Serendipity:  Language And Lunacy, by Umberto Eco

This particular book is a collection of essays, and they demonstrate the approach that Umberto Eco has taken as a semiotician through the course of his career as a philosopher.  With a strong interest in language and in the difficulties that result from errors being fruitful to future research and inquiry, Eco brings what is certainly a complicated and nuanced perspective to the question of language as well as the way that what we say is often highly colored by the beliefs and worldviews we bring as well as the language that we have to bring to bear on describing our observations.  While I cannot say that I agree with the author’s understanding of all of what he discusses, I must say that I appreciate the seriousness he takes to the problems of understanding the use and understanding of language and even his appreciation of a greater biblical context to dealing with questions of languages than is often viewed to be the case.  Indeed, the author’s understanding of the Bible can help us to understand the way that languages are born to this day, through the workings out of isolation and historical change rather than the active imposition of divine curses of incomprehension as at Babel, through his reading of both Genesis 10 and 11.

Coming in at just over 100 pages and containing five essays, this is a very short book with somewhat disparate contents.  Readers of nonfiction authors are likely quite used to such feasts of scraps, though, where somewhat related but largely independent essays are combined to make for books that can be published for royalties as well as to pad one’s list of publications.  After a preface that introduces the concern of languages and the question of serendipity, the first essay looks at the force of falsity by making use of the powerful logic that whatever one’s belief system, one believes that most of humanity has lived in darkness over the course of humanity, therefore there must be a powerful pull for deception and error (1) that humans struggle against.  After that the author examines the question of languages in paradise by giving a sound reading of Genesis 10 and 11 to balance different aspects of incomprehensibility in the biblical account (2) of early human history.  The third essay provides a fruitful examination of intellectual misunderstandings in the writings from Marco Polo to Leibniz as the rhino, for example, was viewed as being a confirmation of belief in unicorns (3).  After that the author looks at the language of the Austral land (4), before the book closes with a discussion of the linguistics of Joseph de Maistre (5) as well as notes and an index.

There are a great deal of insights that one can gain from this book, even though it is a short one.  The author shows that he can take questions of language seriously whether he is looking at, say, the false understanding (but momentous consequences) of Christopher Columbus regarding the distance between Spain and East Asia or whether he is examining the quest for perfect languages in early modern Europe or whether he is looking at the linguistics of fiction (like the Austral land) or the writings of an obscure but interesting European thinker.  The way that the author balances an appreciation for the unexpected results of misunderstandings and error as well as his own deep discussion into the question of tradeoffs as well as the limitations of language in expressing truth provides plenty of opportunities for the reader to ponder questions of semiotics in relationship to our own experience and understanding of the power and limitations of language.  And this is a subject well worth reading and appreciating.