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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| It is the same old journey. |
Well, it may be but travelling overland without continuous roads means even a journey you have done before is unbelievably complex. But how did you learn it in the first place? Are you supposing now an infinite number of families specialising in each route passing down the information?
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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Right, steady on!
When I said the 'same old journey' I meant that this would be done countless of times - hence the suggestion of infinity; it is what humans do isn't it, to reduce experience to habit?
But it is still a finite number of routes.
It is all about them trying to find an efficient outcome.
| travelling overland without continuous roads means even a journey you have done before is unbelievably complex. |
But how compex would it be to someone versed in the attributes of non-literacy, which has to be memory, (and yes I know you are opposed to this social significance of memory)?
How often do I check the map, or timetable, or fare structure of my route up here in Edale?
Familiarity is the key to oral tradition, plus a familiar way of passing it on.
Which brings me to:
| infinite number of families |
Firstly, it isn't an infinite number of families - indeed the whole point of specialisation would be to REDUCE choice to a small number of families.
The reason for this supposition is that family relationships provide a fertile environment for the oral tradition.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| KarlMarxthespot wrote: | | ...the fact that literacy makes us lazy with our memory capacity.... |
Fact? Truism.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Oral traditions are the inventions of academics.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| Oral traditions are the inventions of academics. |
Of course you might be right on this Ishmael.
Lots and lots of orthodox academics have used this 'truism' as a lazy device to fill in the gaps - I'm not stupid. But by discounting it completely we are in danger of missing a lot of interesting stuff:
If, as AEs, we work with the epistemological principal that what is is what was...unless clearly proven to the contrary, then the reverse will also pertain: Why is not WAS still is?
I've been banging on about this for a while here and there.
In the case of the early navigation systems MH suggested that it was literacy.
The large henges are just archaeological detritus..this is what is.
Clearly they were built to last...as follies?
I think not.
So what happened?
Something - MH says literacy.
Very interesting.
In THOBR and elsewhere MH comments that the task of orthodox history is to produce 'the modern' as somehow special, and legions of practitioners in my neck of the woods, (Economics/Sociology/Anthropology/Economic History), will testify that what indeed makes us special are two things:
Industrialisation, and ...literacy...it is conventional wisdom.
Yet many of the 'Officially Credited' engineers of the industrial revolution were illiterate. Indeed Blind Jack Metcalfe, who built many of the Turnpikes in this area of NW England, was ...blind.
What on earth is going on?
Assembling an over complicated model of neolithic wanderers, (akin to a 20th Century Tesco model of consumerism), trying not to get lost by following the equivalent of modern signs, isn't the way forward...in my opinion.
Discard the consumerist paradigm and focus on production - which for almost any group must be a least cost model, which involves specialisation.
I would be far more interested in answers to the question: 'If the Oral tradition was so good, then why bother with literacy? '
I like falsification too!
For example, why invent a printing press without demand for the product?
And where did that demand come from?
If I don't have a granny who can tell me three good bread recipes then I need a recipe book...and the literacy to go with it.
But what if granny decides to post her knowledge, via pictograms, on a wall somewhere in the past...and the whole slide into literacy , (ie decontextualised knowledge), starts.
Except, according to your 'Truism' dismissal, I can't allow this as an object of study.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: | | Yet many of the 'Officially Credited' engineers of the industrial revolution were illiterate. Indeed Blind Jack Metcalfe, who built many of the Turnpikes in this area of NW England, was ...blind. |
Meaning, what? That they had no access to the vast stores of knowledge now preserved in written documents? Hardly! Information of that sort is social. Even if freed of direct dependence on human beings for preservation, knowledge relied still upon humans for transmission.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: | | 'If the Oral tradition was so good, then why bother with literacy? ' |
ANSWER: The oral tradition wasn't any good at all.
Most academic conundrums arise from invalid premises. Your problem goes away if we just assume that then as now, people forgot what wasn't written down. There was no oral tradition. The 19th century -- an era characterized by the spread of literacy -- was the hey-day of memorization. It was in this context that was born the myth of illiterate Homeric bards.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| Even if freed of direct dependence on human beings for preservation, knowledge relied still upon humans for transmission. |
Three questions that I would much appreciate your take on Ishmael:
What are mnemonics and other aides memoires for?
What role do you think pictograms might have played in the storage of knowledge among social groups, and can we classify maps as pictograms, in your opinion?
Intellectual Property Rights depend, for their assertion, on literacy. In an aboriginal society characterised by the absence of a concept of private law/proprietorial rights would an oral method of sharing knowledge have been sufficient?
I need to try and get my thoughts a bit straighter on these issues so comments welcome. (I am still concerned that the AE paradigm is leading us to an over early dismissal of the oral tradition).
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: | | What are mnemonics and other aides... |
They're evidence that people have always had terrible memories.
That's what they are.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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The rest of your questions are typically academic. That is, of no value at all.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| simpler world where specialist animal-drovers can follow easy-to-follow, rugged and effective signs |
Without the benefit of memory apparently, or advice from others, because of a dogmatic aversion to an oral tradition, satirised as a group of separate 'memory men'; oral tradition does not mean a bunch of what...shamens...sitting around in tents telling long stories, it means the oral transmission of useful knowledge to other specialists, which then may have to remembered, possibly with the aid of mnemonics and even pictograms. It isn't a mutually exclusive set of ideas.
However putting dogma aside , let's focus on 'rugged and effective signs'.
The economic concept of a 'public good' is directly relevant here:
A good whose benefits are characterised as non excludable and for which there in non rivalry.
A lighthouse, (a rugged and effective sign I would say), is the classic example. There is a clear need for a lighthouse, I build one in the hope of making my fortune...but don't, for the reasons that even if I have persuaded a few unfortunate mariners to pay me they certainly won't for long, as anyone can gain the benefit for free and consumption of the good by one person doesn't reduce the amount available for others.
If we have an ancient system of navigation premised on large scale travel by inexperienced travellers all going to get their own flints or whatever, then, as you say, we need a large number of rugged and effective signs...public goods and not available, unless there is an over arching authority willing to fund by levy/tithes/tax. A communal body. Hopefully using the same signage rubric.It is all getting a bit complicated.
If we have an ancient system of navigation premised on a small group of experienced travellers, well versed through an inter generational fund of remembered knowledge, doing intermediate length journeys only, then we need far fewer signs and what signs we need are far more likely to be put up because the communality required for this.
Where are all your signs coming from, and why avoid a simpler model that requires fewer of them?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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You are missing the point. It doesn't matter how many of these 'professional memory men' you care to posit, the point is that the number of different journeys is always going to be infinite. According to you everybody undertaking any kind of journey, longer than the purely local, is going to have to take a professional memory man along with him. But this isn't the main problem! It is finding a memory man who happens to know the journey you are about to undertake. You'll need a local memory man to remember which local memory man knows which routes. And since the bloke who qualifies is probably off taking somebody else in that direction you might have to wait a while.
I cannot imagine a more unwieldy system and yet this is precisely the model that (without actually spelling it out) orthodoxy relies on.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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PS However once you have a rugged, easy to follow set of signs then you can employ memory-men strictly at the nodal points. That is a very different matter.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| According to you everybody undertaking any kind of journey, longer than the purely local, is going to have to take a professional memory man along with him |
I think that this is according to you. According to me you are your own memory man, (as you satirise it), because my specialist family members have provided me with oral advice as to how to make journeys.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| rugged, easy to follow set of signs |
Coming from?
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