Rationality and the Literate Mind Contributor(s): Harris, Roy (Author) |
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ISBN: 0415850231 ISBN-13: 9780415850230 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $66.49 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 2013 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Language Arts & Disciplines | Linguistics - General - Language Arts & Disciplines | Literacy |
Dewey: 401 |
Series: Routledge Advances in Communication and Linguistic Theory |
Physical Information: 0.44" H x 6" W x 9" (0.63 lbs) 206 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: This book re-examines the old debate about the relationship between rationality and literacy. Does writing restructure consciousness? Do preliterate societies have a different mind-set from literate societies? Is reason built in to the way we think? How is literacy related to numeracy? Is the logical form that Western philosophers recognize anything more than an extrapolation from the structure of the written sentence? Is logic, as developed formally in Western education, intrinsically beyond the reach of the preliterate mind? What light, if any, do the findings of contemporary neuroscience throw on such issues? Roy Harris challenges the received mainstream opinion that reason is an intrinsic property of the human mind, and argues that the whole Western conception of rational thought, from Classical Greece down to modern symbolic logic, is a by-product of the way literacy developed in European cultures. |