Difference between revisions of "Palimpsest"

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===Bad===
 
===Bad===
 
* At one point, the author pays lip service to [[Stephen Jay Gould]]'s awful [[non-overlapping magisteria]] argument.
 
* At one point, the author pays lip service to [[Stephen Jay Gould]]'s awful [[non-overlapping magisteria]] argument.
 +
* The author preaches some of the history rather than teaches it. For example, he quotes from the [[Book of Job]], not in Hebrew, but in Latin, then says the He rew authors certainly understood the passage in the same way as the Latin translation. He offers no evidence for this, just mere assertion.
  
 
===Ugly===
 
===Ugly===

Revision as of 11:12, 13 September 2020

Palimpsest: A History of the Written Word is a non-fiction book about the history of writing written by Matthew Battles and published on 2015-07-27.

Personal

Status

Review

Good

  • At one point the author suggests that the many just-so stories about the origin of writing are probably due to the fact that writing wasn't invented in full form, but evolved over thousands of years with no real origin, so people made one up. That sounds like a pretty accurate description.

Bad

  • At one point, the author pays lip service to Stephen Jay Gould's awful non-overlapping magisteria argument.
  • The author preaches some of the history rather than teaches it. For example, he quotes from the Book of Job, not in Hebrew, but in Latin, then says the He rew authors certainly understood the passage in the same way as the Latin translation. He offers no evidence for this, just mere assertion.

Ugly

  • The book is light on science and history and heavy on romantic flowery waxing of mythology and poetry. It's not so much about the history of writing, but rather, the mythology of writing. I guess that's fine if that's what you're looking for, but I was disappointed because the title suggests a much more scholarly work.

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