†

In summary, the hearer of news is a man who finds himself in a predicament. News is precisely that communication which has bearing on his predicament and is therefore good or bad news.

The question arises as to whether news is not the same thing as a sign for an organism, a sign directing him to appropriate need-satisfactions, like the buzzer to Pavlov’s dog, or warning him of a threat, like the lion’s scent to a deer. The organism experiences needs and drives and learns to respond to those signs in its environment which indicate the presence of food, opposite sex, danger, and so on.

This may very well be a fair appraisal of the status of the news we are talking about here — providing the notions of “organism” and “sign” be allowed sufficiently broad interpretation. For the organism we speak of here is not only the physiological mechanism of the body but the encultured creature, the economic creature, and so on. The sign we speak of here is not merely the environmental element; it is the sentence, the symbolic assertion made by one man and understood by another.

The scientist — I use the word in the broadest possible sense to include philosophers and artists as well as positive scientists — has abstracted from his own predicament in order to achieve objectivity.* His objectivity is indeed nothing else than his removal from his own concrete situation. No sentence can be received by him as a piece of news, therefore, because he does not stand in the way of hearing news.

(3) The Scale of Significance

The scale of significance by which the scientist evaluates the sentences in the bottles may be said to range from the particular to the general. The movement of science is toward unity through abstraction, toward formulae and principles which embrace an ever greater number of particular instances. Thus the sentence “Hydrogen and oxygen combine in the ratio of two to one to form water” is a general statement covering a large number of particular cases. But Mendeleev’s law of periodicity covers not merely water but all other cases of chemical combination. A theory of gravitation and a theory of radiation are conceived at very high levels of abstraction. But a unified field theory which unites the two occurs at an even higher level.

The scale of significance by which the castaway evaluates news is its relevance for his own predicament. The significance of a piece of knowledge is abstracted altogether from the concrete circumstances which attended the discovery of the knowledge, its verification, its hearing by others. The relationship of Mendeleev’s law of periodicity to Lavoisier’s discovery of the composition of water is a relation sub specie aeternitatis. Its significance in no way depends upon Lavoisier’s or Mendeleev’s circumstance in life or on the circumstance of him who hears it.

But in judging the significance of a piece of news, everything depends on the situation of the hearer. The question is not merely, What is the nature of the news? but, Who is the hearer? If a man has lost his way in a cave and hears the cry “Come! This way out!” the communication qualifies as news of high significance. But if another man has for reasons of his own come to the cave to spend the rest of his life, the announcement will be of no significance. To a man dying of thirst the news of diamonds over the next dune is of no significance. But the news of water is.

The abstraction of the scientist from the affairs of life may be so great that he even ignores news of the highest relevance for his own predicament. When a friend approached Archimedes and announced, “Archimedes, the soldiers of Marcellus are coming to kill you,” Archimedes remained indifferent. He attributed no significance to a contingent piece of news in comparison with the significance of his geometrical deductions. In so doing it may be that he acted as an admirable martyr for science or it may be that he acted foolishly. All that we are concerned here to notice are the traits of objectivity.

The castaway, on the other hand, can only take account of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis if it is significant also as news. If his island stands to win international honor providing one of its scientists discovers the secret of atomic energy, or if indeed such a discovery means survival, then the announcement of his scientist friend

E =MC²!

is news of the highest significance.

In summary, the scale of significance by which one judges sentences expressing knowledge sub specie aeternitatis is the scientific scale of particular-general. The scale of significance by which a castaway evaluates the news in the bottle is the degree of relevance for his own predicament.

(4) Canons of Acceptance

The operation of acceptance of a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis is synonymous with the procedure of verification.

We need not review the verification procedures of formal logic or positive science. The truth of analytic sentences is demonstrated by a disclosure of the deductive process by which they are inferred. The truth or probability of synthetic sentences is demonstrated by a physical operation repeatable by others.

What about the verification procedures of our other “scientific” sentences, those of psychoanalysts, artists, philosophers, et al.? For example, a neurotic physicist is able to verify the suggestion of his analyst that his dream symbol means such and such, and to do so without resorting to a physical operation. These and other such sentences, I suggest, are verifiable not experimentally but experientially by the hearer on the basis of his own experience or reflection. These sentences

Your dream symbol, house and balcony, represents a woman.

The whole is greater than the part.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep

can only be verified (or rejected) by the immediate assent or assent after reflection of him who hears, on the basis of his own experience.

The criteria of acceptance of a news sentence are not the same as those of a knowledge sentence. This is not a pejorative judgment. To say this is not to say that news is of a lower cognitive order than knowledge — such a judgment presupposes the superiority of the scientific posture. It is only to say that once a piece of news is subject to the verification procedures of a piece of knowledge, it simply ceases to be news.

If I am thirsty and you appear on the next sand dune and shout, “Come with me! I know where water is!” it is not open to me to apply any of the verification procedures mentioned above, experimental operations, deduction, or interior recognition and assent to the truth of your statement. A piece of news is neither deducible, repeatable, or otherwise confirmable at the point of hearing.

You may deny this, saying that the thirsty man is not really different from the scientist: The only way to verify a report in either case is to go and see for yourself. Very true! But what we are concerned with is not the act, going and seeing for yourself, as a verification procedure, but how one decides to heed the initial “Come!” The scientist does not need to heed the “Come!” For he does not have to come. He is in no predicament whatever and any knowledge that he might wish to arrive at can be arrived at anywhere and at any time and by anyone. Whatever he wants to find out can be found out in his laboratory, on his field trip, in his studio, on his grass mat.

But the castaway must act by a canon of acceptance which is usable prior to the procedure of verification. He is obliged to contrive some standard. Otherwise he is easy prey for any clever scoundrel who knows how to take advantage of his predicament to lead him into a den of thieves. What is this standard? What elements does it comprise?

Clearly there are at least two elements. One is the relevance of the news to my predicament. If the stranger in the desert approaches me and announces, “I know what your need is. It is diamonds. Come with me. I know where they are”—I reject him on two counts. One, because it is not diamonds I need; two, because, if he is such a fool or knave as to believe it is diamonds I want, he is probably lying anyway. But if he announces instead, “Come! I know your need. I will take you to water”—then this very announcement is an earnest of his reliability. Yet he might still be a knave or a fool.

Two men are riding a commuter train. One is, as the expression goes, fat, dumb, and happy. Though he lives the most meaningless sort of life, a trivial routine of meals, work, gossip, television, and sleep, he nevertheless feels quite content with himself and is at home in the world. The other commuter, who lives the same kind of life, feels quite lost to himself. He knows that something is dreadfully wrong. More than that, he is in anxiety; he suffers acutely, yet he does not know why. What is wrong? Does he not have all the goods of life?

If now a stranger approaches the first commuter, takes him aside, and says to him earnestly, “My friend, I know your predicament; come with me; I have news of the utmost importance for you”—then the commuter will reject the communication out of hand. For he is in no predicament, or if he is, he does not know it, and so the communication strikes him as nonsense.

The second commuter might very well heed the stranger’s “Come!” At least he will take it seriously. Indeed it may well be that he has been waiting all his life to hear this “Come!”

The canon of acceptance by which one rejects and the other heeds the “Come!” is its relevance to his predicament. The man who is dying of thirst will not heed news of diamonds. The man at home, the satisfied man, he who does not feel himself to be in a predicament, will not heed good news. The objective-minded man, he who stands outside and over against the world as its knower, will not heed news of any kind, good or bad — in so far as he remains objective-minded. The castaway will heed news relevant to his predicament. Yet the relevance of the news is not in itself sufficient warrant.

A second canon of acceptance of news is the credentials of the newsbearer. Such credentials make themselves known through the reputation or through the mien of the newsbearer. The credentials of the bearer of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis are of no matter to the scientist. It doesn’t matter whether Wagner, in writing his music, is a rascal or whether Lavoisier, in speaking of oxygen, is a thief. The knowledge sentence carries or fails to carry its own credentials in so far as it is in some fashion affirmable. If the newsbearer is my brother or friend and if I know that he knows my predicament and if he approaches me with every outward sign of sobriety and good faith, and if the news is of a momentous nature, then I have reason to heed the news. If the newsbearer is known to me as a knave or a fool, I have reason to ignore the news.

If the newsbearer is a stranger to me, he is not necessarily disqualified as a newsbearer. In some cases indeed his disinterest may itself be a warrant, since he does not stand to profit from the usual considerations of friendship, family feelings, and so on. His sobriety or foolishness, good faith or knavery may be known through his mien. Even though he may bring news of high relevance to my predicament, yet a certain drunkenness of spirit — enthusiasm in the old sense of the word — is enough to disqualify him and lead me to suspect that he is concerned not with my predicament but only with his own drunkenness. If a Jehovah’s Witness should ring my doorbell and announce the advent of God’s kingdom, I recognize the possibly momentous character of his news but must withhold acceptance because of a certain lack of sobriety in the newsbearer.*

If the newsbearer is a stranger and if he meets the requirements of good faith and sobriety and, extraordinarily enough, knows my predicament, then the very fact of his being a stranger is reason enough to heed the news. For if a perfect stranger puts himself to some trouble to come to me and announce a piece of news relevant to my predicament and announce it with perfect sobriety and with every outward sign of good faith, then I must say to myself, What manner of man is this that he should put himself out of his way for a perfect stranger — and I should heed him. It was enough for Jesus to utter the one word Come! to a stranger — yet when he uttered the same word in Nazareth, no one came.

The message in the bottle, then, is not sufficient credential in itself as a piece of news. It is sufficient credential in itself as a piece of knowledge, for the scientist has only to test it and does not care who wrote it or whether the writer was sober or in good faith. But a piece of news requires that there be a newsbearer. The sentence written on a piece of paper in the bottle is sufficient if it is a piece of knowledge but it is hardly sufficient if it is a piece of news.

A third canon of acceptance is the possibility of the news. If the news is strictly relevant to my predicament and if the bearer of the news is a person of the best character, I still cannot heed the news if (1) I know for a fact that it cannot possibly be true or (2) the report refers to an event of an unheralded, absurd, or otherwise inappropriate character. If I am dying of thirst and the newsbearer announces to me that over the next dune I will discover molten sulfur and that it will quench my thirst, I must despair of his news. If the castaway arrived at his South Sea island in 1862 and found his adoptive land in bondage to a tyrant and if a newsbearer arrived and announced that Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia were on their way to deliver the island — such a piece of news would lie within the realm of possibility yet be so intrinsically inappropriate that the most patriotic of islanders could hardly take it seriously. If, however, there had been promises of deliverance for a hundred years from a neighboring island and if, further, signs had been agreed upon by which one could recognize the deliverer, and if, finally, a newsbearer from this very island arrived and announced a piece of news of supreme relevance to the predicament of the islanders and announced it in perfect sobriety and with every outward sign of good faith, then the islander must himself be a fool or a knave if he did not heed the news.

(5) Response of the Reader of the Sentence

The response of a reader of a sentence expressing a piece of knowledge is to confirm it (or reject it). The response of a hearer of a piece of news is to heed it (or ignore it) by taking action appropriate to one’s predicament. In the sphere of pure knowledge, knowledge in science, philosophy, or art, the act of knowing is complete when the sentence (or formula or insight or poem or painting) is received, understood, and confirmed as being true. Other consequences may follow. Physics may lead to useful inventions; a great philosopher may invigorate his civilization and prolong its life for hundreds of years; a great artist may lower the incidence of neurosis. But science is not necessarily committed to technics; philosophers do not necessarily philosophize in order to preserve the state; art is not a form of mental hygiene. There is a goodness and a joy in science and art apart from the effects of science and art on ordinary life. These effects may follow and may be good, but if the effect is made the end, if science is enslaved to technics, philosophy to the state, art to psychiatry — one wonders how long we would have a science, philosophy, or art worthy of the name.

The appropriate response of the reader of a sentence conveying a piece of knowledge — a piece of knowledge which, let us say, falls in the vanguard of the islander’s own knowledge — is to know this and more. The movement of science is toward an ever-more-encompassing unity and depth of vision. The movement of the islander who has caught the excitement of science, art, or philosophy is toward the attainment of an ever-more-encompassing unity and depth of vision. The man who finds the bottle on the beach and who reads its message conveying a piece of knowledge undertakes his quest, verification and extension of the knowledge, on his own island or on any island at any time. His quest takes place sub specie aeternitatis and, in so far as he is a scientist, he does not care who he is, where he is, or what his predicament may be.

The response of a hearer of a piece of news is to take action appropriate to his predicament. The news is not delivered to be confirmed — for then it would not be a piece of news but a piece of knowledge. There would be no pressing need to deliver it for it is not relevant to the predicament of the islander and it can, theoretically, be arrived at by the islander himself on his own island. The piece of news is delivered to be heeded and acted upon. There is a criterion of acceptance of a piece of news but this acceptance procedure is strictly ancillary to the action to be taken. In science, however, the technical invention which may follow the discovery is optional.*

If a congress of scientists, philosophers, and artists is convening in an Aspen auditorium in order to take account of the recent “sentences” of their colleagues (hypotheses, theories, formulae, logics, geometries, poems, symphonies, etc.), and if during the meeting a fire should break out, and if then a man should mount the podium and utter the sentence “Come! I know the way out!”—the conferees will be able to distinguish at once the difference between this sentence and all the other sentences which have been uttered from the podium. Different as a bar of music is from a differential equation, it will be seen at once that the two share a generic likeness when compared with a piece of news. A radical shift of posture by both teller and hearer has taken place. The conferees will attach a high importance to the sentence even though it conveys no universal truth and even though it may not be verified on hearing. A different criterion of acceptance becomes appropriate. It is not an inferior or makeshift criterion — as when a castaway makes do with a raft but would rather have a steamship. It is the criterion appropriate to news as a category of communication. If a criterion of verification could be used, then the communication would cease to be news relevant to my predicament; it would become instead a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis.†

The conferees at Aspen apply an appropriate criterion. They are not gullible — for bad advice at this juncture could get them killed. If the newsbearer had announced, not that he knew the way out, but that world peace had been achieved, they would hardly heed him. If he commanded them to flap their arms and fly out through the skylight, they would hardly heed him. If he spoke like a fool with all manner of ranting and raving, they would hardly heed him. If they knew him to be a liar, they would hardly heed him. But if he spoke with authority, in perfect sobriety, and with every outward sign of good faith and regard for them, saying that he knew the way out and they had only to follow him, they would heed him. They would heed him with all dispatch. They would, unless there were an Archimedes present, give his news priority over the most momentous and exciting advance in science. They would heed him at any cost, even though as scientists they must preserve a low regard for sentences bearing news of a contingent event.

The Mistaking of a Piece of Knowledge for a Piece of News from across the Seas

What if it should happen that a scientist should assign a high order of significance to a piece of knowledge and a low order of significance to a piece of news? He could make a serious mistake. Having assigned all news sentences to a low order of significance, he could make the mistake of attending only to scientific sentences in the belief that since they are so important in the sphere of knowledge, they might also do duty as pieces of news. Thus, if it should happen that he experiences a predicament of homelessness or of anxiety without cause, he may seek for its cause and cure within the sphere of scientific and artistic knowledge or from the satisfaction of his island needs. He may resort to analysis or drugs or group therapy or creative writing or reading creative writing, all of which may assuage this or that symptom of his loneliness or anxiety. Or he may seek a wife or new friends or more meaningful relationships. But what if it should be the case that his symptoms of homelessness or anxiety do not have their roots in this or that lack of knowledge or this or that malfunction which he may suffer as an islander but rather in the very fact that he is a castaway and that as such he stands not in the way of one who requires a piece of island knowledge or a technique of island treatment or this or that island need satisfaction but stands rather in the way of one who is waiting for a piece of news from across the seas? Then he has deceived himself and, even if his symptoms are better, is worse off then he was.

The Difference between Island News and News from across the Seas

My purpose here is not apologetic. We are not here concerned with the truth of the Christian gospel or with the career in time of that unique Thing, the Jewish-People-Jesus-Christ-Catholic-Church. An apologetic would deal with the evidences of God’s entry into history through His covenant with the Jews, through His own incarnation, and through His institution of the Catholic Church as the means of man’s salvation. It would also deal with philosophical approaches to God’s existence and nature. My purpose is rather the investigation of news as a category of communication.

In the light of the distinction we have made, however, it is possible to shed light on some perennial confusions which arise whenever Christianity is misunderstood as a teaching sub specie aeternitatis. As Kierkegaard put it, the object of the student is not the teacher but the teaching, while the object of the Christian is not the teaching but the teacher.* I say perennial because the misunderstanding by the Athenians of Saint Paul and the offense they took is not essentially different from the misunderstanding of modern eclectics like Whitehead, Huxley, and Toynbee, and the offense they take. Not being an apostle and, as Kierkegaard again would say, having no authority to preach, I should hope not to give further offense and to propose only a small clarifying distinction — not a piece of news in the bottle but only a minor “scientific” sentence — which should offend neither believer nor unbeliever. Whitehead, for one, should not take offense. He pronounced that generality is the salt of religion just as it is the salt of science. And if one should propose therefore that Christianity is not a teaching but a teacher, not a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis but a piece of news, not a member in good standing of the World’s Great Religions but a unique Person-Event-Thing in time — then the eclectic should not mind, because to say this is hardly to advance the case of Christianity in his eyes; it is rather to admit the worst that he has suspected all along. I do not mean that a mistaking of the Judeo-Christian Thing for a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis leads always to hostility and rejection. Indeed it is more common nowadays to accept Christianity on such grounds — as being confirmed by Buddhism in this respect or by psychiatry in some other respect — or as in the case of the Look magazine article which announced that one might now believe in miracles because the Law of Probability allowed that once in a great while a body might fly straight up instead of falling down.

We might then be content here to agree to disagree about what salt is and whether or not in becoming general it loses its savor. Nevertheless the peculiar character of the Christian claim, its staking everything on a people, a person, an event, a thing existing here and now in time — and on the news of this Thing — and its relative indifference to esoteric philosophical truths such as might be arrived at by Vedantists, Buddhists, idealists, existentialists, or by any islanders anywhere or at any time — might serve here to quicken our interest in news as a category of communication.

But to return to the castaway and the message in the bottle. The castaway has, we have seen, classified the messages differently from the scientist and logician. Their classifications would divide the sentences accordingly as they were analytic or synthetic, necessary or contingent, repeatable or historic, etc. But the castaway’s classification divides them accordingly as some express a knowledge which can be arrived at anywhere and at any time, given the talent, time, and inclination of the student — and as others tell pieces of news which cannot be so arrived at by any effort of observation or reflection however strenuous and yet which are of immense importance to the hearer. Has the castaway’s classification exhausted the significant communications which the bottles contain? If this is the case, then we seem to be saying that the news which the islander finds significant is nothing more than signs of various need-satisfactions which the organism must take account of to flourish. These needs and their satisfactions are readily acknowledged by the objective-minded man. Indeed, the main concern of the biological, medical, and psychological sciences is the discovery of these various needs and the satisfying of them. If a man is thirsty, then he had better pay attention to news of water. If a culture is to survive, it had better heed the news of the approach of the British or a war party from a neighboring island. Also, if a man is to live a rich, full, “rewarding” life, he should have his quota of myths and archetypes.

Are we saying in short that the predicament which the islander finds himself in and the means he takes to get out of it are those very needs and drives and those very satisfactions and goals which the objective-minded man recognizes and seeks to provide for every island everywhere? It is not quite so simple. For we have forgotten who it is we are talking about. As we noted earlier, the significance of news depends not only on the news but on the hearer, who he is and what his predicament is.

Our subject is not only an organism and a culture member; he is also a castaway. That is to say, he is not in the world as a swallow is in the world, as an organism which is what it is, never more or less. Our islander may choose his mode of being. Thus, he may choose to exist as a scientist, outside and over against the world as its knower, or he may choose to exist as a culture member, that is, an organism whose biological and psychological needs are more or less satisfied by his culture. But however he chooses to exist, he is in the last analysis a castaway, a stranger who is in the world but who is not at home in the world.

A castaway, everyone would agree, would do well to pay attention to knowledge and news, knowledge of the nature of the world and news of events that are relevant to his life on the island. Such news, the news relevant to his survival as an organism, his life as a father and husband, as a member of a culture, as an economic man, and so on — we can well call island news. Such news is relevant to the everyday life of any islander on any island at any time.

Yet even so all is not well with him. Something is wrong. For with all the knowledge he achieves, all his art and philosophy, all the island news he pays attention to, something is missing. What is it? He does not know. He might say that he was homesick except that the island is his home and he has spent his life making himself at home there. He knows only that his sickness cannot be cured by island knowledge or by island news.

But how does he know he is sick, let alone homesick? He may not know. He may live and die as an islander at home on his island. But if he does know, he knows for the simple reason that in his heart of hearts he can never forget who he is: that he is a stranger, a castaway, who despite a lifetime of striving to be at home on the island is as homeless now as he was the first day he found himself cast up on the beach.

But then do you mean that his homesickness is one final need to be satisfied, that the island news has taken care of 95 per cent of his needs and that there remains one last little need to be taken care of — these occasional twinges of nostalgia? Or, as the church advertisements would say, one must have a “church home” besides one’s regular home? No, it is much worse than that. I mean that in his heart of hearts there is not a moment of his life when the castaway does not know that life on the island, being “at home” on the island, is something of a charade. At that very moment when he should feel most at home on the island, when needs are satisfied, knowledge arrived at, family raised, business attended to, at that very moment when by every criterion of island at-homeness he should feel most at home, he feels most homeless. Not one moment of his life passes but that he is aware, however faintly, of his own predicament: that he is a castaway.

Nor would it avail to say to him simply that he is homesick and that all he needs is to know who he is and where he came from. He would only shake his head and turn away. For he knows nothing of any native land except the island and such talk anyhow reminds him of Sunday school. But if we say to him only that something is very wrong and that after fifty years on the island he is still a stranger and a castaway, he must listen, for he knows this better than anyone else.

Then what should he do? It is not for me to say here that he do this or that or should believe such and such. But one thing is certain. He should be what he is and not pretend to be somebody else. He should be a castaway and not pretend to be at home on the island. To be a castaway is to be in a grave predicament and this is not a happy state of affairs. But it is very much happier than being a castaway and pretending one is not. This is despair. The worst of all despairs is to imagine one is at home when one is really homeless.

But what is it to be a castaway? To be a castaway is to search for news from across the seas. Does this mean that one throws over science, throws over art, pays no attention to island news, forgets to eat and sleep and love — does nothing in fact but comb the beach in search of the bottle with the news from across the seas? No, but it means that one searches nevertheless and that one lives in hope that such a message will come, and that one knows that the message will not be a piece of knowledge or a piece of island news but news from across the seas.

It is news, however, this news from across the seas, and it is as a piece of news that it must be evaluated. Faith is the organ of the historical, said Kierkegaard. Faith of a sort is the organ for dealing with island news, and faith of a sort is the organ for dealing with news from across the seas.

But what does it mean to say that faith is the organ of the historical? For Kierkegaard it means two things. For an ordinary historical truth — what we here call “island news”—faith is the organ of the historical because the organ of the historical must have a structure analogous to the historical. The nature of the historical is becoming. The nature of belief is a “negated uncertainty which corresponds to the uncertainty of becoming.” By historical Kierkegaard means the existing thing or event, not only that which existed in the past, but that which exists here and now before our very eyes. One sees that star rightly enough, but one must also confirm by another act that the star has come into existence. Faith is the organ which confirms that an existing thing has come into existence.* The Christian faith, however — the news from across the seas — is an embrace of the Absolute Paradox as such, a setting aside of reason, a credo quia absurdum est. It is well known that Kierkegaard, unlike Saint Thomas, denies a cognitive content to faith — faith is not a form of knowledge. His extreme position is at least in part attributable to his anxiety to rescue Christianity from the embrace of the Hegelians.

Yet we must ask whether Kierkegaard’s antinomy of faith versus reason is any more appropriate to the situation of the castaway than the logician’s classification of synthetic and analytic. For the castaway, or anyone who finds himself in a predicament in the world, there are two kinds of knowledge, knowledge sub specie aeternitatis and news bearing on his own predicament. The classification of the castaway would correspond roughly to the two knowledges of Saint Thomas: (1) scientific knowledge, in which assent is achieved by reason, (2) knowledge of faith, in which scientific knowledge and assent are undertaken simultaneously. The fact is that Kierkegaard, despite his passionate dialectic, laid himself open to his enemies. For his categories of faith, inwardness, subjectivity, and Absolute Paradox seem to the objective-minded man to confirm the worst of what he had thought all along of the Christian news.

To Kierkegaard the Absolute Paradox was that one’s eternal happiness should depend on a piece of news from across the seas. He still remained Hegelian enough (“scientist” enough in our terminology) to accept the scientific scale of significance which ranks general knowledge sub specie aeternitatis very high and contingent historical knowledge very low. Yet the curious fact is that the philosophical movement of which he has been called the founder has developed an anthropology, a view of man, which is very much more receptive to such news than Kierkegaard ever allowed one could be—even though this movement has in most cases disavowed the Christian setting Kierkegaard gave it. The Jasperian notion of shipwrecked man, Heidegger’s notion of man’s existence as a Geworfenheit, the state of being a castaway, allows the possibility of such news as a significant category of communication, as indeed the most significant.

To put it briefly: When Kierkegaard declares that the deliverance of the castaway by a piece of news from across the seas rather than by philosophical knowledge is the Absolute Paradox, one wonders simply how the castaway could be delivered any other way. It is this news and this news alone that he has been waiting for. Christianity cannot appear otherwise than as the Absolute Paradox once one has awarded total competence to knowledge sub specie aeternitatis, once one has disallowed the cognitive content of news as a category of communication.

The stumbling block to the scientist-philosopher-artist on the island is that salvation comes by hearing, by a piece of news, and not through knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. But scandalized or not, he might at least realize that it could not be otherwise. For no knowledge which can be gained on the island, on any island anywhere at any time, can be relevant to his predicament as a castaway. The castaway is he who waits for news from across the seas. It is interesting to see what criteria of acceptance Kierkegaard does allow to faith. Clearly he removes faith from the sphere of knowledge and science in any sense of these words. Is it not then simply a matter of God’s gift, a miraculous favor which allows one to embrace the Absolute Paradox and believe the impossible? No, there is more to be said. Kierkegaard recognizes that a category of communication is involved. Faith comes from God, but it also comes by hearing. It is a piece of news and there is a newsbearer. But why should we believe the newsbearer, the apostle? Must the apostle first prove his case to the scientist in the seminar room? No, because this would mean that God and the apostle must wait in the porter’s lodge while the learned upstairs settle the matter.

Why then do we believe the apostle? We believe him because he has the authority to deliver the message. The communication of the genius (the scientific message in the bottle) is in the sphere of immanence. “A genius may be a century ahead of his time and therefore appear to be a paradox but ultimately the race will assimilate what was once a paradox in such a way that it is no longer a paradox.” Given time, knowledge may be arrived at independently on any island. It is otherwise with the apostle. His message is in the sphere of transcendence and is therefore paradoxical. It cannot be arrived at by any effort and not even eternity can mediate it.

How then may we recognize the divine authority of the apostle? What, in other words, are the credentials of the newsbearer? The credential of the apostle is simply the gravity of his message: “I am called by God; do with me what you will, scourge me, persecute me, but my last words are my first; I am called by God and I make you eternally responsible for what you do against me.”

Kierkegaard recognized the unique character of the Christian gospel but, rather than see it as a piece of bona fide news delivered by a newsbearer, albeit news of divine origin delivered by one with credentials of divine origin, he felt obliged to set it over against knowledge as paradox. Yet to the castaway who becomes a Christian, it is not paradox but news from across the seas, the very news he has been waiting for.

Kierkegaard, of all people, overlooked a major canon of significance of the news from across the seas — the most “Kierkegaardian” canon. One canon has to do with the news and the newsbearer, the nature of the news, and the credentials of the newsbearer. But the other canon has to do with the hearer of the news. Who is the hearer when all is said and done? Kierkegaard may have turned his dialectic against the Hegelian system, but he continued to appraise the gospel from the posture of the Hegelian scientist — and pronounced it absurd that a man’s eternal happiness should depend not on knowledge sub specie aeternitatis but on a piece of news from across the seas. But neither the Hegelian nor any other objective-minded man is a hearer of news. For he has struck a posture and removed himself from all predicaments for which news might be relevant. Who is the hearer? The hearer is the castaway, not the man in the seminar, but the man who finds himself cast into the world. For whom is the news not news? It is not news to a swallow, for a swallow is what it is, no more and no less; it is at home in the world and no castaway. It is not news to unfallen man because he too is at home in the world and no castaway. It is not news to a fallen man who is a castaway but believes himself to be at home in the world, for he does not recognize his own predicament. It is only news to a castaway who knows himself to be a castaway.

Once it is granted that Christianity is the Absolute Paradox, then, according to Kierkegaard, the message in the bottle is all that is needed. It is enough to read “this little advertisement, this nota bene on a page of universal history—‘We have believed that in such and such a year God appeared among us in the humble figure of a servant, that he lived and taught in our community, and finally died.’”

But the message in the bottle is not enough — if the message conveys news and not knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. There must be, as Kierkegaard himself saw later, someone who delivers the news and who speaks with authority.

Is this someone then anyone who rings the doorbell and says “Come!” No indeed, for in these times everyone is an apostle of sorts, ringing doorbells and bidding his neighbor to believe this and do that. In such times, when, everyone is saying “Come!” when radio and television say nothing else but “Come!” it may be that the best way to say “Come!” is to remain silent. Sometimes silence itself is a “Come!”

Since everyone is saying “Come!” now in the fashion of apostles — Communists and Jehovah’s Witnesses as well as advertisers — the uniqueness of the original “Come!” from across the seas is apt to be overlooked. The apostolic character of Christianity is unique among religions. No one else has ever left or will ever leave his island to say “Come!” to other islanders for reasons which have nothing to do with the dissemination of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis and nothing to do with his own needs. The Communist is disseminating what he believes to be knowledge sub specie aeternitats—and so is the Rockefeller scientist. The Jehovah’s Witness and the Holy Roller are bearing island news to make themselves and other islanders happy. But what if a man receives the commission to bring news across the seas to the castaway and does so in perfect sobriety and with good faith and perseverance to the point of martyrdom? And what if the news the newsbearer bears is the very news the castaway had been waiting for, news of where he came from and who he is and what he must do, and what if the news-bearer brought with him the means by which the castaway may do what he must do? Well then, the castaway will, by the grace of God, believe him.

* Some of the bottles must have been launched by Rudolf Carnap, since the sentences are identical with those he uses in the article “Formal and Factual Science.”

* See, for example, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger in What Is Life? and the psychiatrist C. G. Jung in Der Geist der Psychologie.

† I wish to make an objective distinction here without pejoration to castaways on the one hand or scientists, scholars, mystics, and poets, on the other — while at the same time readily admitting we could use a few more of the absent-minded variety at, this time.

* If the depth psychologist objects that the scientist and artist is no different from anyone else: he undertakes his science and his art so that he may satisfy the deepest unconscious needs of his personality by “sublimating” and so on— the castaway will not quarrel with him. He will observe only that, whatever his psychological motivation may be, the scientist and artist — and depth analyst — undertake a very extraordinary activity in virtue of which they stand over against the world as its knowers.

* If one thinks of the Christian gospel primarily as a communication between a newsbearer and a hearer of news, one realizes that the news is often not heeded because it is not delivered soberly. Instead of being delivered with the sobriety with which other important news would be delivered — even by a preacher — it is spoken either in a sonorous pulpit voice or at a pitch calculated to stimulate the emotions. But emotional stimuli are not news. The emotions can be stimulated on any island and at any time.

* Einstein’s discovery of the equivalence of matter and energy and of the ratio of the equivalence was a momentous advance of science. As it happened, it was also a piece of good news for the Allies in World War II. Indeed, pure science, research sub specie aetemitatis, may be undertaken under the pressure of a historical predicament. But the point is that it may also be undertaken — and Einstein’s research was undertaken — with no thought of its possible bearing on politics.

† True, after the announcement, the way out could then be seen by the conferee from where he sits, and so the news verified before it is heeded and acted upon. The event then takes place at an organic level of animal response. But the difference still holds: the prime importance which the hearer attaches to the announcement, even

though it is of no greater scientific significance than the sentence “There is a fly on your nose”; the response of the hearer of the sentence, the getting out rather than the verification in situ.

* Although primarily a teacher, a Person, Christianity, of course, involves a teaching too.

* A similar distinction is made by Newman between real assent and notional assent.