On the Precedence of Perception

On the Precedence of Perception is a treatise of 311 leaves, first circulated in fair copy from the scriptorium at Cardinal Stair in the winter of 1872 (Tower Reckoning), and the document in which the theory of Acoustic Primacy was first formulated. Its author, a Librarian of the ninth rank named Archivist Meridian Ost, did not sign the first edition; her name appears only in the recension of 1879, in a marginal note reading "corrected against my own hearing, which is not what it was." The work is cited in nearly every proceeding of the Directorate of Precedence, and no edition of it has ever been out of print.

Argument

The treatise advances a single claim and defends it for two hundred leaves: that certain catalogued entities are constituted primarily by their sound, and that the visual, tactile, and olfactory properties recorded for them are consequences of the sound rather than the reverse. Ost's central example is the Bell of the Ninth Landing, which three separate expeditions have measured as a bell and none has ever been able to see. To catalogue such an entity by its shape is, in Ost's phrase, "to describe a man by his shadow and call the shadow the man" (On the Precedence of Perception, leaf 44 recto).

The argument proceeds by elimination. Ost shows that the visual record of the Bell varies with the observer's distance, the humidity of the landing, and whether the observer has recently eaten, while the acoustic record does not vary at all. She concludes that the variable properties inhere in the observer and the invariable properties in the object, and that the Bell is therefore an acoustic entity with incidental visual furniture.

Relation to the Echo doctrine

Ost's formulation is not identical to the Echo doctrine, though the two are routinely conflated. Echo holds that a sound is defined by its perception; Ost held only that some sounds constitute their objects. She was explicit on the point, and unkind: "The Echo-men would have the bell be whatever is heard. I would have the bell be what is there, and what is there is heard" (leaf 112 verso). The Fifth Concordance, which defines the Echo doctrine and contests the Third Concordance on precisely this ground, quotes the passage in its annex without comment, a silence that has been read as assent for one hundred and forty years and as something else entirely by the present annotators of the Manual of Acceptable Tolerances.

Reception and the Kael ruling

The treatise was received coolly by the Directorate of Precedence, which found its method sound and its conclusions administratively inconvenient. The Directorate had by then built its operations around the Scale of Precedence, an instrument calibrated to visual and tactile properties, and Ost's argument implied that the Scale was weighing the wrong thing. The resulting quarrel, known in the internal correspondence as the Weighing Question, was not resolved so much as outlasted; the Scale remains in use and the Precedence Assignment procedure still requires a visual submission.

The decisive ruling came in 1904, when Archivist-Provisional Kael held that subjective perception cannot override instrumental non-detection in certification matters for echoes. The ruling did not overturn Ost, but it confined her to theory, and the phrase "sound in the treatise, unsound at the desk" entered the Directorate's private vocabulary and has not left it. Ost's defenders observe that Kael cited the 1872 edition and not the corrected 1879 text. Kael's defenders observe that Kael could not have cited what she had not read, which is generally taken as the end of the matter.

Textual history

Four recensions are recognised. The first (1872) lacks the chapter on simultaneous sound; the second (1879) adds it and corrects eleven errors of arithmetic; the third (1888) reorders the chapters to place the Bell first and is regarded as a corruption by the College of Correctors; the fourth (1901) restores the original order and appends the Index of Unheard Objects, a list of forty-three entities catalogued by sound alone and never since encountered. The Index is the most consulted part of the work.

A fifth recension is alleged. The Catalogue of Disputed Holdings records a copy bearing annotations in a hand tentatively identified as Ost's own, dated after her death, and the Office of the Recension has declined three times to rule on its status. The copy was last seen on Floor 511, in the reading room adjoining Aperture 511, and is not presently available for consultation.

Standing

''On the Precedence of Perception'' remains the founding text of Acoustic Primacy and the first sustained argument that the Tower's catalogue should record what a thing sounds like before it records what a thing looks like. The practice was adopted on three floors and abandoned on two. Its influence on the Perceptual Dilation Logs is indirect but acknowledged, and passages of it are set as copy in the training of every candidate for the Directorate. Candidates are advised to read the 1879 text, to read the 1872 text beside it, and to consult Standard Chronometric Index conventions before attempting the chapter on simultaneous sound. The work is not to be removed from the reading room, and the Bell is not to be rung for demonstration purposes, a prohibition posted at the Ninth Landing since 1874 and renewed without discussion at each of its eleven subsequent revisions.