Enthusiasm over technology is not an argument; and semiotics,
obfuscated by semiologues, is not a panacea. George Steiner
pointed out that scientists, who "have been tempted to assert
that their own methods and vision are now at the center of
civilization, that the ancient primacy of poetic statement and
metaphysical image is over." This is not an issue of criteria
based on empirical verification, or the recent tradition of
collaborative achievement, correctly contrasted to the apparent
idiosyncrasy and egotism of literacy. The pragmatic framework
reflects the challenge of efficiency in our world of increased
population, limited resources, and the domination of nature. This
framework is critical to the human effort to assess its own
possibilities and articulate its goals. Let us accept Steiner's
idea-although the predicament is clearly unacceptable-that
sciences "have added little to our knowledge or governance of
human possibility." Let us further accept that "there is
demonstratably more insight into the matter of man in Homer,
Shakespeare, or Dostoevsky than in the entire neurology of
statistics." This, if it were true, would only mean that such an
insight is less important to the practical experience of human
self-constitution than literacy-based humanities would like us
to believe.
Literary taste or preference aside, it is hard to understand the
epistemological consequence of a statement like "No discovery of
genetics impairs or surpasses what Proust knew of the spell or
burden of lineage." All this says is that in Steiner's practical
experience of self-constitution, a pragmatics other than genetics
proves more consequential. Nobody can argue with this. But from
the particular affinity to Proust, one cannot infer that
consequences for a broader number of people, the majority of
whom will probably never know anything about genetics, are not
connected to its discoveries. We may be touched by the elegant
argument that "each time Othello reminds us of the rust of dew
on the bright blade, we experience more of the sensual,
transient reality in which our lives must pass than it is the
business or ambition of physics to impart." After all the
rhetoric that has reverberated in the castle of literacy, the
physics of the first three minutes or seconds of the universe
proves to be no less metaphysical, and no less touching, than
any example from the arts, literature, or philosophy that
Steiner or anyone else can produce. Science only has different
motivations and is expressed in a different language. It
challenges human cognition and sentiment, and awareness of self
and others, of space and time, and even of literature, which
seems to have stagnated once the potential of literacy was
exhausted. The very possibility of writing as significantly as
the writers of the past did diminishes, as the practical
experience of literate writing is less and less appropriate to
the new experiences of self-constitution in the civilization of
illiteracy.
The argument can go on and on, until and unless we settle on a
rather simple premise: The degree of significance of anything
connected to human identity-art, work, science, politics, sex,
family-is established in the act of human self-constitution and
cannot be dictated from outside it, not even by our humanistic
tradition. The air, clean or polluted, is significant insofar as
it contributes to the maintenance of life. Homer, Proust, van
Gogh, Beethoven, and the anonymous artist of an African tribe are
significant insofar as human self-constitution integrates each or
every one of them, in the act of individual identification.
Projecting their biological constitution into the world- we all
breathe, see, hear, exercise physical power, and perceive the
world-humans ascertain their natural reality. The experience of
making oneself can be as simple as securing food, water, and
shelter, or as complex as composing or enjoying a symphony,
painting, writing, or meditating about one's condition. If in
this practical experience one has to integrate a stick or a
stone, or a noise, or rhythm in order to obtain nourishment, or
to project the individual in a sculpture or musical piece, the
significance of the stick or stone or the noise is determined in
the pragmatic context of the self-constitutive moment.
Many contexts confirm the significance of literacy-based
practical experiences. History, even in its computational form
or in genetic shape, is an example. Literacy made quite a number
of practical experiences possible: education, mass media,
political activism, industrial manufacture. This does not imply
that these domains are forever wed to literacy. A few contexts,
such as crafts, predated literacy. Information processing,
visualization, non-algorithmic computation, genetics, and
simulation emerged from the pragmatics that ascertained
literacy. But they are also relatively independent of it.
Steiner was correct in stating that "we must countenance the
possibility that the study and transmission of literature may be
of only marginal significance, a passionate luxury like the
preservation of the antique." His assertion needs to be extended
from literature to literacy.
The realization that we must go beyond literacy does not come
easy and does not follow the logic of the current modus
operandi of the scholars and educators who have a stake in
literacy and tradition. Their logic is itself so deeply rooted in
the experience of written language that it is only natural to
extend it to the inference that without literacy the human being
loses a fundamental dimension. The sophistry is easy to catch,
however. The conclusion implies that the practical experience of
language is identical to literacy. As we know, this is not the
case. Orality, of more consequence in our day than the majority
are aware of, and in more languages that do not have a writing
system, supports human existence in a universe of extreme
expressive richness and variety.
Many arguments, starting with those against writing enunciated in
ancient times and furthered in various criticisms of literacy,
point to the many dimensions of language that were lost once it
started to be tamed and its regulated use enforced upon people.
Again, Steiner convincingly articulates a pluralistic view:
"...we should not assume that a verbal matrix is the only one in
which articulations and conduct of the mind are conceivable.
There are modes of intellectual and sensuous reality founded not
on language, but on other communicative energies, such as the
icon or the musical note." He correctly describes how
mathematics, especially under the influence of Leibniz and
Newton, became a dynamic language: "I have watched topologists,
knowing no syllable of each other's language, working
effectively together at a blackboard in the silent speech common
to their craft."