You're welcome, Ray. I expand on my answer to A, but am stuck on B.
A. As a naive undergraduate in science, I was disappointed to learn that scientists are no better than anyone else. They've the same faults as others, including a tendency to irrational behaviour. Whatever makes science a rational pursuit, therefore (which by and large it is) cannot be the scientists. Nor the experimental method, because non-experimental fields of scholarship proceed on a more-or-less rational basis, too. What they all share in common is a process of validation that works through a public discourse of peers and a general expectation of rationality. Somehow the cream rises to the top in that kind of bottle.
If it works for scientists, then I feel confident it'll work for any other broad swathe of the population. I defer to Habermas on this, as he's my authority on the public sphere (the bottle I speak of). I haven't yet expanded my reading much further.
Irrational bottles exist, too. A modern election run through the mass media is an example of a process that tries hard to bring out the worst in people. But those people aren't the problem. They've as much capacity for both rational and irrational behaviour as scientists. Give them the same access to the public sphere, therefore, and they'll be just as protected from sources of manipulation, such as the mass media and its "emotional overtones". The public sphere is essentially impenetrable to force, and critical of force. So this is what I propose.
B. You say polysemy isn't a problem, but an opportunity. The only problem then is my unfamiliarity with it; I'm uncertain how to take advantage of the opportunity. Maybe in the mythopoeic overguideway where the text is likely to be aesthetic in its form, and logic (plot, character development, etc.), as myths generally are. These aspects will be largely the work of artists, of course. I imagine they'll employ polysemy to its full effect, as they're the experts on that kind of thing.
Otherwise I'm uncertain how to take advantage of it.
Mike
