Outer Reaches of the Palindrome Page: 29
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RECURSION
The palindrome is an example of recursion, which is a dominant structural dynamic in
many aspects of language, math, and science. As I have noted, the shaman, yogic,
hallucinogenic, schizophrenic, and hero voyage are conceptually parallel to the palindrome, and
recursion is at the heart of this parallel. The very juxtaposition of "departure" and "return"
implies recursion, and one can say that the process of such a reversal hinges upon the structure
employing an instance of itself so as to achieve completion. This type of function exists not only
in the palindrome and the aforementioned "voyages" but also in the expressions of art, nature,
and language.
Recursion is a procedure that invokes an instance of itself, and thus can be applied
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repeatedly to create or analyze entities of any size.24 Recursion applies directly to the palindrome
in that it invokes an instance of itself, or, more clearly, the palindrome refers to itself backwards
if we are looking at the structure as something that progresses from left to right, as is natural to
view sentences in the English language. Once the letters arrive at their axis, their nucleus, the
center of the palindrome, the same order unfolds in reverse toward completion of the palindrome,
like the hero en route back to the point of departure. If we start from the axis of the palindrome
and follow the letters in both directions, we find that we are looking at identical letters bilaterally
onionskinned all the way up to the most peripheral letter on both sides.
Author and linguist Steven Pinker cites recursion as part of a category of qualities which
have yet to be demonstrated in the case of animals but which nonetheless are inherent in human
language, qualities such as reference, use of symbols displaced in time and space from their
referents, creativity, categorical speech perception, consistent ordering, hierarchical structure,
infinity, and so on.25 The word "inherent" strikes me as supporting the claim of the palindrome29
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McConnell, Michael Constantine. Outer Reaches of the Palindrome, thesis, December 2003; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4407/m1/32/: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .