Percy writes at what he sees as the conclusion of the modern age and attempts to create a middle ground between the two dying ideologies of that age: Judeo-Christian ethics, which give the individual freedom and responsibility; and the rationalism of science and behavioralism, which positions man as an organism in an environment and strips him of this freedom.

Percy begins by asking why modern humans are so sad despite the 20th century's technological innovations and unprecedented levels of comfort.

What's more, no existing research really deals with the question of how language really works, of how human beings use and understand the symbols of linguistics.

The moment when this Delta Δ entered the mind of a person—whether this happened via random chance or through the intervention of a deity—that person became human.

It was not the world of organisms and environments but just as real and twice as human" (44)—humans are made whole by the Delta Δ where the popular notions of religion and science had split us in two.

"The Loss of the Creature" is an exploration of the way the more or less objective reality of the individual is obscured in and ultimately lost to systems of education and classification.

Percy suggests several ways of getting around this situation, almost all of them involving bypassing the structure of organized approaches—one could go off the beaten path, for example, or be removed from the presence of other tourists by a natural disaster.

This bypassing, however, can lead to other problems: Namely, the methods used are not necessarily authentic; "some stratagems obviously serve other purposes than that of providing access to being" (51).

The couple enjoys themselves and repeatedly tells themselves, "Now we are really living," but Percy judges their experience inauthentic because they are constantly concerned that things may not go perfectly.

Either the student can suffer some sort of ordeal that opens the text to him in a new way; or else he can be apprenticed to a teacher who takes a very unusual approach to the subject.

The overall effect of this obscuration by structure is one of the basic conditions of modern society: The individual layman is reduced to being a consumer.

The poet, according to Percy, has a double-edged task: his metaphors must ring true, but they must be flexible enough to reverberate with his audience and for them to gain a new understanding of the things to which they refer.

The castaway frequently finds on the beach bottles that have one-sentence messages on the inside, such as "There is fresh water in the next cove," "The British are coming to Concord," or "Lead melts at 330 degrees."

Percy sets forth three criteria for the acceptance of a piece of news: (a) its relevance to the hearer's predicament; (b) the trustworthiness of the newsbearer; and (c) its likelihood or possibility.

The problem with modern society is that too many people attempt to cure their feelings of homelessness by seeking knowledge in the fields of science and art.

After proving his point that discarding assertions leads to antinomies, i.e., contradictions between human culture and science, though by themselves each is reasonable, he goes on to propose a radical change to the presumptions of the scientific method.

All real events, under the investigation of scientific method (whose main parts are hypothesizing, experimental verification, and conclusion), result in assertions.

Culture is the totality of the different ways in which the human spirit of the local people construes the world and asserts its knowledge and belief.

But culture is not just assertory just like how the heart of science is not the paraphernalia of the laboratory; it is the method, the hunch, the theory, the formula or a law which is the final product and can be disseminated.

The main reason scientific method has failed, as will be demonstrated later, is that culture is a mental activity which our enlightenment sciences have had problem handling and has artificially bifurcated us humans as made of mind and body.

The subject of study – rocks, planets, chemicals, germs, rats, dogs – do not butt in to reinterpret or misinterpret; they do not have a mind of their own, and scientists win.

that humans make are real (whether they are true or false or nonsense cannot be determined and is, in fact, irrelevant) with palpable results in societies, but they are not just space-time events; they are immaterial (as in spiritual, rather than physical, lacking state changes or energy exchanges) and “mental”, i.e., in the minds of the humans involved, with meanings and understandings!

While it is perfectly legitimate to study objectively languages, religions, societies, just as we do tools, hunting, warfare, etc., it is not sufficient.

It is also futile to try to find literal and rational meaning in the assertory statements of myths; it will lead us down a rabbit hole and take us nowhere.

In fact, trying to explain assertory nature of humans using scientific method’s intersubjective assertions is self-referential and is the root cause of the limitation of science in addressing culture.

The societal norm is that each human being falls in a spectral scale of individual sense of right-wrong, truth-falsity, authentic-inauthentic spread.

In essence, science must view the world not as split into observers and data – i.e., those who know and those who behave and are encultured – but as an integrated unit.

Science and scientists must recognize that, just like themselves, all other humans are making equally valid assertions – from their viewpoint and their culture’s point of view – about the world, in their quest for meaning, sometimes getting the answers, and sometimes falling short.

Maturana and Varela in their book, The Tree of Knowledge, also allude to the necessity of including all of humankind into any investigations and highlight the fact that, given that each of us is unique yet must coexist in congruence, our only option is to “see the other person and open up to him room to exist besides us.” Nevertheless, Percy warns about extreme cultural relativism seeping into science, making science nonsensical!

Percy’s endeavor can be exemplified with the observation that a meta-scientific and metacultural reality exists, on top of the science and cultural symbols, that must not be forgotten or ignored which the purely scientific method tends to, due to antinomies that the current scientific method deteriorates into when dealing with humans.