ABSTRACT
The significance of the play of language, which must always include the act of interpretation, in a curriculum of complexity became evident as Bill Doll introduced scholars us to the philosophy of hermeneutics. The beauty and frustration of hermeneutic etymological play at the time was that once students begin to trace the branches of a term they realize that for every branch they identify, four more appear. Language is an infinite regress with no original word or thought except recognition of difference. Doll introduced the author to hermeneutics and helped him learn to use a significant tool of this philosophical mode of interpretation — etymological tracing. It is an act of following the history of a word to see how the first identifiable impulses of describing and articulating the world shifted and changed over time. Why Hermes made play the beginning principle rather than a fixed point of reference, a way of thinking that Doll spent so much time modeling.
