Reinventing Knowledge: The Final Post

As this semester has gone on, my ideas about knowledge have constantly been changing. Each new unit, blog post, and in class discussion gave me new insights on the topic, and standing at the end of our journey I have come to a conclusion. The ability to express our thoughts through spoken word is the most significant advance in the communication of knowledge in human history, and this oral knowledge is the basis of knowledge in all of its other forms.

Oh, How Far We've Come

Preliminary Blog Post

Let me start off by saying I hope you're all doing well with your exams and not stressing out too much! I know for me as a new freshman at BYU this is definitely a learning experience! In preparation for our "salon" tomorrow, here's a look at some of the great work our class has done over the course of the semester.

The Academic Paper of Awesomeness

The day of reckoning draws dearer, our papers are due tonight! I guess I could've posted about my progress earlier in the week, but as I'm sure we can all attest to, this week has been insane!! Either way I would very much appreciate your input, even at the eleventh hour.

As I'm sure some of you may have already inferred by my comments about it in class, (and I apologize if they've gotten annoying, I just really like this topic) my academic paper is about the political ramifications of applying print to legal texts.

 Here's my intro paragraph:

"The American Revolution, the English Civil War, and the French and Russian Revolutions, all are examples of unprecedented political and social change that occurred after a particularly pivotal event in history – then invention of the printing press. The application of printing to the law led to greater political change than any other singular event in history. This primarily brought about a change in the way people communicated legal knowledge, and thereby how they communicated their ideas on the subject. There are two main results of printed law that directly caused this change: greater public access to uniform legal decisions and court proceedings, and a more public discourse regarding law and its functions leading to the wide dissemination of political ideas. While some may argue that the transition from spoken to written law or some other turning point in history was more groundbreaking in its nature, it’s quite apparent that the transition from oral and written legal traditions to the printed word had an effect with far greater scope than those of other developments."


In case you didn't catch it, my thesis is, "The application of printing to the law led to greater political change than any other singular event in history." I think it's simple, provocative, and gets my point across. 

What are your thoughts? Did this really lead to more political change than ANY other single event in history? The only one I could think of was possibly The American Revolution, which I believe depended a lot on print knowledge in the first place. I think it's a pretty divisive statement, so I'm sure there will be someone who disagrees with me. Thanks in advance for your input!

Stop the Press!

In my last blog post about the origins of printed law I briefly touched on how the advent of print in the Islamic world didn't have too much effect on their laws. This is because they followed Sharia law, which they believe to be a divine code set forth in the Quran and by the example of the prophet Muhammad. Because of the sanctity of law in their society, they were very much opposed to defiling their written traditions with the use of printing. In fact not only the printing of Islamic holy laws was forbidden, but the use of the printing press in general was strongly resisted. As a Middle Eastern studies major I thought this cultural conflict was rather fascinating, so that is what my blog post for this week will be about. This article turned out to be an invaluable source for researching this topic. Follow after the jump and see for yourself!

Printing the Word of Law

For my annotated bibliography post I decided to research how the advent of printing dramatically changed the nature of written law. Although law codes had been written in various forms for thousands of years, the transition to print as the medium for this very important knowledge would usher in a new era of uniformity, and challenge conventional authority, changing the way law is perceived in our society. Keep reading to find out more!

"A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible"

For my "field trip" for our class's print unit I decided to visit, "The Life and Legacy of the King James Bible" exhibit in the Harold B. Lee library here at BYU. It was truly an eye opening experience for me to see just how much time, effort, and even controversy went into creating what I thought was just the de facto Bible throughout history (that shows just how much I know). Keep reading after the break!

Write Like an Egyptian

For the Rosetta Stone project I was in the African cultures group. Fittingly enough for a project emulating the famous stone, we decided to write out our message in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics... and because that's virtually the only written language of ancient Africa that has been translated into English, so we had no choice in the matter. Now, I'm not trying to make this project sound miserable, it really ended up being a lot of fun! It was really cool to see just what challenges played into the translation of ancient texts. Follow after the jump to find out for yourself!

Would You Like Some Cyanide with that?

So I know that Professor Burton wants us to start to transition our posts into our new unit on printing, but I had another idea I really wanted to post about. In class on Tuesday we brushed on the topic of how the development of writing systems granted access to the languages of other cultures by means of translation and an easier structure for teaching that language, which led to a larger dissemination of these languages. This greater understanding of other languages led to a very significant tactical change - the beginning of intelligence gathering and espionage between civilizations. This idea particularly piqued my interest because as a Middle Eastern Studies/Arabic major this is one of the career fields I'm interested in going into, (and I think it would be kinda cool to talk about ancient spies).

To Write or Not to Write

So for this post I'm going to deviate a little bit from the civilization I've been covering, but I think it's appropriate given what we've been talking about in class. (But the writing that I'm talking about was written in reformed Egyptian so its kinda almost related)

Today in class we touched briefly on the characteristics of the civilizations that some of us have been studying that did not have written languages. It's difficult to determine why they didn't develop such a system, but the effects of that lack of development are blatantly obvious. We know very little about those without a writing system, and their societies do no appear as advanced as their writing counterparts, (In most cases, barring the Incas who appear to be an exception to the rule). The Book of Mormon gives a perfect example of the different paths civilizations might take depending on their development  (or use) of a written language. Keep reading after the jump to find out more!

Writing- It's Kind of a Big Deal

So I've basically given up on finding new information on the ancient Kush language... As much as I want to find out more about them, for the time being it appears that they will remain one of the great mysteries of ancient history, at least until some remarkable discovery is made in The Sudan. Sadly the prospects of that seem rather slim because of the more pressing issues they face like slavery, civil war, drought, and genocide, which puts archeological efforts and decoding a dead language pretty much on the back burner.

But as you've probably already guessed, I've found out some interesting stuff about Ancient Egyptian writing! Follow after the jump to find out what!

Now You're Speakin' My Language... Well, Not Really...

As I'm sure I've made abundantly clear in my previous blog posts on the Kush civilization, no has yet been able to decipher their ancient written language. So instead of making a blog post about nothing, I decided I would turn to another ancient African people whose language has been decoded. Luckily one such civilization, arguably one of the most studied in history, lied just to the north of Kush, and their cultures and language systems were closely linked in many respects - I'm talking of course, about the Egyptians. As we're shifting to the study of written knowledge and educational systems, I think the Egypt is a very interesting civilization to scrutinize because we have uncovered so much evidence about their educational system.

Lost in the Sand

The old saying goes, "You don't know what you don't know..." And when it comes to the ancient Kush of the Southern Nile river valley, what you don't know is quite a bit. I've scoured numerous sources, other blogs, newspaper articles, books, you name it, and I've found that the common theme with their take on this once powerful political force, is how much is left to be discovered.  Here's a video that helped me gain a better understanding of this than getting lost in the text of dozens of written articles. (At least for me, an example of an advantage of oral communication over written forms)

Sing it Out!

Sorry about the video quality, it's the best I could find. Start watching at 0:30 :)

This week I really wasn't sure what type of folk/oral knowledge I was going to post about. I was singing a song, like I usually am, and it hit me... Why not do a post on singing?! I think just about everyone sings at some point in their life, and people in history has, so I'd say that makes it a pretty substantial piece of folk knowledge.

 

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Buzz Buzz

Today's post is brought to you by:             shuan

This is the start of Reinventing Knowledge.

The first post of this blog will be regarding one of the most important aspects of it: the name.

The Hive

Why The Hive? Well, it was sort of a vision. (Not in a sacrilegious way)