The World on Paper

What role has writing played in the development of our modern understanding of language, nature, and ourselves? In the historical and developmental account, David Olson offers a new perspective on this process. Reversing the traditional assumption about the relation between speech and writing, he argues that writing provides an important model of the way we think about speech; that our consciousness of language is structured by our writing system.

In addition, he argues that writing provides our dominant models for thinking about nature and the mind, and shows how our understanding of the world and our understanding of ourselves are by-products of our ways of creating and interpreting written texts. This challenging study draw in recent advances in history, anthropology, linguistics, and psychology.