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Only a simpleton, said Socrates, would trust his thoughts to writing. He was as good as his word, too. We only know what he said because it was written down by his most famous pupil, Plato. Or, at least, Plato wrote down what he said Socrates said. Many people seem to attribute these particular thoughts to Plato himself. They produce them, with a smug flourish, whenever they want to dismiss others' concerns about a new technology: "Yes, yes, people have always worried about new technologies. Why, Plato himself worried that this new-fangled writing business would cause our memories to atrophy!"
I'm no Classics scholar, and I wouldn't even attempt to disentangle Plato's thoughts from Socrates's. I don't much care, in fact, whose thoughts are coming out of the mouth of Plato's Socrates. What I do care about, with that uneasy mixture of feelings that seep out when the scab of ignorance is picked (embarrassment at common knowledge so recently unknown, swirled with the pleasure of its discovery), is that whoever it was, he pretty much summarised one of the main theses of my recent book. Over 2,300 years ago.
I don't mean that I think only simpletons write. My self-esteem is a little higher than that. But Plato/Socrates hit several nails on the head when he spoke of "the propriety and impropriety of writing".
First, he said that writing cannot help us to remember, but only to remind us of our thoughts. Even then, he warned against putting too much trust in the future intelligibility or unambiguity of what we have written in the past. Certainly, he was convinced that no serious philosopher would attempt to use writing as a means of communicating with others, whose misinterpretations and criticisms cannot be answered by mere words on a page.
So here are three important truths about writing:
1. Writing does not help our brains to remember information. It remembers the information for us, making it available to our brains when we wish to be reminded of it.
2. Writing preserves information in a code that must be deciphered by a human receiver. The interpretation of its content may therefore vary between human receivers, or between the same receiver at different stages of his life.
3. Writing is designed to preserve information rather than to communicate it.
I agree with Plato/Socrates on all three points, and in particular about the differences between writing and speech. I disagree that these differences make writing inferior to speech. Rather, they are what makes writing so valuable - not as a substitute for speech, but as its complement.
The evolution of human culture has been made possible by the evolution of human languages. These include natural languages, like English, Punjabi and Nicaraguan Sign Language, which use the media of human voices and gestures. They also include what I have dubbed artefactual languages, like writing, mathematical symbols and musical notation, which use the media of human artefacts such as paper and ink.
There is now extensive evidence that natural languages evolved primarily for communication: as a means of getting our thoughts across to other people. Natural languages don't do a perfect job of communicating our thoughts, of course. We have to supplement them with all sorts of nonverbal communication, and conversations are peppered with attempts to clarify each other's meaning. But natural language doesn't need to be perfect, so long as it enables humans to communicate.
Artefactual languages, on the other hand, have evolved primarily for representation. They began to evolve at the point when human cultural evolution had expanded beyond the bounds of what our collective brains could manage. Their purpose is precisely to do what Plato/Socrates argues that writing does: not to help the human brain to remember, but to preserve information that the human brain cannot remember. They preserve information in a code that is rather less ambiguous than a natural language, although there is still room for misinterpretation of and disagreement with their content. As a means of communication, writing and other artefactual languages are limited: as Plato/Socrates identifies, "if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence", and "if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves."
At the time of writing, of course, Plato was right. His words, once committed to the medium of the day, were orphaned as soon as they left his hands. But by committing our words to today's electronic media, modern writers can keep a watchful eye on their progress through the world. These new media have opened up for the written word a communicative potential that will never quite rival speech, but far outpaces what Plato/Socrates could have imagined. I can't help feeling that he'd have enjoyed a good blog.
