----------
>From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Media / Oral Literacy
>Date: Mon, Jul 5, 1999, 4:40 PM
>
> Thomas Lunde wrote:
>>
>> ----------
>> >From: Robert Rosenstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>
>> >
>> > It seems to me that the thrust of all this, if it continues, is away from
>> > a society in which everybody is (should be) reading and writing literate
>> > to one in which the overwhelming majority will be culturally-content with
>> > their daily entertainments (movies, sitcoms, music videos, award shows,
>> > specials), and manufactured news bits. In such a situation, there will be
>> > a privatization of knowledge, owned by the few and used for the benefit
>> > of the few - which is almost the situation, now.
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> A couple of thoughts on the above paragraph. Most listening, watching
>> technologies are time specific.
Brad wrote:
>
> But not all. Your can freeze-frame and replay as often as you wish
> a VCR or audio tape, or, a fortiori, a laser disk.
Thomas:
Yes but! Notice, that the while the "yes" agrees, the "but" negates. These
technologies are far from easy to use or even in some cases to own. But the
point I was making - perhaps not clearly, is that the message is time
specific as decided by the sender. For example, if I sit down to read a
book, I can skim, study, reread and my reading speed is under my control.
Not only is the speed under my control, but so is the space, I can read in
the bathroom, on the bus, in bed, before breakfast, while this versatility
is often not possible to listening and watching technologies. While if I
listen to you talk, the message speed is under your control, I cannot speed
up your message. I also have to be available when you, or the program is
being played. (or have the technological skills and capabilities, plus the
equipment to store said information)
>
>> Though you have mentioned several times the
>> attribute of being able to listen while doing something else, I would
>> comment that retention, reflection and musing get lost as the data stream
>> continues uninterruped. The minute you take your attention from the TV,
>> radio or other media, there is no going back to catch what was missed. It
>> is much like riding on a train. As long as you sit at the window looking
>> out, you can see the current scenery, but you can't replay that which has
>> just went past, nor recapture that which happened while you glanced away or
>> left your seat for a minute. The strength of reading as learning
>> information medium is that you can go back and re-read or compare with other
>> information and reflect on the juxtaposition of thought that has been
>> presented.
>>
>> Similarly, with speaking. It is a spontaneous event, unless speaking from
>> something memorized. For most people, speaking is not prethought, it is
>> just a reflex action and the speaker is often surprised or delighted or
>> ashamed of what came out of his mouth as is the listener. Also, speaking
>> limits vocabulary to approx 5000 common words in the language.
>
> This may be true in a primary oral society, but literate persons should
> be able to deploy their larger vocabulary in secondary orality.
>
>> While
>> writing allows a greater vocabulary and language more specifically used.
>> Writing, focus's the communicator specifically on his message, allows
>> complex themes to be developed, fosters rational thought and specificity
>> rather than the generalizations commonly used when speaking.
Brad wrote:
>
> Yes, but.... Consider the architect or engineer designing something.
> Words, whether spoken or written, would be hard pressed to substitute
> for "mechanical drawing" and/or freehand drawing, etc. (See William
> Ivins, _Prints and Visual Communication_, MIT Press)
Thomas:
That is true but (again), I defy you to comprehend or explain the drawing
without using words, either internally to yourself or externally to another.
>
>> A large part
>> of this is dealt with in great depth by Marshal McLuhan and his observations
>> that TV and radio represent a sensory change from visual (reading and
>> writing) to an oral society, which most of prehistory and history up until
>> Guttenburg operated in. Oral societies are often tribal, ruled by emotion
>> and passion, foster different lifestyles and focus on different aspects of
>> reality than a visual society.
Brad wrote:
>
> Perhaps it is more accurate to say that persons in primary oral
> cultures live in a *different reality* (See, e.g, Julian Jaynes,
> _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral
> Mind_, Houghton Mifflin). I think it is an open question
> the extent to which primary oral persons *are* persons in the way
> educated literate persons -- esp. after Descartes, Kant, etc. --
> conceive of ourselves. Speculation: primary oral "people" may
> have a form of existence somewhere between that of higher apes and us.
> The ancient Greek notion that the line demarcating the human from
> the non-human does not run along a species boundary, but rather
> runs through a single biological species may be worth thinking
> about.
Thomas:
There has come through the Internet a piece of information that I believe
will buttress some of my statements and perhaps challenge your
"speculation". (see the following lengthy article) It was McLuhan's
contention, (and I believe) that the sensorium mix that one culture uses to
percieve the world may often be unintelligible to peoples holding another
sensorium view. This difference, whether of a Borneo headhunter, an
Austrailian aboriginal person, a Native of North America is not one of
intelligence or as you comment, evolutionary. Rather it is a culture in
which the media used to make sense of the world is different from someone
elses.
In my opinion, there has been very little intelligent follow-up by
academics, whether mainstream or creative on McLuhan's work. And yet, I
believe it is/was the single most creative piece of analysis done in the
20th century. Far outweighing Jung, Freud or any of our other so called
pyschological thinkers. As to the philosphers, I find most of their
speculations grand science fiction dressed up in dubious logic and fancy
vocabulary, often of their own invention.
Human beings percieve the world through their senses - there is no other
way. We accept explanations of the world through our culture and the
various languages and their linguistics are signposts of what they find
important - which is a result of what mix of senses they pay attention too.
In an oral/listening society, for you cannot have one without the other,
stories, music and impecabble memory form the basis of the culture. In a
visual culture, your have writing and reading, pictures and lack of memory.
It has been said of our Canadian culture that we do not know our history,
this to me is the result of a visual culture, which does not remember, but
stores it's memories in symbols, writing, graphs, pictures. That's great
but if no one reads them, it is like all the crap I save in my hard drive,
there but have never reviewed.
If I have any fault with McLuhan's explainations, it is that he dealt with
sensorium on a broad canvas, perhaps not realizing the subtle variations
within each individual sense. Nuero-linguistic Programming of Bandler and
Grinder have dealt with this extensively and in my opinion are the natural
inheritors of McLuhan thought, even though in developing their theories,
they did not access McLuhan, However, it is their work which provides the
basis for an expansion of McLuhans ideas. Because the academic community
finds theories developed outside their specialized enclaves difficult to
credit, much good learning and thinking is denied to those who go through
academic disciplines. Conversely, much needed respect is denied those who
tread the path less travelled.
As the following article indicates, perhaps two thousand years of church and
academic scholars have completely missed the main message in the Iliad and
yet perhaps, if an Albanian or Serb from a rural village had have been asked
their opinion, many of them still very oral in their sensorium and culture,
an answer that indicated the truth of the following story might have been
found much sooner - but then what does a peasant know?
Well, that's my rant.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Danny Fagandini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*******
Financial Times Weekend Section 20.6.99 page 1
Could the 'Iliad' be more than just a story - a stellar guidebook,
in fact?
Christian Tyler tracks the ancient heroes across the heavens
Generations of scholars and students have pored over Homer's Iliad.
They have admired the vigour of its language and relished the
descriptions of fighting and smiting. And if this ancient epic has
sometimes seemed overpopulated, inconclusive and strangely narrow in
its focus, that could always be put down to the rude ignorance of
antiquity.
But, according to Florence and Kenneth Wood, we have all been missing
the point. The Iliad, they say, is not just a story. It is a stellar
guidebook, a poetic encryption of ancient geography and an
astronomical record.
Early next month the couple, who live in retirement in a suburb of
Bolton, Lancashire, will publish the startling results of more than 40
years' research begun by Florence's late mother.
Born on a farm on the Kansas prairie, where the stars shine bright,
Edna Johnston went on to be a teacher in England. She puzzled for
years over the oddities of Homer's epic. Gradually she became
convinced that the Iliad is a memory aid. a vastly extended mnemonic
for the movement of stars, constellations and planets visible from the
ancient Aegean. It was the coded knowledge of a pre-literate age,
vital for land travel, nautical navigation and agriculture.
If her theory is right, it will deserve to rank among the great
archaeological discoveries of the century.
Now the world, as we know, is full of cranks. You can find them in
any bookshop, snapping up stories about the Holy Grail, the lost city
of Atlantis, or the alien builders of the Egyptian pyramids. But
Florence and Ken Woods do not look like cranks nor like the type who
would exploit them. They appear normal, intelligent people. She is a
former teacher of maths and computer science, her husband a former
assistant editor of a well-known British newspaper, the Manchester
Evening News. And Edna? They describe Florence's late mother as "a
powerhouse, very practical, and of phenomenal integrity".
Their book, Homer's Secret Iliad, will be brought out by the
old-established Mayfair firm of John Murray, publishers of Darwin,
Byron and Conan Doyle. Asked why the firm had accepted a contentious
story from off its usual turf, Grant Mcintyre, editorial director,
replied: "Because it is so fascinating and persuasive." A zealous
reader of Homer himself, he added: "I found it entirely convincing.
There was just so much evidence."
The manuscript written by the Woods is based on a mass of material
left by Edna at her death in 1991, supplemented by their own
computer-assisted researches. Alongside the book they have made a
catalogue of the 650 stars and 45 constellations which they say Homer
identifies, and a two-volume textual commentary.
Edna kept her papers in a mahogany box. "If we children went anywhere
near it she would bite our heads off, " Florence recalled this week.
When she died, the couple were unwilling to get involved and tried to
pass the material to professional historians of astronomy. They were
rebuffed by all 20 they approached. "If I live to be 100 I will never
understand the lack of curiosity they showed, " Florence said.
Yet the reaction was all too predictable. How many professional
historians of science, how many academic classicists are prepared- to
admit that they have overlooked so fundamental a fact if fact it be
about one of the best known books in the world? Why should they waste
time examining the speculations of mere amateurs?
The Woods did get support, however, from Dr Hertha von Dechend and
colleagues at Frankfurt University who were working on the meaning of
myths. And through a cousin at the University of Texas, they found a
receptive ear in Dr Betty Sue Flowers, professor of western
literature, and her colleagues. Several British academics have allowed
their advice to be acknowledged.
Nor are amateurs disqualified from astronomy or archaeology. When
they succeed it is because they can afford to stick their necks out.
The Woods say they had the advantage of coming to the material without
"baggage" or prejudice.
As for amateurism, it was the amateur Heinrich Schliemann who, in the
1870s, ignoring the wisdom of experts. discovered the many layered city
of Troy at Hissarlik and the graves of kings at Mycenae. It was the
amateur Michael Ventris, an architect and amateur cryptographer, who
in 1952 deciphered as archaic Greek the Linear B script of tablets
found at Knossos and Pylos. Many comets are named after amateur
astronomers, perhaps because the professionals have been more
interested in deep space. And Edna had an exemplar: it was in Kansas
that Clyde Tombaugh, the son of a farmer, discovered the planet Pluto
in 1930.
The night sky which the farmer's daughter learned to read like a map
was much like the one seen by Homer himself (unless, as legend has it,
the bard was blind). Her home town of McCune, Kansas. is on the same
latitude as the Aegean island of Rh odes.
As a trainee teacher, she studied mythology alongside her major
degree in English literature. In 1944, she married John Leigh, an
English airman, and went to live in Lancashire. teaching at US
airbases and diplomatic schools. She continued to read Homer until she
could recite most of the Iliad and the Odyssey from memory. Yet there
was something about the poems which continued to bother her.
"The Iliad and the Odyssey were the most thoroughly exasperating
pieces of literature," she wrote. "I read these two books again and
again. .. Yet, each time I finished reading, my reaction was the same:
I felt I had missed the point." It was, she said, like hewing the
faint whisper of a melody behind an orchestral crescendo, or viewing
"some enormous and far away canvas".
After testing and rejecting many hypotheses, she discovered almost by
chance a resemblance between the geography of the Bay of Pegasus on
the Greek mainland opposite Euboea and the constellation also called
Pegasus. It was both the key to a problem which has puzzled Homeric
scholars and the beginning of decades of systematic research.
Book II of the Iliad contains a wearisome recitation of the 29
Achaean (Greek) and 16 Trojan regiments present at the siege of Troy,
where they came from and who their commanders were. Various
explanations have been offered of this so-called Catalogue of Ships.
Edna Leigh now suggested that the regiments represented
constellations, which were chosen for their similarity to places on
earth. Mycenae stood for Leo, Sparta was Scorpius, Salamis was Argo
Navis, the Troad was Ursa Major.
Now she reasoned that the commander of each regiment stood for the
brightest star in its constellation. So Achilles, the greatest warrior
of the Iliad, became Sirius in Canis Major, the brightest star in the
sky. Patroclus, his bosom buddy, was Procyon, the clearest star (which
astronomers call alpha) in Canis Minor; Agamemnon was Regulus, the
alpha of Leo; Menelaus was Antares, alpha Scorpii; Odysseus was
Arcturus, alpha Bootes. By this means the 73 commanders named in the
Catalogue of Ships were located in the firmament.
Extending Edna's hypothesis and method, the Woods discovered and
tested other "rules".
When men were killed in the story, it was always at the hands of
warriors whose stars were brighter than theirs. Homer is specific,
gruesomely so, in his description of wounds; now it appeared that he
had a purpose.
For minor stars were to be identified by the nature of the wounds
received by their mythical counterparts. So, for example, the wounds
suffered by the sons of Priam - one in the hand, one in the belt, one
on the collarbone - identified the location of those stars in Orion,
the constellation of Priam's family.
Clusters of stars were associated with helmets, shields, chariots,
horses or household servants. About 650 stars could thus be
identified. As for the gods, they were to stand for the moon and five
visible planets: the moon becomes Hera, Venus becomes Aphrodite,
Jupiter is Athene, Mars is Ares, Saturn is Poseidon, Mercury at dawn
is Apollo, at dusk Hernes. The Milky Way is depicted in terms of
crops or sand, and there are codes for eclipses (Zeus and Hera in
conjunction, for instance) and meteor showers. Homer's "wine-dark
sea" refers not to the ocean but to the night sky.
But the theory claims even more. Homer, it is generally agreed, is
the name of the poet (or poets) who, in about 800BC, wrote down 'epics
transmitted orally over generations. Now, the Woods say, not only is
his Iliad a rough sky-map of ancient Greece and Asia Minor devised
before maps were made; not only is it a star chart recited before
textbooks were invented; it is also an allegorical record of celestial
events dating back as far as 9000BC.
Its central story, the return of Achilles to the battlefield after a
long sulk, is said to record the reappearance over Greece of Sirius in
about 8900BC, an event so momentous that, when the Chinese observed
it, they rebased their entire calendar.
Achilles' pursuit and slaying of Hector describes the way in which
Canis Major appears to chase and catch Orion between twilight and
dawn. The fall of the House of Troy is said to be an allegory of the
"decline" of Ursa Major as the former pole star, Thuban (in
neighbouring Draco), ceased to function as a useful north-pointer in
about 1800BC. (The pole star now is Polaris in Ursa Minor.) This
change in the firmament is due to a protracted, 26,000year "wobble" of
the earth on its axis.
So, too, is the precession of the equinoxes, a periodic change of the
constellations in which the sun rises at the spring and autumn
equinoxes. The Iliad is supposed to register this change in the ebb
and flow of the Trojan war.
It all seems too good to be true. One possibility - a danger with any
decryption - is that the theory works only because it is circular. Yet
the authors of Homer's Secret Iliad reject any suggestion that they
have bent the material to make it fit. Each hard won hypothesis, they
say, has been tested against passages from elsewhere in Homer's text,
and found consistent.
"Don't think we haven't had nightmares about it," said Ken. "Is there
a fatal flaw, a peg holding the whole thing together which you can
pull out? We have worried about it but we can't find it. It just all
seems to hang together. "
He described puzzling for months over an episode in Book I where Zeus
leads the gods on-stage in a line. A specialist magazine bought
casually in an American shopping mall revealed that Nasa astronomers
knew of a day when the moon and planets appeared in a short line at
dawn. When he read this, Ken ran upstairs to interrogate the
astronomical CDRom on his computer. Yes, said the computer, there was
such an event, on March 5 1953BC.
If the Iliad is really a book of astronomy, why doesn't Homer tell
us? And why don't the ancients tell us?
The answer to the first question, the Woods claim, is that Homer did
not need to explain what he was doing because his contemporaries would
have known. The answer to the second is that the ancients did tell us.
Strabo in the first century defended Homer as the father of geography,
for which, he said, knowledge of astronomy was indispensable.
Why do we not know it? Is it because poetry and science divided about
the time writing was invented?
Only if the academic world responds to the Woods' claims will we know
whether their story stands up whether, indeed, it can be verified or
falsified, or must remain for ever speculative. The Woods hope it will
at least give a fillip to the study of Homer, once a staple ingredient
of western education.
But whatever the truth about the real stars of the Iliad, it will be
difficult to look at the night sky, or at Homer, in the same way
again.
Florence and Ken Wood are now working on the Odyssey. All they will
say is that it is about calculating time. But if Achilles, Hector and
the rest are cyphers, then did wily Odysseus really make that voyage
around the Mediterranean?
end
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>
>> According to McLuhan, media shape the
>> sensorium of individuals and his major theme was that we are creating new
>> media which is reshaping the majority of the populations sensory intake
>> which will have the effect of changing society in ways that are totally
>> different from political philosophy's, economic theories and cultures.
>
> One form of "change" is ceasing to be.... What might the
> ultimate outcome of the present ever-accelerating speeding-up of
> everything (etc.) be? Conversely, what if we conceived of ourselves
> and others more as interpreting perspectives upon the world and
> less as predefined objects in a pre-given world (which is how a lot of
> us think a lot of the time)?
>
> Just some thoughts....
>
> \brad mccormick
>
> --
> Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
>
> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
> -------------------------------------------------------
> <![%THINK;[SGML]]> Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
>
