The Mind on Paper
Reading, Consciousness and Rationality

Shows why reading and writing are essential to developing a consciousness of language that, in turn, lies at the core of rationality.

David R. Olson (Author)

9781107162891, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 November 2016

280 pages, 11 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.52 kg

'This is a wonderful book … with fresh insights on every page. It should be of interest to school and university educators, to literacy scholars, to psychologists and to philosophers.' Ian Winchester, Interchange

Although the importance of literacy is widely acknowledged in society and remains at the top of the political agenda, writing has been slow to establish a place in the cognitive sciences. Olson argues that to understand the cognitive implications of literacy, it is necessary to see reading and writing as providing access to and consciousness of aspects of language, such as phonemes, words and sentences, that are implicit and unconscious in speech. Reading and writing create a system of metarepresentational concepts that bring those features of language into consciousness as a subject of discourse. This consciousness of language is essential not only to acquiring literacy but also to the formation of systematic thought and rationality. The Mind on Paper is a compelling exploration of what literacy does for our speech and hence for our thought, and will be of interest to readers in developmental psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and education.

Preface
Part I. Introduction: Reading, Writing and the Mind
1. Awakening: reading and consciousness
Part II. Theories of the Relation between Writing and Mind: 2. Inventing writing: the history of writing and the ontogeny of writing
3. Dewey and the New Pragmatists: reading, writing and mind
4. Vygotsky and the Vygotskians
5. The cognitive science of metarepresentation
Part III. Reading and the Invention of Language about Language: 6. Phonemes and the alphabet
7. The discovery of words and thinking about words
8. Sentences and logic
9. Prose and rational argument
10. The testing of rationality and the rationality of testing
Part IV. The Implications and Uses of Metarepresentational Language: 11. The psychology and pedagogy of reading
12. The psychology and pedagogy of rationality
Part V. Conclusions: 13. Reading, consciousness and rationality
References
Author index
Subject index.

Subject Areas: Educational psychology [JNC], Philosophy & theory of education [JNA], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Child & developmental psychology [JMC], Linguistics [CF]