[] Re: Language and Logic

Re: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.ai.conceptual-graphs/2944

Jon Awbrey wrote:
 >
> I can't remember if I mentioned this here before,
> but there is a fascinating book along these lines
> that I read last year.
> 
> | Wolf, Maryanne (2007), ''Proust and the Squid:
> | The Story and Science of the Reading Brain'',
> | Harper Collins, New York.  Paperback edition,
> | Harper Perennial, New York, 2008.

Wolf kept a thread of philosophical reflection on language and reading
running through the brain science and the history of alphabetic scripts,
and I've found myself returning to these themes time and again since then.

Here's one excerpt:

| When all is said and done, of course, Socrates' worries were not so much
| about literacy as about what might happen to knowledge if the young had
| unguided, uncritical access to information.  For Socrates, the search
| for real knowledge did not revolve around information.  Rather, it was
| about finding the essence and purpose of life.  Such a search required
| a lifelong commitment to developing the deepest critical and analytical
| skills, and to internalizing personal knowledge through the prodigious
| use of memory, and long effort.  Only these conditions assured Socrates
| that a student was capable of moving from exploring knowledge in dialogue
| with a teacher to a path of principles that lead to action, virtue, and
| ultimately to a "friendship with his god."  Socrates saw knowledge as
| a force for the higher good;  anything — such as literacy — that might
| endanger it was anathema.  (Wolf, p. 220).
|
| Wolf, Maryanne (2007), ''Proust and the Squid:
| The Story and Science of the Reading Brain'',
| Harper Collins, New York.  Paperback edition,
| Harper Perennial, New York, 2008.

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