Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time

Previous books in Jacques Chevalier's "The 3D Mind" trilogy dealt with the horizontal and vertical planes of brain science and their relevance for a better understanding of signs in culture and language. "Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time" brings the trilogy onto a third and final plane, the associative fibers that connect the rear lobes to the anterior regions of the brain. This is the coronal plane that governs the weavings of remembrance and anticipation, recollections of the past and expectations of the future. Chevalier shows that while brain and sign processing caters to events that succeed in attracting our attention, it also provides means to produce silence where unawareness is called for. Some inattention to things that are no longer or not yet is a requirement of the plotting of signs of hope and apprehension folding and unfolding in narrative time.The end result is a complex calculus of recollection, anticipation, and hope combined with traces of deferment, forgetfulness, and fear. This intricate 'time-machine' built into language and the brain governs the 'working memory system', an active memory operating by necessity in the present tense. Chevalier explores these issues in light of what philosophers such as St. Augustine, Kant, Heidegger, and Levi-Strauss have said about memory and the nature of time. Arguing against all static and apocalyptic conceptions of time, Chevalier applies his own blending of 'neurosemiotics' and Ricoeurian hermeneutics to the interpretive analysis of narrative plots ranging from a cat drawn by a child to intriguing speculations on the hot and the cold in Mexican Nahua agriculture. "Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time" also looks at prophecies of demonic scorpions in the "Book of Revelation", and signs of the End heralded by the tragedy of 'Ground Zero'.