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

New perspective on the relation between writing and the processes of thought.

David R. Olson (Author)

9780521575584, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 20 June 1996

340 pages, 20 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.3 cm, 0.545 kg

"...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

What role has writing played in the development of our modern understanding of language, nature and ourselves? In this historical and developmental account, David Olson offers a new perspective on this process. Reversing the traditional assumption about the relation between speech and writing, he argues that writing provides an important model of the way we think about speech; our consciousness of language is structured by our writing system. In addition, writing provides our dominant models for thinking about nature and the mind, and shows how our understanding of the world - our science - and our understanding of ourselves - our psychology - are by-products of our ways of creating and interpreting written texts. This challenging study draws on recent advances in history, anthropology, linguistics and psychology, and will be of interest to readers across the range of these subjects.

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.

Subject Areas: Linguistics [CF]