Half Brain Fables and Figs in Paradise: (3-D Mind)

Half-Brain Fables and Figs in Paradise starts the trilogy on the lateral plane and explores the tendency of each hemisphere to specialize but also to complement or supplement the other hemisphere. Brain and sign processing is thus shown to involve bimodal weavings or reticles of right-hemispheric similarities and left-hemispheric differences. Chevalier goes on to illustrate how whole-brain connectivity generates the crisscrossings of oppositions and metaphors in language, using symbolically rich material ranging from Western naming practices to expressions of ethnobotany in the bible (figs in Genesis), poetry (Longfellow's Evangeline), and native Mexican mythology. Three major philosophical implications follow from Chevalier's "theoreticle" perspective on the weavings of signs and synapse. First, the integrative concept of "nervous sign processing" should be substituted for models of the brain and the intellect that separate biology from mental and cultural activity. The subject matter of "semiosis" is both physical and communicational. Second, sign reticles are orderly and chaotic at the same time. They are subject to patterns of convergence but also to lines of divergence that defy simple modeling, whether analytical or dialectical. Third, sign events are governed by the principle of conferencing, not referencing. They do not refer to things or thoughts signified through representational means. Rather they confer meaning through "signaptic" conversations, reticles of fine lines evolving in language and in neural cells alike.

Review :
"What a marvelous trilogy this is - a crackerjack, up-to-date study of neuropsychology blending in with semiotic and philosophical analyses at their best. Chevalier demonstrates, with great clarity, and at times eloquence and a sense of humour, that his neuropsychological/semiotic model can help us understand science, literature, myth, history, philosophy, and religion. Brilliant analyses are found in each of the three books. Chevalier has laid out in a clear, indeed spell-binding, way in concrete form the theory Charles Peirce and future semioticians such as Thomas Sebeok and John Deely have postulated: the unity of experience through semiotic understanding." William Pencak, Department of History, Penn State University "This is a highly ambitious work, which is destined to lay the foundation for a whole new branch of semiotics - neurosemiotics. Chevalier demonstrates an impressive mastery of each of the disciplines (from anthropology to philosophy by way of neuropsychology) he has brought together in The 3D Mind. The originality of this trilogy lies in the way its author uses concepts drawn from neuropsychology to frame and then dissolve debates in the humanities and social sciences over such things as representation, identity construction, moral regulation, simulation, and eroticism, to name but a few of the controversies Chevalier considers from the unique standpoint he has developed." David Howes, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University