Re: thoughts on origin of religions

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Feb 27 2002 - 06:44:36 MST


On Wed, Feb 27, 2002 at 12:35:25AM -0500, Mark Walker wrote:
>
> Erik Havelock in _Preface To Plato_ makes an argument along these lines:
> writing was a necessary condition for philosophy because without the written
> word all one's "computational space" was devoted to being a member of that
> society. The point of the barb's telling of the Iliad was to relate the
> cumulative experience of what it is to be Greek. It took a tremendous effort
> on the part of the Greek philosophers to break the poet's stranglehold on
> the Greek mind, to make people think abstractly. Writing freed-up
> computational space and thus made philosophy possible. For a defence of this
> thesis see Havelock. :)

If his thesis is right, then Google will usher in yet another level of
freed up mental space and cause a renaissance. I can hardly wait! :-)

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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