Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 496 pages
- Published by: Penguin Non-Classics September 1, 1999
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0140196013
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0140196016
-
Book Dimensions:
8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
- Weighs: 15.2 ounces
Product Review
"Literacy has promoted the subjugation of women by men throughout all but the very recent history of the West," writes Leonard Shlain. "Misogyny and patriarchy rise and fall with the fortunes of the alphabetic written word."
That's a pretty audacious claim, one that
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess provides extensive historical and cultural correlations to support. Shlain's thesis takes readers from the evolutionary steps that distinguish the human brain from that of the primates to the development of the Internet. The very act of learning written language, he argues, exercises the human brain's left hemisphere--the half that handles linear, abstract thought--and enforces its dominance over the right hemisphere, which thinks holistically and visually. If you accept the idea that linear abstraction is a masculine trait, and that holistic visualization is feminine, the rest of the theory falls into place. The flip side is that as visual orientation returns to prominence within society through film, television, and cyberspace, the status of women increases, soon to return to the equilibrium of the earliest human cultures. Shlain wisely presents this view of history as plausible rather than definite, but whether you agree with his wide-ranging speculations or not, he provides readers eager to "understand it all" with much to consider.
--Ron Hogan
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
The advantages of a literate society are self-evident, but is there a dark side to language? In this extraordinary book, Shlain, a surgeon and the author of Art and Physics (LJ 9/1/91), argues that when cultures acquire literacy, the brain's left hemisphere dominates the right?with enormous consequences. Alphabetic writing, Shlain believes, "subliminally fosters a patriarchal outlook" at the expense of feminine values. Focusing on Western cultures, Shlain surveys world history and religion to illustrate how alphabet literacy fosters extremes of intolerance. Indeed, a subtheme of the book is that overreliance on the left hemisphere "initially leads a society through a period of demonstrable madness." Such aberrations as group suicide, religious persecution, and witch-hunting are the result of a dominant linear, reductionist, and abstract method of perception. While admitting that "correlation does not prove causality," Shlain presents a forceful case based on a wealth of circumstantial evidence. An absorbing, provocative, and, ironically, highly literate work that should receive considerable review attention; recommended for most public and academic libraries.?Laurie Bartolini, MacMurray Coll. Lib., Springfield, IL
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Alphabet Versus the Goddess (Hardcover)
I really thought I was going to like this book. Shalin is (ironically) a very stylistic writer, whose affinity for the written word and the English language give his prose a luminous quality. The premise of the book is fascinating. He provides an interesting overview of Western history, and re-interprets many events and developments in light of his thesis. However. Here is a list of the ways in which this book disappointed me: 1. Near the start of the book, he says he is going to survey the available explanations for the historical developments he traces, and show why his theory is the one that explains the historical facts the best. He doesn't do this. His general approach is to show how some "bad" development followed immediately on the introduction of an alphabetic form of writing, or the printing press, or an increase in literacy. Although he says that he understands the difference between correlation and causality, in the end, he mostly presents correlations in time. 2. Along the same lines, he fails to provide any cogent analysis of what is wrong with competing theories for the rising dominance of men in Western society (he mentions the horticulture-to-agriculture shift theory, but simply dismisses it without explaining why this explanation is wrong or incomplete). 3. He takes odd little detours. I never did figure out what the chapter on Ganymede and Sappho had to do with his thesis. 4. By the end of the book, the chapters became tediously repetitious. Basically, each one consisted of a description of some heinous development in Western culture, the establishment of some time-based correlation between this development and an increase in literacy, followed by the assertion that this was further proof that alphabets cause horrible problems. 5. His entire premise relies on the equation of left brain with masculine (and thus with males), versus the right brain with feminine (and thus with females). He fails to distinguish between the social constructs of masculine/feminine and biological sex. He ignores all the studies which show that the differences within each sex (on this masculine/feminine scale) are far greater than between the sexes. 6. Whenever he encounters a woman who thrives in a "masculine" environment, he adduces this as evidence of that particular woman being co-opted by the over-emphasis on the left brain. He never seems to question the degree to which his thesis is affected by the culture in which he is located -- to what degree can he universalize a theory tied so deeply to a particular notion of masculine and feminine that come so cleary from the time and place in which he lives. Interestingly, Shalin seems to recognize the irony of his entire project (using alphabet-based writing and logical thinking to debunk the same...). Therefore, he occasionally makes a point of saying that alphabets aren't *all* bad. It's just that whenever there's an increase in alphabetic literacy, then there is a corresponding social disruption. In the end I found the book to be based on an interesting idea, but altoghter too dogmatic in expounding the idea. And this dogmatism makes the argument ultimately unpersuasive to me.
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