Knowledge is Power

Sorry for this being late. . .internet was out in our entire apartment complex for a couple hours this morning.

Knowledge is Power

Throughout history, there have been several knowledge institutions that have served to transmit knowledge between individuals and among groups of people.  Some of these knowledge institutions include: Folk Knowledge; Oral Knowledge; Written Knowledge and Printed Knowledge.  As one institution shifts to another, there are apparent remnants of each previous institution within the current institution.  The studying of such paradigm shifts allows us to discover how our current forms of knowledge institutions came to be.  While some may argue that when one knowledge institution shifts to another the previous institution is largely forgotten, it is actually the previous institution that has a notable impact on the design and limits of the new institution.

Final Exam: Salon

   Well, it has been great fun. Really. Knowledge is amazing and powerful. Thank you so much for all off your input. Bittersweet. Anyway, here is my essay. Enjoy:

Final Blog Post.... (insert mixed feelings)

Knowledge institutions have a profound impact on knowledge itself. Knowledge, in turn, has a profound effect on civilizations and plays a major role in shaping history. Several learning institutions have been analyzed by our class this semester, all of which have certain strengths and weaknesses, and all of which have had different effects on history. Despite major advancements and paradigm shifts accompanying all transitions from one learning institution to the next, writing systems and written knowledge represent the greatest reinvention of knowledge in history because of the economizing effects and additive qualities this shift had on knowledge.

Flashbulbs and Fires

Oral tradition goes back a loooooong way, most likely to the beginnings of interpersonal communication. (Possibly even before that, with all the controversy that invites [wikipedia].) Its impacts have been broad, and are seen most poignantly in the religious traditions of the world; however, it alone has never had the power to bring religion onto the world stage. Only with the advent of writing was any religion able to spread across (or with) great empires such as Rome, and only with the advent of printing has any religion been able to become global.

Prep for the salon... saloon would be cooler.

So I figured the best way to show my preparation for the final would be to post my notes I’ve taken as I paroused the blogs trying to find themes. So here you go…

Salon notes.

Here are my notes:

Final Exam Review Table

For the Final Exam "Salon" review, I compiled in this chart the blogs for each of the units, and some places put links to other blogs.  The other chart I made on my computer has a bit more information, but this is a good summary, I think.

Note: Post Labels

Howdy,

I've gone through and tagged each post with two things:

• the unit I thought it came from or fit into
• the name of the author

Many other labels exist, but I thought his might be helpful in preparing for the final.

If you get a moment, please check to see that your posts got labelled correctly. :)

Good luck next week!!!

Final Review: Serialized

Good morning,

It seems that for our final exam we will do well to fill out the suggested chart. Blogger isn't particularly good at doing non-linear work, so I figured I'd do an outline. (My internal nerd won't move on without mentioning that this is a classic scenario requiring the serialization of a non-linear body of information--in this case, turning a chart into a written flow of information due to the blog's limitations.) Here goes!

Censorship Rough Draft

Ok, so after thinking and researching some more about censorship, I found a pretty good thesis:

"While many believe that the outpouring of revolutionary thought in the Enlightenment era in England and Europe gained momentum through the use of the printed word, it was also a catalyst for Royal and Ecclesiastical censorship, which resulted in the impediment of the printing industry."

Writing a Paper on Censorship

As I've been writing my paper on censorship before 1700, I have run across some interesting things I would like to share here.

Finding a Thesis

When we were first assigned an annotated bibliography I was reminded of other research papers I had done. Most notably, my high school senior paper, which was on ambient noise imaging. When I started that research project, I had this bright idea and no clue as to who might have already researched and tried it. Many dead-end search queries on online databases taught me the hard way that getting the right word or phrase was vital, so I began to keep a journal of what I found and how. Some absolutely brilliant work surfaced while I was hunting for the 'right' query, so, in spite of it not being quite what I wanted, I kept it. It was a fun, exploratory game. After about 8 pages of notes, I was ready to start my 10-page paper.

At the same time, I was looking into casting rather than sintering advanced ceramics. Naturally, this meant I had two running journals of what I had found.

The point? The idea of "keeping an annotated bibliography" might be new to me, but the practice certainly is not--complete with glib storytelling.

Problem is, I generally have to have some point, interest, or question I'm trying to answer, and I don't.

Research Paper Update

As I have been working on my essay it has been kind of difficult to find an arguable claim considering dictionaries, as outlined in Dr. Burtons thesis powerpoint. I was although, able to connect it quite easily to the learning outcomes. In looking through the outcomes for a connection, the third one, communicating knowledge, basically popped out at me. The words preserved, communicated, and experienced seemed to help define my stance on the dictionary and the different things I have learned historically and personally.

Better Late Than Never..... ?

so i realize i still haven't finished my post about the rosetta project!! i was going to do it over thanksgiving, then forgot untill class thursday (i know - worst student ever!)

so i was involved in the making of the artifacts in a kinda weird way. i never actually saw the artifact our group made until the day of class - i was put in charge of 2 things... 1) find something to translate. this i did by visiting with Dr. Stratford - an expert on ancient Mesopotamian. he informed me that BYU has a mesopotamian nail (like the kind you build buildings with) that had an inscription written on it, and had the translation. so i sent that off to my group and got to work on the real difficult part of my job - making the stylus with which to write in cuneiform. i picked out a hard wood dowel, assuming that a softer wood would soak up the moisture from the clay and make it harder to use, then there was the decision of what would be easier -a triangle tool and a line tool, or a two in one tool? i decided on the second, thinking i would be annoyed by having to continuously switch between two sticks.

So then it came ot actually carving the stylus. the hard wood i chose made the carving process difficult, but not impossible. as i carved, i wondered - who did this in mesopotamia? did everyone make their own stylus to fit their personal prefrences? or was there a stulus maker? what materials were they made of? the clay tablets i have seen have writing that is MUCH smaller than that on our artefact, so their styluses would have had to be made of either an extremely hard wood that would keep its rigidity when carved down to such a small size, or made of metal or stone. there are problems with both of these, however, in that stone is very brittle, and metal is difficult and time consuming to shape. in the end, i had an image of ollivander's wand store in Harry Potter, but rather than wands, there would be styluses in little boxes on the shelves, where you could come and try out a limestone size six stylus, then a copper size eight, then an oak size five.

so maybe that's taking it a bit too far, but the INDUSTRY of writing is a very interesting thing - whether it be clay and a stylus, or vellum and parchment, or paper and leather, or ink and bamboo leaves, or stone and chisels, or loose-leaf college ruled paper and Bic pens, there seems to have been an industry of writing as long as there has been writing. this also begs the question - how is the paper industry (and others involved) going to survive the digitization of society, when the rules of the writing business are rewritten?

FINAL part A

today's lecture was pretty interesting - i have some thoughts on the final paper, but I'm still in the brainstorming stages -
when Dr. Petersen mentioned the guy who coined the phrase "the dark ages" as opposed to the "light ages" that proceeded it (ancient Greece) the gears started turning, and i wondered - how does humankind go from the wealth of knowledge and freedom that was seen in ancient Greece and Rome to the "darkness" of the middle ages?? what was the difference between the two societies? i believe a large part of it had to do with the availability and the communication of knowledge - it seems that the dark ages were wso dark because there was a VERY low rate of literacy (used as an indication of % of the population that is educated) as opposed to Greece or Rome, where it definitely wasn't 100% literacy, but the information and education was much more widespread. so does the amount of education determine how "good "a society is? can that be shown by examining literacy? i guess i'll find out!

Ye Oulde Bookes

After the Special Collections experience, I wandered through the King James Bible Exhibit in the library.

It was cool.

The oldest books had a style of script called fractura, which we had just learned about. The vertical strokes are very thick, while horizontal connections are thin and even ephemeral at times. This makes it rather hard to read, Bro. Skousen, and boy was he right! Contrasting this with the Roman fonts--even with the old long 's' characters--was very informative. I finally have a handle on why I dislike old script so much, and the oddly-named "Times New Roman" now makes sense!

For the record, I'm excited now any time I see various fonts and title pages, as I'm reminded of that lecture and the lecture reminds me of the large quantities of information quietly sitting in the text and design of a book.

Seeing the extremely find handiwork that went into some of the less typographically-oriented texts reminds me of something we have today: coffee table books, often from National Geographic or the World Wildlife Foundation. These massive tomes contain a moderate amount of information nestled between massive swaths of gorgeous photography all layered on thick, glossy paper. (Ink chemistry--why such paper is used--is a set of books unto itself.)

Just for Fun

In doing research for my bibliography on dictionaries I was able to come upon some "low" and "cant" words, or in other words, slang or jargon words. They were recorded by Samuel Johnson and help to show his personality and writing style, which can prove to be difficult when writing a dictionary.
Here are some interesting words:
Dandiprat: a little fellow; a urchin; a word used sometimes in fondness, sometimes in contempt.
To conjobble: to settle, to discuss. A low cant word.
Clodplate: a stupid fellow; a dolt; a thickscull.
Kicksey-wicksey: a made word in disdain or ridicule of a wife.
To phog: to rob; to steal; a low word.

Unit Four: Printed Knowledge and the History of Dictionaries.

In thinking of what topic to use for my bibliography I thought of the different printed knowledge resources that I use. I found that not a day goes by in which I don't use a dictionary. Either to check my spelling or to make sure I'm using my words right.
While doing research I stumbled upon this quote which I thought was a pretty accurate intro into my topic.

"No reference book, perhaps no book of any kind except the Bible, is so widely used as "the dictionary."'

Pretty cool stuff.
So the research part was surprisingly fun. I was a little nervous to use printed resources as it was something I had never done before. It was interesting to see the little things you miss when actually going and doing the research physically. Actually turning the pages or cross referencing certain books and having to search shelves and follow library jargon. The library doesn't seem as daunting anymore and yet it's amazing to consider all the knowledge it holds on its shelves.
A fun thing to be able to do was read the book, search it's footnotes, and then find that referenced book. It made it easier to see how interrelated certain aspects of knowledge are and to be able to actually use the same books that authors used in their research. It also helped to create a sort of timeline as different authors from different times built upon eachother.
Another things to observe that I remembered from class discussions was the affect that highlighting or written notes had on the book. I found that I was drawn to the important parts, which was a help, while at the same time, I felt as if I might be overlooking things as my eyes would automatically be drawn to already highlighted portions. It definitely has its pros and cons.
 Anyway, here goes my bibliography on the history of dictionaries.

Non-European Printing: an Enigma

Welcome, dear reader, to a dark tale of endless wo, of deadends and murky fens, of victory and defeat.

Looking down the list of topics, I found the entry "Non-European Printing." With visions of sweeping reference works carrying me conveniently to my destination atop a pile of relevant sources, I set off to the campus library.

What I found there was...less than idyllic. While the library computer catalog provided me with a few hits, its very generality of purpose renders it nearly useless. By the third page of results of one search I was reading about King Louis XIV's history, and "printing" brings up Uinta County: its place in history. Really?

Still, I found a few gems this way. I started off looking for A Short History of the Printing Press without paying mind to the publication year. This was in the section on the 5th floor about printing--which is well picked over at this point. I noticed quite a few titles that were intriguing. First, though, is the book I was looking for:

Biblio - Mania!!!

I chose to research the history of literacy for my annotated bibliography - I'm fascinated with how the transition from orality to literacy affects society. so i began in the library - i may have cheated, i wasn't too sure how we were and weren't supposed to find sources, so to get the ball rolling, i did a simple search of the library database for history of literacy. this led me to my first source. the other sources i found after this came in one of two ways. first, looking up what books the author had referenced , then doing the same with those books, then doing the same with those. there were also several interesting and applicable books on the shelves near books i was already looking for, so by just wandering the shelves a bit while searching for three books, i ended up with six. the process was very informative - as i found that nearly all the good books are on the bottom shelf, so you have to get down on your knees ans look like a fool to find good sources. it is also interesting to note that print knowledge enables a link to other knowledge resources - creating a web of knowledge that builds on itself perpetually (have you ever played the game where you have to connect one celebrity to another by the costars of the movies they've been in? it would be kinda fun to try to connect subjects or books by what books have referenced what other books)

so anyways - here's my bibliography - Enjoy!!

Historical Literacy:

Friedmann, Fredrick G., The Hoe and the Book: an Italian Experiment in Community Development, Cornell University Press, 1960. This book follows the efforts of a group called the UNLA (translated name is association for the fight against illiteracy) who advocate and promote literacy for rural Italian citizens with the belief that higher literacy leads to higher Quality of life. though this is a more modern source - the question of the benefits of literacy is pointedly addressed and could be applied top ancient civilizations.

Havelock, Eric A., The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences, Princeton University Press, 1982. this book examines the cultural impacts that occurred from the shift in ancient Greek society because of the shift from orality to literacy. it examines the problems of transcribing the oral code of a people into a written code, the relationship between sound and sign, the preliteracy of the Greeks, the recording of homer's works and other things.

Havelock, Eric A., The Muse Learns to Write, Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to Present, Yale University Press, 1986. This book's focus is on what happens in societies when the shift from orality to literacy is made. especially telling is the Greek shift from orality to literacy. Havelock states "the way we use our senses and the way we think are connected, and ... in the transition from Greek orality to Greek literacy the terms of this connection were altered, with the result that thought patterns were altered also, and have remained altered..."

Hezser, Catherine. Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine: texts and studies in ancient Judaism. 2001. this book is an in depth analysis of ancient Jewish literacy. it traces the writings and literacy of biblical-era Jews, grecco-roman Jews, educational opportunities for each, including an examination of ancient Jewish educational institutions. other subjects discussed include the existence of archives and libraries, the distribution and ownership of books, the social status of literates and the view of illiteracy, and others.

Houston, R. A., Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: illiteracy and society in Scotland and England 1600-1800, Cambridge university press, 1985. This book examines the literate revolution of Scotland from the 1600s to the 1800s. this includes the reasons for literacy and an analysis of literacy vs orality. Houston states; "We must question the simplistic notion of a non-literate society as somehow a culturally substandard version of a literate one"

Soltow, Lee, The Rise of Literacy and the Common School in the United States: a socioeconomic analysis to 1870. this is a book about literacy in early American history. it examines literacy by time periods - prior to 1840, and 1840-1870, with other studies and examples from similar time frames. this book is a socioeconomic analysis, giving a summary of the economic consequences of illiteracy in this time frame, but since economy plays an integral role in culture, this may be an interesting filter through which to view the cultural impact of literacy as well.

Materials and style

Good morning!

I was in the Semitic language group for our recent Rosetta project. This was interesting for several reasons. (Sorry there aren't more pictures!)

For one, this is a fairly recent set of civilizations, mostly made up of Hebrew and Arabic speakers. (Notably, our group's civilizations spoke just these two languages.) I feel that these places, peoples, and times don't fit very well into our European slant on Civ I, but I also feel that they are fascinating and very much worth including. For example, studying medieval Islamic culture feels much more like studying Renaissance Europe, as scholarship, trade, and communications were all alive and well. This civilization was a significant source of classical Greek texts and philosophy during this time, as mentioned in class. This has been a source of confusion to me as we have been directed away from written culture while apparently expected to study an inherently writing-based culture. (Still, this confusion drove me to uncover several interesting facts about Islam/Arabic's transition from oral to written knowledge. I have yet to get a well-founded perspective on this historical period. It's relevant today given that many modern terrorists are motivated by specific readings of the Koran. Hmm...how are the Hadith and old naqqali culture related to present-day extremism?)

That being said, it was very informative to try to reproduce a simple piece of text in these languages. I was tasked with procuring the material on which to write.

Papyrus is as authentic as it comes, right? (We decided this based on our collective understanding of the cultures aat the time.) Did we not hear in special collections that the bookstore sells it? Whether or not we did, well, sadly, they don't. (The bookstore manager gave me a really strange look when I asked, as if I'd requested a blank obelisk...) The HFAC supply room was equally bereft of any reproduction of this ancient media.

It seems that these peoples often used parchment in their work as well, and the bookstore sells that! Well, sort of.

Turns out BYU likes animals.

They sell a specific finish and weight of paper called parchment that does not suffer from the...irregularities of traditional parchment sources. One of these papers had a nice, uniform "old" print on it, and, barring an overnight voyage to Egypt or to a tannery, we settled on the very pseudoauthentic paper. It should be noted here that the Islamic cultures were some of the first to adopt paper as a writing material from the Orient, so this wasn't entirely inaccurate. :)

With the medium decided upon, we proceeded to become copyists. The Internet provided us with Koran and Torah passages in their original (albeit vowel-marked) language. Turns out that writing Hebrew using a fountain pen is difficult. Arabic, with its flowing lines and curves, was easier, but still awkward. This is in part because writing with a fountain pen is difficult all on its own. Just getting the ink flowing is an art that only one of us ever 'got.' My attempt netted me a mouthful of ink.

Remember those wax tablets the Romans used? That group mentioned that they were sometimes used for composition and redaction of something that was then copied onto a less-temporary and less-forgiving medium. Well, we did the same thing. We carefully reproduced the characters from the computer screen using pencil, and then proceeded to fill them in with the pen. I think this two-part process was what rendered our Arabic "illegible" to the professor who helped the other group translate our product.

I think the Egyptian fiasco has been covered well enough elsewhere, so I will merely say that I hadn't the remotest idea just how fiendishly complex hieroglyphics were. Nor did the other group, I daresay. It's no wonder that classical Egyptian remained uncracked until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone!


(Also, while I do agree that our midterms have been amazing as learning instruments, they have not been examinations.)

Annotated Bibliography on Censorship

I have really enjoyed researching an overarching theme in each of the units, and especially in this unit on printed knowledge, which is how knowledge has been controlled and thus used to create dichotomies between those who "know" and those who don't "know."  Knowledge seems to have always been used to place one group above another through putting prices on the knowledge, controlling the language of the knowledge, and, as I have more recently researched, through censorship of knowledge.  That's a concept: The ability to manipulate knowledge, even to the ability to remove it completely from a referable source, creates even more power in the hands of the censor.

Below is an annotated bibliography of several books I found about the early beginnings of censorship in the printing world.

hmmm......

blogger is being a bit strange today (maybe it's my computer)

so my post for the day appears to have published a few posts down. sorry!

<3 jared

response to "dogma"

So, i think as people in general have become more educated, "Dogmas" of other groups have been placed in question, which i think is why the term dogma has lost its value - think of yourself as an atheist college student at a liberal arts university (ie. the opposite existence of the average BYU student). so if you were this person (not you) how would you view the "dogmatic" beliefs that a 14 year old boy saw god, who told him he had to save all the world's souls. how about the "dogmatic" teaching that the eucharist turns into the ACTUAL FLESH of jesus christ inside your body. what about the centrally dogmatic belief that the scientific method is the only way to obtain truth?

while i'm guessing that the first two would be complete poppycock, the third is probably sounding pretty good to you.
but my question is WHY??? why would these essential unquestionable FACTS(according to those that believe them) be questioned?

is it because education enhances skepticism?

is it an us vs them issue?

is it because the mass quantity of information that is available (a lot of it being GARBAGE) forces people to choose what they will and will not believe?

^^^does the above question suggest that the "digital" age has brought about the necessity of new social skills?

^^^does this happen whenever there is a shift in knowledge institutions?

"The Matter of Words"

For my field trip, I decided to visit "The Matter of Words" exhibit by artists Adam Bateman, Harrell Fletcher, and John Fraser in the Museum of Art.  This exhibition uses several pieces of art to portray the importance of the printed word.  The artists state:

"Language shapes the understanding of the world and the nature of our relationships. . .In an age of electronic media, where the printed word is rapidly being dematerialized, as a result of digital forms, 'the matter of words' may soon become an outmoded concept.

The first exhibit I no-ticed was this large stack of books and magazines.  Piled together, these printed materials created a giant block, nearly 30 feet high! It seems to stand as a stark contrast to the now so "simplified" electronic devices that hold as much (and probably more) information. . .all within the palm of your hand.


Then, the artists created this piece through placing a large piece of paper onto the large book sculpture, and then, using a graphite stick, rub the impressions as if writing on a tombstone.  Adam Bateman suggests that this piece is meant to imply the "object-ness" of the books.

Do we view books as mere objects, or do we view them as knowledge?

Another exhibit I found particularly interesting was this collection of highlighted Bibles.  According to Harrell Fletcher, he met Veda Epling, a homeless woman living in the doorway of a church. He enjoyed her colorful way of highlighting her Bibles in some code only she knew.  He says: "Her Bibles exemplify the use of a restricted language code, as she is the only person who can understand her color-coded communications between herself and God."


My questions is:

How is her code of reading the Bible different from keeping the original Bible in Latin, rather than translating it into English or Greek?  Is her code viewed as less important because it seems so simple?

This next exhibit I found rather intriguing, and at first I was a little shocked.  It is a 32-minute looped video of books in a washer! Adam Bateman titles it "Admirals in Collision", also the title of a book in the washer.  The title is a play on linguistic theories and deconstruction, emphasizing that while the books are physically being washed and destroyed, the contents are still there---the pulp and the words are all still there, but they've been washed and abused and used. He says that it has been "reorganized."

In what ways do we use and abuse language?

In what ways do we minimize the importance of books and their ability to preserve language?

Are we replacing the printed word for electronic versions?

Dogma

Today we discussed dogma.

Dogma: noun. That which is fundamental to a system of beliefs; that which cannot be debated.

It was remarked that we don't use the word dogma this way anymore. In general this is true; I'd like to point out a few places this concept is still visible today.

Obviously, the Catholic church still conveys its central teachings as dogma.

Remember in biology, how DNA sequences are copied as RNA strands? Think waaaay back; those RNA strands are then used as a data source for producing proteins. The other direction doesn't work; that'd be silly! Proteins don't produce DNA! This one-directional flow is taught here at BYU to freshman in PDBio 120 as the Central Dogma of Molecular Microbiology.

James, in our post-class discussion, brought up physics. The law of gravity is pretty central and rather irrefutable, right? No. Gravity is one of the last frontier in quantum mechanics, and it's well-known that Newton's model for gravity is wrong in significant but small ways. In physics we find 'dogmatic' teaching in the fundamental assumption that everything in the universe can be modeled with elegant mathematics.

We don't call it such, but the older concept of dogma is still around!

"For passage over the water, there is a bridge"





Our Rosetta Stone was composed of balsa wood, bamboo leaves, brush and india ink, and twine. Our language included English, Sanskrit, and Ogham. It was definitely interesting to see the contrast and difference among these languages and civilizations as they came together, and also somwhat easy to see why each civilization used the medium they did (also factor in what was available to them).

Overall, the process of bringing the factors of each civilization together made for some cool experiences and thought progressions.

The Rosetta Clay

Clay tablet with Sanskrit, Greek, and English translations.

"स नः पितेव सूनवे.अग्ने सूपायनो भव |
सचस्वा नः सवस्तये"

"sa naḥ piteva sūnave.aghne sūpāyano bhava  

sacasvā naḥ svastaye"

"Να είναι εύκολο να μας όσον αφορά την προσέγγιση, έστω και ωςπατέρας στο γιο του: Αγνή, να είναι μαζί μας για ευτυχία μας."

"Be to us easy of approach, even as a father to his son: Agni, be with us for our weal.--"

We received from the "India" group this line from Book One Hymn One of the Rig Veda.  Since I remember Crista talking about the Rig Veda in her reports on India, I figured we should start there.  So, fortunately, versions of the Rig Veda are available online---and luckily the sentence was the last sentence of Book One Hymn One.  We were able to easily match the sanskrit.


English versions of the Rig Veda are also easily available, so all we had to do match Greek to the English as best as possible.


In doing this project, I realized a few interesting traits of working with clay.


First, working with clay is actually pretty easy, for the most part.  Writing in it was fairly easy. . .I mean, have you ever written in clay or Play-doh before? Pretty easy, right?  So was writing in the clay. If you mess up, then all you have to do is rub the mistake out of the clay.  It's like you're writing in pencil on an eraser.


Another thing I noticed is that while clay is easy to write on, once it's burned in a kiln, it's rather definitive.  However, it would seem rather inappropriate to bring clay to, say, a university to take notes on.  About the time that the written tradition started to take over in Greece, papyrus was also popular.  So, bringing clay to class and recording teacher's words would seem maybe out of place.


Which brings me to the point of this blog:  Are some mediums of writing more appropriate for a situation than another?  Today, you can take notes manually with a pen and pencil, or on a computer, or record them, or, I suppose, even videotape the lecture if you felt so inclined.  But then again, I rarely see someone bring their computer to church to take notes.  It wasn't until recent that it seemed appropriate to use the internet version of the scriptures to annotate and highlight.


This project taught me that mediums of writing are more than just materials, but, like the mother tongue and father tongue, there is a paternal implication for every material---in other words, there is an expectation for every writing medium.


So does that mean, for example, chiseling in stone is more manly than writing on papyrus? What do you think?

oops - where'd friday go???

So as we have been talking about the different groups and their experiences writing and translating ancient texts, it has really struck me how interconnected the different aspects of writing are.

First of all, I never realized how much the writing medium influences/is influenced by the subject of the writing. What really surprised me was the realization that I have made medium decisions at several times based on subject. For instance, I take class notes on loose leaf paper with whatever will write, but my personal journal is leather bound, acid-free paper and is only written on with select pens. There’s a reason sticky notes don’t hang around for years at a time – that medium is designed for a very specific kind of information.

Also, not all civilizations had stone tablets, or metal plates, etc. but I feel it is important to note that although the writing medium itself may not fit into this importance-hierarchy theory, I feel like the thousands of man hours of work and the immense amount of resources that go into building the temple to house the less durable mediums still allow us to count that as an effort to preserve the important stuff.

So, If we take this observation – important information is put on a lasting medium – and add that the harder it is to write on the medium, the more important the information has to be in order to be recorded (think of how writing in your personal journal would be different if it were on stone tablets) (mine would probably only include major events and their date, ie – “Marriage to Ashley M, 5-20-11”) I feel like we can make an argument that the texts that endured from ancient civilizations did so because the people of that civilization wanted them to because they are what were most valued by those people. If this is true, we can take a SUPER basic summary of what remains from an ancient civilization and make some pretty powerful inferences about that civilization.

For instance, my assigned civilization, Mesopotamia, has thousands and thousands of artefacts that remained through the years. Most of these are business and law related. So, Mesopotamian society, especially sumeria, we can assume that they were a very business oriented society. I would assume that this means they were probably a capitalist society (to some extent) and that they had relatively good social mobility.

I dunno, do you think I’m overstepping historical interpretation boundaries?

Ancient Greek Universities

We have been talking recently in class about how universities revolutionized the storage and transmission of knowledge throughout history and throughout the world.  The ancient Greek academies, lyceums, gymnasiums, and museums also contributed to this change.

Numbers and Letters

Today's discussion in class raised an interesting question:

What happens when a writing system combines numbers and letters?

In addition, what happens when they are separate?

From heavy mysticism to advanced math, I think it makes a world of difference.

I also think it doesn't.

MysticitsyM (oooh.... mystic-y.....)

thanks to the written system of ancient Mesopotamia, we have a REALLY good idea as to the procedures of the types of events that are typically shrouded in mysticism, such as marriage, birth of children, etc. The Mesopotamian's obsession with keeping logistical records has allowed us to see that a marriage contract to them was pretty much the same type of "contract" that we think of today. there were a lot of weird little rules and exceptions, however that differ greatly from modern marital laws. surprisingly, i wasn't able to find a lot of evidence for "mystical" procedures involved with marriage. in fact, the Mesopotamian wedding ceremony seems a lot less weird than Korean Thanksgiving. the only "odd" practice is when the groom pours perfume on the bride's head - but who doesn't want to smell nice on their wedding day, right?

there are a few traces of mystic beliefs in Mesopotamian lore. In the epic of Gilgamesh, there is an interesting series of dreams predicting the future (as interpreted by Gilgamesh's mother), strongly suggesting that dreams were a big part of how Mesopotamians believed they had mystical experiences. there is also strong evidence of a link between what Christians may call gentile beliefs and the beliefs of the people of israel - the biblical " Merkabah " or Ezekiel's chariot dream, contains mythical images that correspond to Mesopotamian traditions(Vita Daphna Arbel)

what commonly accepted things in our society may be considered "mysticism" in 500 years?

The Oracles and Knucklebones

Pythia---The Oracle at Delphi

I like how we're now exploring mysticism and the occult in class.  It turns history inside out and lets us see the weird and the abnormal.  Sometimes, it leads us to some still rather unknown and thus intriguing practices born in antiquity.  One of the more well-known mystic practices is that of the Oracles in Ancient Greece.  These oracles were the masters of divination and prophetic premonitions.  These mystic oracles served many purposes in Greek society, but I wish to focus on the purpose of our current topic: Written knowledge.

The Emergence of Writing in Greek Antiquity

Do you believe that the transition between the days of pre-internet read a book and write a paper, and our current days of fast blue-tooth cord-free and other hyphenated techno-craze has been an easy one?


Do you think it has been entirely in the interest of all people?

Have we lost anything in making this transition?

Adiabene 101

Adiabene(ܚܕܝܐܒ) was a small kingdom that made up part of the Armenian empire. though this country was only around for about a century, it's history contains religious shifts, two kings, ethical-political tension, martyrdom, Jewish rabbinic academies, and catholic archbishoprics.

now, before i go any further, i have to make clear the fact that i am definitely still taking about Mesopotamia. i had been searching out the earliest things i could find on Mesopotamia since i was assigned the culture. i then realized that there were people assigned Sumerians and Hittites, both of whom had excellent cuneiform posts yesterday. so rather than fight for the early mesopotamian culture spotlight, i though it might be interesting to examine a time period of extreme transition (since i figured that paradigm shifts count as knowledge turning points, why not look at the Mesopotamian cultures around the time Christianity is really catching on?) so i found this little gem of a case-study-in-a-country.

the Adiabene empire was a subservient empire to Persia, Assyria, and other Mesopotamian powerhouses, then in the first century BC, the country gained independence(not in the flag waving revolutionary war way America did, they just sort of were all of a sudden good enough to have a little respect). Izates, the king-to-be, converted from to Judaism at about the same time his mother did, followed by a large enough chunk of the general populace to make Judaism the primary religion in the country. the second most popular choice was that newfangled Christianity with all their Jesus talk, and in third came Zoroastrianism, a more traditional Mesopotamian religion.

now, this next part gets a bit inferrence-heavy, so bear with me and if my logic seems off, let me know. picture yourself as if you lived at the beginning of this kingdom. life's gotta be a little uncertain, seeing as how the country you live in didn't exist when you were born. not only that, but the king and a WHOLE BUNCH of your neighbors are either going to church at the synagogue, where they believe in a dude who got some fancy rocks from god, or to the christian church, where they believe that the head of their church is some dead-but-not dead guy who's alive but not here.... right..... .anyways - the world seems a bit turbulent (it gets better when you add in the fact that your dear sweet homeland will be no more by the time your kids die). so, this brings a few questions into my Adiabene mind. what the heck is going on?? where am i supposed to go to get a bit of stability? the Jews have their big rolls of paper, and seem to be the most stable non-traditional choice for a life direction, but grandma's ghost would haunt me forever if i stopped going to the Zoroastrian church (you can tell i haven't studied Zoroastrianism very thoroughly) but those Christians aren't completely crazy either - they have some letters written by their leaders, who have spoken to the not-dead guy, apparently. since the political vicissitudes are a bit uncontrollable, all i can do is choose a way to live life, and one of these churches has to tell me the right way to go, right? so a logical choice seems to be to READ THEIR TEXTS. (the idea of hearing something you've never heard before, but reading the text and basing life decisions on what you read is NOT foreign to those of us who are Latter Day Saint Returned Missionaries). so. my musings aside on what the situation might be like and how i might deal with it aside, there is a point here. in this volatile environment of constantly changing knowledges, written texts give an individual a good chance to objectively become informed (something that oral and folk knowledges may not accomplish so well) and to adapt to the changes. adaptation is what survival is all about - so those individuals who best adapt to changing knowledge systems are the ones who survive, the ones who get their names in history books, etc.

how do you see this adaptation in today's society - seeing as how we are on the cusp of the data age?

images: The sarcophagus of Queen Helena of Adiabene, Frieze from the Tomb of Queen Helena of Adiabene near Jerusalem, roman coin depicting Bound Arab and Adiabene captives seated back to back on shields