The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading

ISBN-13: 9780521575584 / Angielski / Miękka / 1996 / 340 str.

David R. Olson

Opis

What role has writing played in the development of our modern understanding of language, nature and ourselves? Drawing on recent advances in history, anthropology, linguistics and psychology, the author offers a bold new perspective on how writing and reading have historically and developmentally altered our understanding of language, mind and nature. These understandings, Olson argues, are by-products of living in a "world on paper."

Recenzje

"...new perspective on the impact of writing on the development of our understanding of language, nature and ourselves....the book contains illustrations; it ties up various approaches to the problem and will certainly encourage further research in this field." Journal of Indo-European Studies

Spis treści

1. Demythologising literacy; 2. Theories of literacy and mind from Levy-Bruhl to Scribner and Cole; 3. Literacy and the conceptual revolutions of Classical Greece and Renaissance Europe; 4. What writing represents; 5. What writing doesn't represent; 6. The problem of interpretation; 7. A history of reading; 8. Reading the Book of Nature; 9. A history of written discourse; 10. Representing the world in maps, diagrams, formulas, pictures and texts; 11. Representing the mind; 12. The making of the literate mind.