Καταρχάς να παραθέσουμε και την επιστολή του Σταύρου Παπαμαρινόπουλου που αποτέλεσε τη βάση για τα κείμενα που ακολούθησαν:
http://www.kathimerini.gr/722270/opinion/epikairothta/arxeio-monimes-sthles/grammata-anagnwstwn Ο κος Παπαμαρινόπουλος αναφέρεται αρχικά στον
Eric A. Havelock, για τον οποίον ο εν λόγω τόμος έχει αναφορές σε πολλά από τα έργα του — ένα ευσύνοπτο γενικό σχόλιο είναι πάντως το εξής:
Another vein of research, less heady and better grounded in historical fact, was provided by Havelock (1963), who raised much controversy in classical scholarship with his theories of the impact of writing on cognition. Although his work has been criticized with some vigor (Woodbury, 1983; Larsen, 1986), one of Havelock's greatest achievements is to have suggested that the structure of the Greek alphabet, rather than just any kind of literacy, might be responsible for much of the cognitive change of Greek culture. His argument, as if inspired by a reaction to King Thamous' answer to Theuth, seems to take the opposite stance: namely, that the simplicity of the alphabet's structure enabled the learner to release the mind from the burden of memorizing objects of knowledge, making it available for speculation and critical thought. This laid the foundation for a new, more technical and factual attitude toward knowledge.
Η αναφορά στον βασιλέα Θαμούς είναι από τον
Φαίδρο (275a-b), όπου μέσω αυτού ο Πλάτων ισχυρίζεται ότι η γραφή μπορεί να λειτουργήσει αρνητικά για την πνευματική ανάπτυξη (κατ' αναλογία με την παλιά δοξασία ότι τα κομπιουτεράκια θα καταστρέψουν τους μαθητές, κάνοντάς τους τεμπέληδες και να ξεχάσουν την αριθμητική):
http://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/ancient_greek/tools/corpora/anthology/content.html?t=555
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Στη συνέχεια ο κος Παπαμαρινόπουλος κάνει μνεία για την ενεργοποίηση της περιοχής Broca, αλλά σ' ένα γρήγορο πέρασμα που έκανα στον συγκεκριμένο τόμο εγώ βρήκα άλλα· λ.χ.:
[ΙΑΠΩΝΙΚΑ & ΠΕΡΙΟΧΗ BROCA] Pure alexia affects both Kana and Kanji processing to equal degrees, but alexia involving aphasia was associated with either Kana processing superiority or Kanji processing superiority, depending on the types of lesions involved. In cases of Broca's aphasia, Kanji performance was superior, while in cases of transcortical sensory aphasia, Kana performance was superior.
[ΑΥΤΑΠΑΤΗ ΟΤΙ Η ΠΕΡΙΟΧΗ BROCA ΑΝΑΠΤΥΧΘΗΚΕ ΑΠ' ΤΗΝ ΑΛΛΑΓΗ ΤΡΟΠΟΥ ΓΡΑΦΗΣ / ΕΝΕΡΓΟΠΟΙΗΘΗΚΕ ΑΠ' ΤΑ ΦΩΝΗΕΝΤΑ] In the majority of human brains, there are thus parts of Broca's and Wernicke's areas which are anatomically more important than their homologues in the right hemisphere (anatomical asymmetry). One is thus naturally tempted to establish a link between these two sets of facts, but such a link is not intrinsically necessary and one must still prove that these individuals show both an anatomical and a functional asymmetry. This has in fact been demonstrated, if one has no methodological objections, by the researchers at the Montreal Neurogical Institute: the subjects who represent the rule in the human species, that is to say those who speak with the left hemisphere, as shown by the fact that they suffer from transitory aphasia following the injection of a barbituric substance into the arteries feeding the left hemisphere of their brains, are also those whose show a greater development of the Wernicke's area in the left hemisphere than in the right, as shown by special radiographical slides (Ratcliff, Dila, Taylor & Milner, 1980). If one then knows that this anatomical asymmetry can be observed in the fetal brain as early as the 28th or 29th week of gestation (Tezner, 1977), that is to say before birth and, a fortiori, well before any realization of any sort of language capacity, one can believe that the dominance of the left brain for language rests, in the human species, on an innate biological predisposition. The question is settled.
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Η βασική εργασία στον τόμο η οποία αναφέρεται στον ρόλο που διαδραμάτισε η γραφή των φωνηέντων είναι στο 19ο κεφάλαιο (
The Role of Vowels in Alphabetic Writing, Baudouin Jurdant). Με την ευκαιρία, να αντιγράψω και κάτι περί ημισφαιρίων του εγκεφάλου από το συγκεκριμένο κεφάλαιο: «
Observations have brought two facts to light: the left hemisphere is not only linguistic, and the right hemisphere is more linguistic than had previously been believed!»
Προσέξτε τώρα τι γράφει ο ίδιος ερευνητής για την ιαπωνική γλώσσα, η οποία έχει όχι ένα αλλά τρία αλφάβητα: «
Tsunoda (1985) has worked for more than 20 years on the differences in hemispheric specialization between the Japanese and the Western brain, and claims to have discovered a clear auditory superiority of the right ear/left hemisphere in Japanese subjects. This superiority is not limited to the processing of linguistic sounds, including vowels, but extends to animal cries, insect buzzes, traditional Japanese music, emotional sounds, etc. Only mechanical noises (e.g., helicopters), Western instrumental music, and a variety of background noises are processed by the right brain of Japanese subjects. In 1975, Shimizu published identical results showing the greater sensitivity of the right ear of Japanese subjects to vowel sounds. The Western brain on the other hand, according to Tsunoda and other authors, shows a specialization of the left hemisphere for syllables and consonants, but most other sounds (mechanical noises, Western instrumental or Japanese traditional music, sounds of nature, sounds associated with emotions, and sustained vowels) are processed on the right. This auditory characteristic of the Western brain has been confirmed by clinical observations made by AssaI and Aubert (1979), who discovered a right hemisphere auditory superiority for animal cries. Since Tsunoda's tests reveal the same hemispheric specializations for subjects who have been blind from birth, the author has hastened to exclude the influence of writing as an explanation for this neurocultural contrast. His interpretation is based on certain particularities of the Japanese language, especially the important role that the vocalic dimension plays in it. [...] What can we conclude from these various works on the role of linguistic sounds in hemispheric specialization? Some authors have claimed that literacy leads to an accentuation of cortical asymmetry; others, like Tsavaras, claim that it is the opposite that occurs and that reading and writing open new cognitive possibilities for illiterate subjects by mobilizing their "right brain"! If this were the case, then why would the Japanese, who have not just one but three writing systems, show a strong cerebral asymmetry analogous to the one that Tsavaras claims to have discovered in illiterates?»
Το τελικό του συμπέρασμα: «A
ccording to the suggestions made by Gazzaniga et al. (1977), one finds oneself in the presence of the very mechanisms that presided over the emergence of consciousness as produced by a quasi-permanent commentary by the left hemisphere on our sensorimotor reactions to vocalic graphic data. This hypothesis would explain why the Greek version of the alphabet led to completely new writing practices, which deeply modified the cultural space of the Mediterranean world.
As Finley (1983) has observed, this writing system, which was initially used by the Greek bards and rhapsodists for the transcription of stories in the oral tradition, very quickly gave birth to new texts that were not written in the Homeric or Hesiodic epic style. These were the texts of authors, designed for the poetic evocation of intimate emotions and personal feelings. Instead of being used for the recording of important events or solemn declarations, writing was used for the individualized expressions of the internal psychic life of the poet. Such texts spotlighted a new dimension of consciousness: a private dimension.»
Τέλος, για τον επαναπρογραμματισμό του εγκεφάλου τα ανέφερε ήδη η SBE για το 20ό κεφάλαιο, απ' όπου εγώ προσθέτω μόνο απ' τα συμπεράσματα: «
Metaphorically, one could say that this was the beginning of artificial intelligence. There is not much that is "natural" about Western intelligence. Indeed, I am considering the possibility that the adoption of the alphabet by Western cultures has had a reordering effect on the brain and the whole nervous system of literate people, including their sensory modes (de Kerckhove, 1981, 1982), an effect comparable to changing the program of a computer. With full phonetization, writing seems to have acquired a precision, a flexibility, and a paradoxical meaninglessness that is comparable to computer programming codes. I do not mean by this that alphabetic writing has turned people into computerized automatons, but that it made language available for a kind of information processing which is, technically, and especially in scientific investigations, very close to a mathematical model.
In evolutionary terms, with the advent of the Greek alphabet, the development of writing moved further and further away from the context of immediate experience, and took up its place as the abstract code of reality. It became possible to read meaningfully strings of visual speechforms that contained radically new ideas, concepts, or notions, some of which could even be completely foreign to the reader as he or she did not have to depend upon previous knowledge to decipher them. Hence, the origin of the first truly comprehensive scientific investigations was dependent upon a system of archival recording that was not bound to the traditional usages of oral speech, but only to the specialization of reliable written documents based on progressively more reliable empirical observations. This conclusion has intuitively and tentatively been reached by many scientists and cultural observers, and its consequences for the reinterpretation of cultural differences and historical developments may require a paradigmatic shift in scientific and scholarly investigations.»
