Dear John, (01)
>As another example, consider the Polynesian navigators who crossed
>thousands of miles of open ocean from Tahiti to New Zealand to Hawaii
>to Easter Island. Some of the old timers preserved an oral tradition
>of how they navigated, and they gave a demonstration while observers
>with GPS systems watched. And they were amazingly accurate. (02)
They made charts - see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Islands_stick_chart>. So it is not
purely verbal - some knowledge is passed on verbally and some encoded in a
physical form. (03)
Best regards,
David (04)
At 11:35 27/03/2010 -0500, you wrote:
>Chris,
>
>CP> I think you may be underestimating some of the post-language changes.
>
>Writing certainly changes many things, but the point I was making is
>that the level of sophistication by illiterate people was extremely
>high. All the ancient civilizations from the Nile to China were
>founded thousands of years before any of them had a system of writing.
>
>Just look at Stonehenge, with its careful alignment to the sun and
>moon, its huge stones that required some technology to move, and
>the number of people that had to be organized in order to do the
>moving and constructing. But they were all illiterate.
>
>As another example, consider the Polynesian navigators who crossed
>thousands of miles of open ocean from Tahiti to New Zealand to Hawaii
>to Easter Island. Some of the old timers preserved an oral tradition
>of how they navigated, and they gave a demonstration while observers
>with GPS systems watched. And they were amazingly accurate.
>
>CP> So, as you probably know, studies in pre-literate Mesopotamian
> > mathematics show that these cultures did not have a notion of number.
> > In other words, they did not have a clear notion of 1, 2 or 3.
>
>I very strongly doubt that. A few isolated tribes, such as the
>Pirahã, do not have a system of counting, but that is an extremely
>rare example. See, for example,
>
>http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto
>
>CP> One can track when the idea was introduced. In the early writing,
> > three sheep were signed by three symbols for a sheep. Subsequently
> > there was one symbol for 3 and one for sheep.
>
>The Romans wrote I, II, and III. But they also had words 'unus',
>'duo', and 'tres'. Those Mesopotamian systems were used by
>merchants for long-distance trading before they had cuneiform
>symbols for the words. I'm sure they were just as sharp at
>bargaining in the bazaars as their modern descendants.
>
>CP> We have the remnants of this is the different bases we use for
> > counting different things (e.g. hours, minutes). Japanese still
> > has residual different numerals.
>
>Sure. And we still use Roman numerals. But note that the words
>for the numbers from 1 to 100 are the best preserved terms in all
>the Indo-European languages. Those languages diverged from a
>common source over 7,000 years ago -- thousands of years before
>any of those languages were written.
>
>There is a very good reason why the numbers are so well preserved:
>merchants who spoke different dialects had to understand the
>spoken numbers because they didn't have written numbers.
>
>CP> My view is that the human mind is to some extent plastic and
> > it can learn things like numbers that have a big effect on its
> > functionality. There is an analogy with a computer, where one
> > could argue that its hardware is fundamental (in some sense) but
> > it also makes a big difference what software is loaded.
>
>I certainly agree with that. And I also agree that writing has
>a strong effect.
>
>CP> My only reason for pursuing this is that if these kinds of
> > claims are correct then the introduction of computing should
> > correlate with some conceptual changes - fundamental or otherwise
> > - and maybe some of this ontology stuff has a part to play in it.
>
>Yes, I believe it can have some effect. But as I said in my
>previous note, the strongest effect is the nurturing by parents
>(and other people) during the first 3 to 5 years -- a time when
>most children are still illiterate and those who have learned
>some reading haven't yet been strongly influenced by it. Some
>influences, such as TV, can actually have a negative effect,
>largely because they reduce the amount of direct human contact.
>
>By the way, that article about the Pirahã tribe has some other
>important implications for ontology. The following observation is
>significant for the ways of thinking about individuals and time:
>
>New Yorker> Committed to an existence in which only observable
> > experience is real, the Pirahã do not think, or speak, in
> > abstractions - and thus do not use color terms, quantifiers,
> > numbers, or myths.
> >
> > the Pirahã perceive reality solely according to what exists within
> > the boundaries of their direct experience — which Everett defined
> > as anything that they can see and hear, or that someone living has
> > seen and heard. “When someone walks around a bend in the river,
> > the Pirahã say that the person has not simply gone away but
> > xibipío — ‘gone out of experience,’ ” Everett said. “They use the
> > same phrase when a candle flame flickers. The light ‘goes in and
> > out of experience.’ ”
>
>In short, the Pirahã seem to classify observations about people
>and candle flames in the same way -- somewhat like my simple
>observation language about Kermit the frog.
>
>John
>
>
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> (05)
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