In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates relates how Theuth (or Thoth), the ancient god regarded as the inventor of letters or writing, went to see the king of Egypt, Thamus. Theuth said his invention would "make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories". I love Thamus's response:
"O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."
These words felt like a revelation when I first read them some years ago. They offered me a clue about my own rather erratic memory of past events. (What would Thamus have said about search engines like Google?)
But I have since come to think that we can indeed develop wisdom through writing, provided we use it to complement rather than replace conversation.
Related reading
Phaedrus by Plato. I have a Penguin version, but the above quote comes from a version available for free via Kindle (translation by Benjamin Jowett). If you haven't yet read Plato's dialogues, they are both readable and edifying.
"O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."
These words felt like a revelation when I first read them some years ago. They offered me a clue about my own rather erratic memory of past events. (What would Thamus have said about search engines like Google?)
But I have since come to think that we can indeed develop wisdom through writing, provided we use it to complement rather than replace conversation.
Related reading
Phaedrus by Plato. I have a Penguin version, but the above quote comes from a version available for free via Kindle (translation by Benjamin Jowett). If you haven't yet read Plato's dialogues, they are both readable and edifying.
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