評論
打印
The creation of new sound signs was probably quite a fast-moving process,
創造新表音符號的過程很可能極快。
and as they developed, the signs would have had to be listed-the earliest dictionaries if you like-beginning an intellectual process of categorising things and relationships, that has never stopped since.
隨著符號逐漸增多， 便有了將其全部列出的必要性，可以稱之為最早的詞典。由此也開始了一個將詞匯、物品及其之間的關系分類記錄的過程，這一過程現在還在延續。
Our little beer-ration tablet leads directly, and swiftly, to a completely different way of thinking about ourselves and about the world that surrounds us.
這塊記錄啤酒配給的寫字板直接而迅速地讓我們獲得了一種重新思考自己、思考周圍世界的新方式。
But what does it do to the human mind when writing becomes part of culture? We asked John Searle, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley:
加州大學伯克利分校的哲學教授約翰瑟爾描述了當文字成為文化的一部分時，人腦發生了怎樣的變化：
I think you don't understand the full import of the revolution brought by writing if you think of it just as preserving information into the future.
文字是我們所認為的現代文明產生的關鍵。它具有我們無法了解的創造力。如果你認為它只是保存信息的一種方式，那你并沒有真正理解文字革命所帶來的巨大影響。
There are two areas where writing makes an absolutely decisive difference to the whole history of the human species.
它在兩個方面決定性地改寫了整個人類歷史。
One area is complex thought.
其一是復雜的思考能力。
There's a limit to what you can do with the spoken word.
口述的能力是有限的。
You cannot really do higher mathematics or even more complex forms of philosophical argument of the kind that I am interested in, unless you have some way of writing it down and scanning it.
如果沒有一個記錄并能反復查看的方式，人類無法進行高等數學運算或是更復雜的哲學辯論。
So it's not adequate to think of writing just as a way of recording, for the future, facts about the past and the present.
因此僅僅認為文字是一種為未來記錄現代和過去的方式是不夠的。
On the contrary, it is immensely creative.
相反，它具有無限的創造力。
But now a second thing about writing, which I think is just as important as that, and that is when you write down you don't just record what already exists, but there are elements in which you create new entities.
至于第二點也很重要：當你用文字書寫時，你并不只記錄了巳存在的內容,
You create money, you create corporations, you create governments, you create complex forms of society, and writing is essential for all of that.
還創造了新的實體一金錢、組織、政府、社會的復雜形式。文字是這一切的關鍵。
