Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“Some years ago I proposed that the originary hypothesis, which in the narrow sense concerns the origin of language, could become the basis of a rigorous anthropological methodology. If we accept the originary hypothesis: that the originary scene is the moment of transformation between animal and human, that this separation is digital and absolute just as language as a formal system of representation is digital and absolute, then everything essentially human is manifested in this scene. This corollary of the originary hypothesis is the basis of what I call originary analysis , the necessarily speculative tracing of cultural phenomena to their “moment” of the originary scene, a process that makes use of the fundamental hermeneutic circle from which all others derive, as each new moment of history reveals a new truth about our origin. Originary thinking, the mode of thought that views the phenomena and categories of human history in the light of this analysis, is not a preformism that expects to find within the seed a miniature tree containing its own miniature seeds ad infinitum. No agency, human or divine, need have had from the beginning the Idea of which history is the unfolding (putting aside for the moment the process that this metaphor is meant to describe). But this does not absolve us, to turn the question around, from seeking an originary explanation for the ubiquitous notion that God’s logos or the equivalent does indeed exist from the beginning, as God’s omniscience includes all of future time.”

— Eric Gans, Originary Analysis, Revisited · Saturday, January 15th, 2005 · Chronicles of Love & Resentment