Book cover of The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present

Book description

One of the most original and penetrating thinkers in Greek studies describes the transformation from oral culture to literacy in classical times and reflects upon its continued meaning for us today.

"Fresh insights into the orality-literacy shift in human consciousness from one who has long been studying this shift in…


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Why read it?

1 author picked The Muse Learns to Write as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book persuasively answers our question why science originated exactly when and where it did: the advent of a unique method of writing, the Greek alphabet, in the context of cosmopolitan democratic societies.

As a result, Greek culture underwent a transition from “orality” to “literacy.” And with that revolution in communications technology came a rewiring of human consciousness. Literacy fostered individual rather than community identity and abstract conceptual rather than concrete narrative thinking. These are the necessary conditions of science as opposed to myth.

Individual thinkers, liberated from the self-proclaimed divinely inspired myth makers, wrote down bold theories about the…

From J.'s list on how and why science began.

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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