Percy, Walker. "The Delta Factor" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.
Percy wants to look at the Delta Factor through a person not familiar with the situation. For example, what would it look like to a martian? Percy believes he qualifies for a martian: "As a nonpsychologist, nonanthropologist, a nontheologian, a nontheologist--as in fact nothing more than a novelist--I qualift through my ignorance as a terrestial Martian. Since I am only a novelist, a somewhat estranged and detached person whose business it is to see things and people as if he had never seen them before, it is possible for me not only to observe people as data but to observe scientists observing people as data--in short to take a Martian view" (11). Percy considers himself to be a martian with an outsider's view. The interesting thing is he sees the whole picture even the scientist observing people, the perspective that gets left out in the scientist's account. The Martian view would observe how frequently people use language: "That they are forever making mouthy little sounds, clicks, hisses, howls, hoots, explosions, squeaks, some of which name things in the world and are uttered in short sequences that say something about these things and events in the world" (12). Before he came to the earth, the Martian had read many books on man by biologists, psychologists, sociologists, and others. They emphasized that man was not much different from the animals. The Martian, however, noticed that the "earthlings talk all the time or otherwise traffic in symbols: gossip, tell jokes, argue, make reports, deliver lectures, listen to lectures, take notes, write books, read books, paint pictures, look at pictures, attend plays, tell stories, listen to stories. . ." (12-13). The earth scientists insist that man is not much different from other earth creatures. They tell him how they spend millions on studying monkeys, chimpanzees, and other animals. The Martian responds that people talk all the time. "Why don't you investigate that?" (13).
Percy asserts, "It was no coincidence when the Martian discovered that earthlings, who have a theory about everything else, do not have a theory about language and do not have a theory about man" (17). Percy is pointing out that language might be the key to developing a theory of man.
Percy states that there is the traditional view of man from a religious perspective: a person with a soul and the scientific view that man is an organism in an environment. Percy wants to develop his theory of man differently. He describes man as man the talker or man the symbol-monger. He asserts, "Instead of starting out with such large vexed subjects as soul, mind, ideas, consciousness, why not begin with language, which no one denies, and see how far it takes us toward the rest" (17). Percy accepts the biblical view of man, but he knows that simply describing man from a Biblical perspective with not work in a secular age. So he wants to work from a foundation that most people accepts. Percy describes the irony of behaviorists studying people through a stimulus-response theory which does not account for the activity of the behaviorist. He suggests that we study the behaviorist through a "larger theory of language" (17) because they are not accounted for in behaviorist theory since behaviorists "not only study responses; they write articles and deliver lectures, setting forth what they take to be the truth about responses, and would be offended if anyone suggested that their writings and lectures were nothing more than responses and therefore no more true or false than a dog's salivation" (17).
Percy says that his theory will make certain assumptions. First, the current theory of language is incoherent; second, the current theories of man are incoherent, and that the incoherences are related. Percy thinks there are two different options for a theory of man: one, he "can be understood as an organism in an environment"(20). Second, he can be "understood to be somehow endowed with certain other unique properties which he does not share with other organisms" (20).
Percy believes there are certain limitations with the scientific method. For one, science can say nothing about the individual. Percy asserts, "Science cannot utter a single word about an individual molecule, thing, or creature in so far as it is an individual but only in so far as it is like other individuals" (22). Percy often states that the problem is that laymen in science idolize scientists, but science cannot say anything about them as an individual knower, only how they are similar to other knowers.
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