Differences with no terms

Here is an excerpt from “Death of a Hermeneutic Phantom: Materialisation of the Sign in the Work of Peter Eisenman,” by art theorist Rosalind Krauss talking about Eisenman’s attempt to link formalism and linguistics into the architectural arena.

“What we have learned from Saussure,” writes Merleau-Ponty, “is that, taken singly, signs do not signify anything, and that each one of them does not so much express a meaning as mark a divergence of meaning between itself and other signs. Since the same can be said for all other signs, we may conclude that language is made of differences without terms; or more exactly, that the terms of language are engendered only by the differences which appear among them.”

This reminds me of a couple of things. The first that comes to mind is a quote from Hermann Melville: “Tuly to enjoy warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.”

The second is the analogy of the stone statue presented by French philosopher Condillac as a refutement of Descartes’ argument that ideas (specifically, perfection) are bestowed on us by God. The statue, given the sense of smell, is placed in a world that possesses only one flower scent. Not until a second kind of scent is introduced to that world will the statue begin to make value judgements about which is scent is more desirable. Condillac is ultimately attempting to prove that values and ideas are based on contrasts within our own experience.

But are they really the bottom line? It seems strange to leave out how integral comparisons are to our interpretation of experience and language. Is a “cat” really just “not dog, not peacock, not windmill, not cabinet, ad infinitum“? No dictionary is structured that way. One thing I’ve learned from my Greek architectural studies is how much we as humans relate objects to ourselves, whether it is a column with proportianal similarity or use of entasis to correct the visual warping that happens as a result of our spherical eyes looking at a building.

Am I off track here?