The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading

by David R. Olson

What role has writing played in the development of our modern understanding of language, nature and ourselves? Drawing on recent advances in history, anthropology, linguistics and psychology, the author offers a bold new perspective on how writing and reading have historically and developmentally altered our understanding of language, mind and nature. These understandings, Olson argues, are by-products of living in a "world on paper."

Genres: Psychology, Linguistics, Nonfiction, Writing

340 pages, Paperback

First published June 24, 1994

Reviews

[Bruce Lerro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of our conventional ideas about the relationship thinking and writing is that they are separate processes. First you think, then you write. Writing is the ratification of what was already in the mind. But taking a page out of the work of Vygotsky, David Olsen argues that writing helps to complete thinking and once writing is on the page, it reflects back and changes the thinking process again. Olson traces the history of western civilization in order to show how the impact of the printing press created a new representational epistemology which replaced resemblance epistemology and this changed epistemology was foundational in shaping the Protestant religion, mechanistic science, and the Dutch masters in the field of art. If you like Harold Innes, Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong and you appreciate Vygotsky, Luria and socio-historical psychology as I do, this book puts them all together. Its rich bibliography led me to a other works which show the theory in action. This is one of those rare books which has both depth and breath at the same time. My only disappointment was the book did not draw out how a representational epistemology might have effected psychology over the period from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. However even disappointment was productive because it helped me to find some of the answers in my own work. This is a wonderful book.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biased, because David was my dissertation supervisor....

[Eric Chevlen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book asks the question "What impact have writing and reading had on thinking?"

The author examines "the role that writing, reading, and literacy in general played in conceptual changes in the West." The author "considered a number of factors including the type of script, the ways of reading scripts and interpreting texts and the application of principles of reading text to 'reading' the natural world."

His conclusions (adapted from the final chapter of the book):
1. Writing was responsible for bringing aspects of spoken language into consciousness, that is, for turning aspects of language into objects of reflection, analysis and design.
2. No writing system, including the alphabet, brings all aspects of what is said into awareness.
3. What the script-as-model does not represent is difficult, perhaps impossible, to bring into consciousness.
4. Once a script-as-model has been assimilated it is extremely difficult to unthink that model and see how someone not familiar with that model would perceive language.
5. The expressive and reflective powers of speech and writing are complementary rather than similar.
6. An important implication of literacy derives from the attempt to compensate for what was lost in the act of transcription.
7. Once texts are read in a certain new way, nature is "read" in an analogous new way.
8. Once the illocutionary force of a text is recognized as the expression of a personal, private intentionality, the concepts for representing how a text is to be taken provide just the concepts necessary for the representation of mind.

Obviously, these are complex ideas, as it were an epistemology of text. The author completes each chapter with a summary of what he wrote in that chapter, and that is a useful technique when such difficult ideas are presented.

I found especially interesting the author's linking of widespread literacy via the printing press with the birth of the modern scientific method of describing the world.

Nietzsche wrote, "Everyone being allowed to learn to read, ruins in the long run not only writing but also thinking." Olson would quibble, saying not that universal literacy ruins writing and thinking, but rather that it certainly transforms them.

I recommend this book for people interested in the impact of reading on writing and thinking.

[Erica Spangler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really thought that minus some of his missing the direct target of his argument that he seems to really set up some rather interesting ideas about literacy. I thought that his discussion as reading attempting to fill in the gap between writer's intention and reader's interpretation. He also seems to show that even in a genre where 'fact' or 'assertion' are supposed to be taken as universal truth, the 'fact' or 'assertion' is still subjective. He shows how a map is a representation of the ideology of the particular times. He also goes over paradigm shifts in the history of language both written and oral, which are interesting.

[Pam · Rating 1 out of 5]

ridiculous. olson is ridiculous.

[Christina Kraker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly suggest this book to anyone who wants to question their understanding of literacy. You don't have to agree with Olson's argument to find value in this book.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucid and persuasive.