8 ms·

I think it's better to think of these as different, rather than superior... especially given our times' proliferation of mediums with differing cognitive implic

I think it's better to think of these as different, rather than superior... especially given our times' proliferation of mediums with differing cognitive implications. Is Twitter > books? Is HN > podcasts? Every medium has its tendencies... positive, negative and complicated. We don't actually choose between them. It's useful to keep an eye on losses, not just gains. Oral traditions, for example, naturally evolve and diversify. A fairy tale can literally spread over the whole world, and develop thousands of versions. Each one adapted and localised. Written stories also spread, but remain identical... even more-so after printing. This is, largely, the story of monotheist religions. Whether or not they had sacred scrolls in ancient times, the religions were mostly based in folk traditions, temple authority, prophets, judges... people. As the moved from oral tradition to authoritative canon, the religions became extremely stiff an unyielding.

spacebanana7 3y ago
> This is, largely, the story of monotheist religions. Whether or not they had sacred scrolls in ancient times, the religions were mostly based in folk traditions, temple authority, prophets, judges... people. As the moved from oral tradition to authoritative canon, the religions became extremely stiff an unyielding. The Catholic Church is interesting counterpoint. Their religious teaching still openly draws upon tradition, institutional church authority and individuals like the Pope.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  But the body of canon law would have been impractical to standardize and disseminate without the printed word. See: how many schisms and papal crises there were in medieval times (admittedly, the Catholic Church was also much more a political-nation-religious entity then vs now)
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    I largely agree about the administrative difficulty although I‘d emphasise the written word over the printed word in this context. Using thousands of monks to copy documents by hand instead of using printers was incredibly resource expensive, but affordable for the Medieval Church.
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      It'd be fascinating to see a conversion to person-hours to copy one book in medieval times. And I mean fully-loaded, so how much time needed to be spent {farming/military/political administration} to give a monk time to learn to read and write, and then allow them time to copy the book itself.
      - brookst 3y ago
        It's an interesting thought. Challenging because of the fixed costs though. The cost to produce one book would be almost identical to the cost to produce 1000 books; it is the infrastructure more than the marginal resource cost per book.
        ethbr0 3y ago
        Could see it going either way. Agricultural efficiency (in terms of person_fed : person_farming) in Europe was pretty low. So the dedicated headcount (monks) might dominate the net cost, which would make it scale more linearly with number of books.
        spacebanana7 3y ago
        The market price 1 medieval book was roughly the same price for 5 pigs according to this analysis [1] Price of 7 books = £5 = 100s -> 14s per book / Price of 1 Pig in London = 3s 14 / 5 => roughly 5 pigs per book Note £1 = 20s [1] http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
        ghaff 3y ago
        Paper was also a huge cost--maybe more than the monks' labor depending upon how you want to value their real cost.
        ethbr0 3y ago
        Today I learned! Thanks!
  - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
    I'm not following. The parent, I believe, was not talking about canon law specifically (which is changing and to be distinguished from doctrine which only undergoes development, but never revision). I also don't understand what papal crises have to do with anything in this context. And what is meant by "political-nation-religious entity"? The Church is a religious institution whose bishops (including the pope) have also exercised distinct secular political authority in addition to religious authority. It was never "national" in character, only supranational (hence, "catholic").
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      Parent was observing that the Catholic Church was an exception to GP's point that the written word stiffened and froze monotheistic religious practice, as it blended oral and written transmission. I was observing that the modern Catholic Church (post-printed word) has offified in exactly that way, with the printed word allow direct dissemination of the "agreed" canon (i.e. pope / hierarchy) to the entire church, thereby unifying them into a single practice. In counterpoint I offered the number of papal crises and schisms that abounded during the medieval and pre-medieval period (i.e. before printed material became cheap and available). Ergo, the use of the printed word allowed the Catholic Church to unify and standardize in a way it had not before -- GP's point. It's indicative that the majority of monotheistic religious splits within Catholicism happened before the printing press, when intervening human parties could reinterprete the canon as it flowed through them. For political-national-religious entity, the Catholic Church / Holy Roman Empire partnership allowed the Church to become a nation in all but land, by the power its blessing conveyed upon a chosen leader. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_law#Catholic_Church https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_law#Catholic_Church
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > But the body of canon law would have been impractical to standardize and disseminate without the printed word. Would it? The Bible, which is much larger, was practical to standardize and disseminate without the printed word, and its not like there was a proximate relationship between the availability of printing (presumably with movable type, in the 15th century) and the codification of canon law in the 20th. The idea that this was waiting on printing is…hard to defend. > See: how many schisms and papal crises there were in medieval times The really durable schisms after the 11th Century emerged after or just before (and became crystallized because of) printing, though.
- naravara 3y ago
  > The Catholic Church is interesting counterpoint. Their religious teaching still openly draws upon tradition, institutional church authority and individuals like the Pope. IIRC this was their main contention against the Protestant reformation. They believed that just pointing at scripture without some practice of custom and tradition to ensure you're properly interpreting it in a sensible way would lead people to folly and extremism/fundamentalism. Granted it's sort of a pick your poison deal. You either get the fundamentalism of hardline scripturalists or you get the corruption that comes with a hierarchical institution that requires people to offloading some of their critical thinking. Or you can blend them together and get the worst of both worlds by creating something that looks like the more noxious elements of the American Evangelical movement.
  - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
    > You either get the fundamentalism of hardline scripturalists or you get the corruption that comes with a hierarchical institution that requires people to offloading some of their critical thinking. I don't think it is fair to say the latter leads to "corruption" or "offloading some of their critical thinking". This phobia is largely a feature of radical individualism and the lack of humility that the notion of radical self-sufficiency (intellectual or otherwise) entails. The paradox of individualism is that it actually weakens the ability to be an individual. Human beings are social animals whose lives are relatively short and therefore whose experiences are limited. And because individualism atomizes the individual, the effect is that this social animal becomes subject to greater levels of fear and stress about his isolation, and when isolated from the social and from tradition, he becomes easy prey for weird ideologies. In this specific case, scriptural canon was compiled by the Catholic Church. You obviously cannot appeal to the canon to codify the canon, so some extra-biblical body of knowledge and understanding must exist that would allow such a canonical body of scripture to be identified. This body of knowledge and understanding is called Tradition, and it is guarded, refined, and transmitted by an unbroken chain of authority found in the apostolic succession. (Tradition is the basis for the transmission and development of all knowledge in human history; there is likewise a scientific tradition without which there could be no science.) The notion that an individual could do better alone without relying or drawing on tradition is belied by the presence of over 40,000 Protestant sects in the US alone, each claiming to be able to interpret scripture. And how do they interpret scripture? However they want! In most cases, it means interpreting it according to whatever happens to be fashionable at the time. So much for "critical thinking". This is very visible in the mainline Protestant churches that, not so incidentally, are shrinking very rapidly. Where this Protestant mindset has leeched into Catholic circles, it has produced the same deadly effect.
nashashmi 3y ago
> This is, largely, the story of monotheist religion. This is largely the story of religions, especially old pagan religions. Myths and folklore came about. The moment when religions went scriptural, the message became firm and technical. And gave rise to law as a study.
- jiggywiggy 3y ago
  Not really, that only really happened in the reformation for Christianity. The romans were already pretty good at law.
  - nashashmi 3y ago
    I had judaism in mind.
    - dalbasal 3y ago
      I don't get it. You mean that old Judaism was pagan before scripture?
      - nashashmi 3y ago
        Judaism preceded the pagan Roman kingdom. Judaism is a scriptural religion. Judaism gave rise to law as a study. Non scriptural religions had evolving myths and folklore like Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. Those religions did not contribute to law like the prior comment mentions.
        jiggywiggy 3y ago
        Not really get your point. The Roman law system was pretty advanced without the influence of Judaism. India developed complicated law system before Judaism. Seems like it's part of human societies that grow in complexity, not something special to Judaism. Protestantism definitely had a big impact on the development of western empirism and probably modern law. In general our current Western individualistic skeptic mindset is the heritage of the reformation.

spacebanana7 3y ago

> This is, largely, the story of monotheist religions. Whether or not they had sacred scrolls in ancient times, the religions were mostly based in folk traditions, temple authority, prophets, judges... people. As the moved from oral tradition to authoritative canon, the religions became extremely stiff an unyielding. The Catholic Church is interesting counterpoint. Their religious teaching still openly draws upon tradition, institutional church authority and individuals like the Pope.

ethbr0 3y ago
But the body of canon law would have been impractical to standardize and disseminate without the printed word. See: how many schisms and papal crises there were in medieval times (admittedly, the Catholic Church was also much more a political-nation-religious entity then vs now)
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  I largely agree about the administrative difficulty although I‘d emphasise the written word over the printed word in this context. Using thousands of monks to copy documents by hand instead of using printers was incredibly resource expensive, but affordable for the Medieval Church.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    It'd be fascinating to see a conversion to person-hours to copy one book in medieval times. And I mean fully-loaded, so how much time needed to be spent {farming/military/political administration} to give a monk time to learn to read and write, and then allow them time to copy the book itself.
    - brookst 3y ago
      It's an interesting thought. Challenging because of the fixed costs though. The cost to produce one book would be almost identical to the cost to produce 1000 books; it is the infrastructure more than the marginal resource cost per book.
      - ethbr0 3y ago
        Could see it going either way. Agricultural efficiency (in terms of person_fed : person_farming) in Europe was pretty low. So the dedicated headcount (monks) might dominate the net cost, which would make it scale more linearly with number of books.
        spacebanana7 3y ago
        The market price 1 medieval book was roughly the same price for 5 pigs according to this analysis [1] Price of 7 books = £5 = 100s -> 14s per book / Price of 1 Pig in London = 3s 14 / 5 => roughly 5 pigs per book Note £1 = 20s [1] http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
        ghaff 3y ago
        Paper was also a huge cost--maybe more than the monks' labor depending upon how you want to value their real cost.
        ethbr0 3y ago
        Today I learned! Thanks!
- lo_zamoyski 3y ago
  I'm not following. The parent, I believe, was not talking about canon law specifically (which is changing and to be distinguished from doctrine which only undergoes development, but never revision). I also don't understand what papal crises have to do with anything in this context. And what is meant by "political-nation-religious entity"? The Church is a religious institution whose bishops (including the pope) have also exercised distinct secular political authority in addition to religious authority. It was never "national" in character, only supranational (hence, "catholic").
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    Parent was observing that the Catholic Church was an exception to GP's point that the written word stiffened and froze monotheistic religious practice, as it blended oral and written transmission. I was observing that the modern Catholic Church (post-printed word) has offified in exactly that way, with the printed word allow direct dissemination of the "agreed" canon (i.e. pope / hierarchy) to the entire church, thereby unifying them into a single practice. In counterpoint I offered the number of papal crises and schisms that abounded during the medieval and pre-medieval period (i.e. before printed material became cheap and available). Ergo, the use of the printed word allowed the Catholic Church to unify and standardize in a way it had not before -- GP's point. It's indicative that the majority of monotheistic religious splits within Catholicism happened before the printing press, when intervening human parties could reinterprete the canon as it flowed through them. For political-national-religious entity, the Catholic Church / Holy Roman Empire partnership allowed the Church to become a nation in all but land, by the power its blessing conveyed upon a chosen leader. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_law#Catholic_Church https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_law#Catholic_Church
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > But the body of canon law would have been impractical to standardize and disseminate without the printed word. Would it? The Bible, which is much larger, was practical to standardize and disseminate without the printed word, and its not like there was a proximate relationship between the availability of printing (presumably with movable type, in the 15th century) and the codification of canon law in the 20th. The idea that this was waiting on printing is…hard to defend. > See: how many schisms and papal crises there were in medieval times The really durable schisms after the 11th Century emerged after or just before (and became crystallized because of) printing, though.
naravara 3y ago
> The Catholic Church is interesting counterpoint. Their religious teaching still openly draws upon tradition, institutional church authority and individuals like the Pope. IIRC this was their main contention against the Protestant reformation. They believed that just pointing at scripture without some practice of custom and tradition to ensure you're properly interpreting it in a sensible way would lead people to folly and extremism/fundamentalism. Granted it's sort of a pick your poison deal. You either get the fundamentalism of hardline scripturalists or you get the corruption that comes with a hierarchical institution that requires people to offloading some of their critical thinking. Or you can blend them together and get the worst of both worlds by creating something that looks like the more noxious elements of the American Evangelical movement.
- lo_zamoyski 3y ago
  > You either get the fundamentalism of hardline scripturalists or you get the corruption that comes with a hierarchical institution that requires people to offloading some of their critical thinking. I don't think it is fair to say the latter leads to "corruption" or "offloading some of their critical thinking". This phobia is largely a feature of radical individualism and the lack of humility that the notion of radical self-sufficiency (intellectual or otherwise) entails. The paradox of individualism is that it actually weakens the ability to be an individual. Human beings are social animals whose lives are relatively short and therefore whose experiences are limited. And because individualism atomizes the individual, the effect is that this social animal becomes subject to greater levels of fear and stress about his isolation, and when isolated from the social and from tradition, he becomes easy prey for weird ideologies. In this specific case, scriptural canon was compiled by the Catholic Church. You obviously cannot appeal to the canon to codify the canon, so some extra-biblical body of knowledge and understanding must exist that would allow such a canonical body of scripture to be identified. This body of knowledge and understanding is called Tradition, and it is guarded, refined, and transmitted by an unbroken chain of authority found in the apostolic succession. (Tradition is the basis for the transmission and development of all knowledge in human history; there is likewise a scientific tradition without which there could be no science.) The notion that an individual could do better alone without relying or drawing on tradition is belied by the presence of over 40,000 Protestant sects in the US alone, each claiming to be able to interpret scripture. And how do they interpret scripture? However they want! In most cases, it means interpreting it according to whatever happens to be fashionable at the time. So much for "critical thinking". This is very visible in the mainline Protestant churches that, not so incidentally, are shrinking very rapidly. Where this Protestant mindset has leeched into Catholic circles, it has produced the same deadly effect.

nashashmi 3y ago

> This is, largely, the story of monotheist religion. This is largely the story of religions, especially old pagan religions. Myths and folklore came about. The moment when religions went scriptural, the message became firm and technical. And gave rise to law as a study.

jiggywiggy 3y ago
Not really, that only really happened in the reformation for Christianity. The romans were already pretty good at law.
- nashashmi 3y ago
  I had judaism in mind.
  - dalbasal 3y ago
    I don't get it. You mean that old Judaism was pagan before scripture?
    - nashashmi 3y ago
      Judaism preceded the pagan Roman kingdom. Judaism is a scriptural religion. Judaism gave rise to law as a study. Non scriptural religions had evolving myths and folklore like Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. Those religions did not contribute to law like the prior comment mentions.
      - jiggywiggy 3y ago
        Not really get your point. The Roman law system was pretty advanced without the influence of Judaism. India developed complicated law system before Judaism. Seems like it's part of human societies that grow in complexity, not something special to Judaism. Protestantism definitely had a big impact on the development of western empirism and probably modern law. In general our current Western individualistic skeptic mindset is the heritage of the reformation.