[lit-ideas] Re: Must the Word be Literate?
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 17:36:24 +0900
On 10/3/07, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> How could this be tested "empirically"? In thinking "about language in the
> absence of writing" we are concerned about pre-literate societies - what
> records will they have left us, and insofar as we find such societies extant
> how could we test your question?
Many preliterate societies have now been studied by anthropologists.
One or more could report (better yet document by providing a
transcription) an origin myth that starts along the lines suggested by
the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word..."
That I can't recall an example speaks to nothing more than the
limitations of my knowledge (or, perhaps, my fading memory). Someone
else might say, "That's been reported in Y's account of the Z." If I
wanted to pursue the matter, I might then go looking to see if the Z
could be plausibly seen as an uncontaminated case. One would have to
look into that since there is hardly anywhere anymore where Christian
or Muslim missionaries have not been at work, if not with the Z, with
their next-door neighbors, the Ws.
Re the analytic/synthetic thing: If, like Leibniz (or Calvin before
him), you assume predestination in the best of all possible worlds,
then everything that is or will be follows logically from God's
premises. Everything true about the world is, thus, analytically true.
John
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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