In this volume, Harris challenges the received mainstream opinion that reason is an intrinsic property of the human mind, and argues that the whole Western conception of rational thought, from Classical Greece down to modern symbolic logic, is a by-product of the way literacy developed in European cultures.

Roy Harris is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics in the University of Oxford and an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall.

Series Editor's Forward

Preface

Chapter 1 Rationality, the mind and scriptism

Chapter 2 The primitive mind revisited

Chapter 3 Logicality and prelogicality

Chapter 4 Reason and primitive languages

Chapter 5 The great divide

Chapter 6 Aristotle's language myth

Chapter 7 Logic and the tyranny of the alphabet

Chapter 8 Literacy and numeracy

Chapter 9 Interlude: constructing a language-game

Chapter 10 The literate revolution and its consequences

Chapter 11 The fallout from literacy

Chapter 12 Epilogue: rethinking rationality

Bibliography

Index