Reply to a netizen’s question: Why did knowledge change from a “virtue” into a “power”? Is it possible to reveal the root of this shift from the perspective of media?
This is a great question ~ and it really can be revealed from the perspective of media.
Roughly speaking, the media through which knowledge is displayed move from the age of oral speech, to manuscripts, and finally to printed books. In the oral age, the only or main way knowledge could be displayed was through speech; knowledge was displayed in lectures or debates. In such a situation, it is easy to imagine that the display of knowledge was always tied to some specific person, and in the process of communication and listening, knowledge appeared as an excellence manifested in that person. When you saw knowledge being displayed, you must always have seen some wise person displaying his own excellence. Thinking in this way, knowledge would naturally appear as a virtue,
whereas the growing spread of written text changed this situation. Only through the dissemination of writing could people face knowledge itself as something independent, without confronting any specific personality. At this point, the meaning of “knowledge” had already begun to change: knowledge no longer meant the excellent character of a sage, but rather meant a collection of certain sentences, a series of “propositions.” These “propositions” gradually acquired trans-contextual and trans-personal characteristics; when people faced sentences, they no longer depended on a specific context or the display of a personality, but could directly face completely neutral propositions.
Of course, the transition from oral to written culture required gradual adaptation. That is why we see that early written works still retained oral features, either in dialogue form to present a context of argument, or in monologue form to simulate the atmosphere of oratory. An “objective” tone had not yet taken shape. Before the advent of printing, manuscript culture had never been sufficient to complete the neutralization of knowledge; manuscripts were still a medium for restoring context. Before printing, handwritten books had no page numbers, and even less often indexes or tables of contents; most of them did not even have titles. The meaning of a manuscript was to be read; if you did not read it, then merely possessing a manuscript without a table of contents or a title still left you with nothing. If you wanted to “possess knowledge,” you still had to study and read it yourself, had to internalize knowledge within yourself; possessing knowledge was still equivalent to enhancing your own inner qualities.
The emergence of printed books changed this situation. On the one hand, the mass circulation of books meant that the speed of acquiring books could exceed the speed of reading them, and even ordinary literate people might collect a whole shelf of books; at the same time, standardized printing made possible tables of contents, indexes, and entries. In this way, a completely “external” “knowledge” became possible. That is to say, I could buy a set of knowledge manuals or an encyclopedia and place it on my shelf. No need to listen or read, no need to improve myself; I only need to fill my bookshelf, and I can “possess knowledge.” I do not need to turn “knowledge” into my own inner cultivation; merely by means of temporary searching and consulting, I can become a widely learned person. Thus, Pliny-like Natural History became popular first in the age of printed books—encyclopedias provide this kind of “practical knowledge”; you do not need to read through and memorize every entry at all, and only need to buy a volume and put it on the shelf in order to “use” it at any time. The utilitarianization of knowledge came together with its objectification, standardization, and mass production. In ancient culture, knowledge could only be something internal to a person, something displayed through a person; whereas in print culture, knowledge began to become something external to a person, something people could take up and use at any time.
November 15, 2010
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply