In modelling the natural environment as a social system, the type of social system modelled depends on that of the modellers, whether egalitarian or dominance hierarchy, for example. Fitting in with that environment involves co-operation with the persons of that system through semiotic exchanges, since as semiotic beings, they are construed as fellow interlocutors with their own reasons and purposes.[1] That is, fitting in an environment requires negotiation with personifications of Nature, especially with those that embody more powerful forces than the modellers themselves. The more powerful the personification, the higher up the social pecking order, the more the tenor entails deference, respect, reverence or (alpha) worship of the modellers in such exchanges.
Moves in negotiatory exchanges involve the semiotic system of speech function.[2] Either information or goods-and-services can be either given or demanded. Giving information constitutes a statement, demanding information constitutes a question, giving goods-and-services constitutes an offer, and demanding goods-and-services constitutes a command. In negotiating with more powerful beings, offers can take the form of sacrifices, which obligate reciprocal offers in response moves, especially in times of natural disaster.[3] Commands can take the form of prayers, in which favours are requested of the powerful. Questions can be addressed with the expectation that statements, in the form of oracles, will be given in response.[4]
Footnotes:
[1] This is ‘nature-as-thou’, as espoused by Romanticism.
[2] See for example Martin (1992: 50ff).
[3] There is an interesting parallel to human sacrifice in prey-predator relations. Once a member of a (less powerful) prey species, such as an emperor penguin, is taken by a (more powerful) predator, such as a leopard seal, the rest of the prey animals benefit by getting free passage. Dawkins (2004: 495) suggests that sacrifice would be an economic solution to the ‘evolutionary arms race’ between prey and predator species:
from an economic point of view, both sides would be better coming to an agreement to call off the arms race. As a ludicrous extreme, prey species might sacrifice a tithe of their number in exchange for secure and untroubled grazing for the rest.
[4] Construing Nature as interlocutors also enables thinking to be attributed to a personified external source. There are also neurological variations which facilitate this. For example, in conditions such as schizophrenia, streams of thought are not recognised as being of the self; the false sensing of the presence of another can be induced by epilepsy or electric fields which increase blood flow to the temporal lobes and away from the parietal lobes.