Why did Plato write??

Medieval portrayal of Socrates and his greatest pupil, Plato.

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them."

A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p.39

    If you think about philosophy, it's about as dependent on writing as math. Formulating thoughts in the air is nearly impossible for me, and certainly impossible  for anyone else to understand (just think of how much harder it is to spell a word out loud than to write it down-- in a spelling bee I'd be thinking,"I could do this if i had a pen and paper..")

      However, we do know that Socrates didn't write a line of his thoughts, and he's considered the father of Greek philosophy and modern thought! We only know the things he said indirectly, kind of like how we have the teachings of Jesus Christ though we don't have his direct account--in this way the two have often been compared, because it has only been through the records of others that we know anything of them.  

     The written word, to Socrates, was as a child without a father: unable to protect itself. He said that writing is deceptive like a painting-- paintings portray things that are falsely living and can't answer questions, just as books can indicate things but cannot give further explanation or answers to questions. Once a man writes down his thoughts, he loses control of them, soon his words become a toy for everyone to play with--written words are vulnerable to having their true meaning lost to them. Socrates had no school, no books, he preferred to a "living" philosophy made of conversation with people he met on the streets. Philosophy was to be made in common with others, the research was made orally. So, even though in our minds philosophy is often represented by great literary works (Kant, Hegel, Descartes...), philosophy is not so clearly related to literacy.

     If Socrates was so opposed to writing, as we talked about in class, and he indoctrinated that belief into his greatest pupil, Plato, why, then, did Plato write?? 

An Apple a Day Keeps The Doctor Away

I think if I were to ask people or if you were to ask yourselves what are some of the things that you take for granted i'm we would get a plethora of answers. Anything from our homes, families, freedoms, knowledge of the gospel, schooling, to material things like cell phones, computers, etc. 

Why do we take things for granted? I think it often depends what type of object or thing it is, but it usually is something that we've had for a fair amount of time and has become or is extremely useful.

I have realized as I've entered my field of study here at school that one thing that I take for granted is Medicine. 

For that reason I wanted to explore how written knowledge has aided the progression of medicine and what difference it has made.

The Roman Calendar

Epigraphy: the study of inscriptions, found on buildings, altars, bricks, plaques or tablets of various materials, tiles, mosaics, pottery--anything you can think of that people write on

From the first three centuries of the Roman Republic (500-200 B.C.), relatively few inscriptions survive. There is no way of knowing what type of role and how big writing/inscribing things played in Romans' lives at that time, but we can assume that what we do have only represents a small fraction of what they used. Ancient literature we have today refers to other works of literature and inscriptions that no longer exist, so it's easy to imagine that we have a limited portion of what ancient people had.

"An impressive variety of texts," however, has survived from the centuries that followed (200-100 B.C.)1 . We have many more inscriptions from this particular time period in the Roman Republic, including calendars!

My Interview with a Library Scientist

     This week I interviewed Donna Cardon at the Provo City Library. Donna got her Master's degree in Library Sciences in 2005. And no, she and I are not related.

The Hittite Cuneiform

Anyone remember when the internet came into existence? Or perhaps your first encounter with the world wide web? Well that was quite a while ago and I think many of us feel as though it's just always been apart of our lives, but talk to those 15 years older and it's a different story. Just try and imagine how unique/unfathomable it was when it first started to become common....I think that's how many civilizations felt when written formats surfaced or became common.

Well i've been able to spend time searching out the roots of the Hittite language and specifically how it transitioned into a written form. This has been quite complex and confusing, but I think I finally have a fair idea of how things went! It really is quite interesting, especially when you try to put yourself in a Hittites shoes and imagine the awe that they would have been in as written text came into play.

Cyrillic

Probably all of you have seen the Cyrillic alphabet around somewhere, if only in badly-made eighties movies with Russian characters or on those signs in public places that are in about 20 languages . This is because, unlike many ancient writing systems, the Cyrillic alphabet survived and is currently used by over fifty languages, including Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Chechen, and Bulgarian. The map shows the countries in the world that use the Cyrillic alphabet. Dark green means Cyrillic is the only official alphabet, and the lighter green means that it is used along with others.

The Roman Writing System

(as a note before you begin, know that when I use "//" to set apart a letter or two letters, I'm using those slashes to indicate that you make the sound within the slashes: Don't say the name of the letter inside them. For example, when you see /ks/ think of  the ksssss sound that x makes , don't say "kay. esss." to yourself.)

 

  No offense to the letter C but.... I've always had a certain amount of disdain for it. Yah I respect it for what it does for my last name, I mean without it I'd be Alyssa Ardon, which is no where near as cute as Alyssa Cardon, but I could just as easily be Alyssa Kardon and I think the kuteness would be fairly komparable.  I guess my problem with the letter C stems from the fakt that we kould easily live without it and have a 25 letter alphabet rather than a 26 letter one-- who wouldn't go for that??? In all seriousness, though: C steals the sound from S and K and really the only new thing it kontributes to our writing system is the "CH" sound in "churro" and quite honestly I think that sounds a lot like a J anyway so I honestly don't know why we don't jhange it.