Thursday, September 9, 2010
Post #2: The Greeks Begin Writing
During Plato's time, the Greeks effectively interiorized writing and, in doing so, a remediation of orality occurred. Instead of using mnemonic formulas, poets could utilize written text which in turn freed the mind for more original and abstract thought. Plato himself noticed that the formula poets had been following now had become counterproductive with the introduction of writing. Therefore, this moment in history describes a remediation as reform because it makes something that is already good better. It identifies a problem, in this case a dependency on memorization, that the society was unaware of and solves it by allowing poems and other narratives to have a permanent existence without relying on a person's memory. Plato's reservations about writing and its destructive threat to our memories ironically would not be here today without its development in ancient Greece. Still, he does make a valid point which is that today's society doesn't posses nearly as great of an ability to remember and recite information due to the fact that much of it is readily available in text somewhere.
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A good, basic answer; could use more depth and fleshed out examples/argument here.
ReplyDeleteYour post reminded me of how knowledge was commonly acquired no less than a century ago. Rote memorization was a key aspect to education, which is exactly what Plato tires of. Were the generations that relied on this background really so bad off? I don't think so, they are the people that broke new barriers, such as flight, travelling faster than the speed of sound, nuclear technology, so on and so forth.
ReplyDeleteWhat I do think, though, is that the new form of education (which would make Plato proud) is far better. Students are much more flexible with their knowledge and strive to learn how things work, not just basic facts or figures, no matter how complex. This will, in turn, spur greater thinking and more remediation.