Julian Jaynes Has Blown My Mind Apart, and Put It All Back Together Again

 

The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind – Julian Jaynes (1976)

 

            For weeks now I have been lost in the pages of this amazing book, one which came to my attention through the bibliographies in several of my previous reads.  One of my favorite literary experiences is when I finally find a seminal book oft quoted or referenced in other books. Such a book is The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.  Author Julian Jaynes has accomplished something outstandingly original and beautiful, providing what is perhaps the best explanation of what we modern humans call “Consciousness,” how it came to be, and how we can track that development.

            Books like this contain so much within their pages.  It is difficult enough to absorb all the information and ideas shared by the author, but discussing it intelligently is another matter entirely. In the over 11 years I have kept this book-review blog I have enjoyed countless books, but very few have coalesced knowledge and wisdom in my brain like The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind has.  It is a masterpiece of insight and research.

            Jaynes divides his work into three “books,” the first one dealing with consciousness itself, what it is, and where it comes from.  This alone is enough material for a great book.  The first great insight that the author shares involves consciousness itself.  We modern humans assume that our brains work in the same manner as all early humans.  We have an internal “I,” designating an interior head-space that exists outside of time and place, and which us modern humans see as our true selves, our internal monologue.  Jaynes central proposition is that this internal “I, this sense of individual consciousness, only arose in humanity after the invention of written language.  Before this time, humans lived in what Jaynes terms a “bicameral mind.”

            To explain what “bicameral mind” refers to, I must go into a bit of neurology and brain structure.  We humans have essentially two separate brains, connected through several channels, (the corpus-callosum is the main one, a bundle of nerves which allow signals to be sent from one brain hemisphere to the other), allowing them to communicate with each other, and to control different aspects of life.  For example, our left hemisphere contains Brocka’s and Wernicke’s areas.  These are two parts of our brain that handle language, with Brocka’s area controlling speech production, allowing our physical mouth and tongue to create meaningful words, and Wernicke’s area handling the other end of speech, that being language comprehension, the mental understanding of the auditory signals received by our ears through spoken language.  In patients who suffer from traumatic brain injuries, strokes, or other such conditions, these areas are sometimes affected, which was the initial impetus for understanding the various sections of our brain. 

            Julian Jaynes posits that, before the advent of the written word, humanity lived in a very different state of mind, the bicameral mind, a consciousness completely unaware of itself, quite the opposite of our current view of consciousness which we feel exists independently of our physical being.  For tens of thousands of years, humans lived in groups led by a “king.”  These kings dictated how the people of a said group would live. The truly great and long-lived kings would be remembered long after their death, their words still echoing in their follower’s heads.  This was not seen as an aberration.  Humans found it perfectly logical that a dead king would continue talking in their heads, as if still alive. The greater the king, the longer the voice would live on in his followers.  As evidence of this, Julian Jaynes discusses how for over ten thousand years, human burials followed the same pattern.  The deceased was not seen as dead, in the way we modern humans see things.  As long as their voice could be heard the king was alive. Because of this, the dead were buried with food, clothing, tools, and all sorts of items that would be useful to the dead person’s continuing “life.”  The high culture of the Egyptians was the pinnacle of this thinking, with Pharaohs buried alongside dozens of sacrificed slaves, wives, animals, etc.  Their isolation in northeast Africa allowed them to maintain their bicameral culture the longest, even after the advent of written language.

            Julian Jaynes posits that the first gods were the dead kings whose voices and commands could still be heard in the people’s heads.  This makes a lot of sense as ancestor worship is the oldest spiritual practice still found among us humans.  Many of the oldest tribal cultures in the world today still observe a lengthy period between when a person’s body stops breathing and when they feel the person is truly dead and ready to be buried/cremated/etc.

            This same bicameral structure is evident in Mesoamerica, where dozens of city states sprung up, flourished, and died over millennia.  These cities are all remarkably similar, containing a large central pyramid of structure housing the king, and in later times, the statue of the local god.  Everything about their lives was dictated by the king/god-king/god, and sometimes the entire city-state would revert back to the jungle after the death of a prominent king.

            Sometime around 2,500 years ago, everything changed.  In Mesopotamia, a writing system was created which altered our entire world and, according to Julian Jaynes, altered our brain’s structure.  This was cuneiform, a method of writing which involves pressing a wooden stylus into wet clay, leaving triangular marks.  Cuneiform is not a language, but a system of writing, and due to this, it was used to write down things in Assyrian, Emetic, Akkadian, and many other languages.  Essentially, once a remote king found that his proclamations could be written down and shared without him needing to personally deliver the information, he then asked his scholars to use cuneiform to write down his proclamations, history, etc.

            In this sense, writing was not what we think of today, words which, when read, create a narrative in our minds.  Much like ancient temples, statuary, and religious artifacts initially did, writing allowed ancient humans to hallucinate words and instructions, keeping the king’s voice alive well past his death.  It was an immensely valuable tool for social control in a time before individual consciousness.  For millennia, humanity passed down its accrued knowledge verbally, with specific people in each tribe/group designated to be the memory carriers, reciting long poems and stories from memory in order to share wisdom and instructions with the next generation.  These bards would not specifically memorize a text, for there was no texts back then.  What they did was remember the salient points of a tale, concerning an old god-king perhaps, and then add in connective language as they reiterated the story in question to a new audience. This way allowed the important points to be learned by the audience, while also allowing the storyteller to shape his stories, adding and subtracting parts as they saw fit to. 

            The written word changed all of this.  Julian Jaynes recounts a very dark era in the history of our developing consciousness.  The period of time, around 500-1000 years after the initial breakdown of the bicameral mind, sometime around 500 BC, was a time of dissolution, fear, and mass-violence.  Before the written language, civilizations lived near each other in relative peace, trading goods and food items, but generally just leaving each other alone.  It was understood that other human groups followed their own gods/kings, and that was good enough for them.  Once writing appeared, the “voices” of the gods/kings no longer reverberated through the people’s minds, causing chaos, and uncertainty.  The idea of an individual “I” was unnecessary before this, for everyone knew what their role was, what they were expected to do in life, and why they did it.  The god-king’s proclamations were followed without question, for he spoke directly from the gods.  The bicameral mind did not seek explanations.

            The written word quieted that internal voice that repeated the gods/kings proclamations.  City states became too large for easy control of the population.  It was at this time that specialists came into being, people whose breeding, training, or social status prepared them to be interlocutors between the god and the people.  These were the beginnings of the sacerdotal sects that we all currently deal with.  Even these methods were not enough to hold the homogeny, and the cities slowly fell into ruin and disuse, as people moved back out into the wilds to make their own lives.  Because of this, there was an extreme rise in violence and warfare.  Without the god’s voices keeping everyone safe, neighbors were seen as violent, evil, “other,” etc., and the need to exterminate them arose.  During this turbulent period, it is estimated that in both the western and eastern worlds, nearly 90% of the human population was exterminated.  This was wholesale genocide on a planetary level.  Humans are our own worst enemies.  It is a sad reminder that, even two thousand years later, our collective humanity can be quickly erased or forgotten when we end up seeing our fellow beings as less than human because they do not believe what we chose, or are told to, believe.

            Julian Jaynes traces the development of consciousness in man through our written works, the oldest ones such as the Rigveda from what is now India or the Iliad, from Greece being written at a time when the bicameral mind was still the norm among us humans.  In these tales, the human protagonists do not share their internal monologues.  They had no internal monologues.  Their actions are not self-decided.  Instead, all the actions in the Iliad, for example, are a result of a command or a suggestion by one of the many gods. Achilles does not choose his actions.  They are dictated by the gods.  The same holds for the characters in the Rigveda.  Bicameral man did not self-assess, self-doubt, or self-analyze.  He lived, breathed, and acted in accordance with the instructions provided him by the gods and spirits, voices we modern humans would describe as our internal monologue.

            In the follow-up to the Iliad, the Odyssey, the protagonists do make their own decisions.  They worry and fret and flip-flop without any certainty, something lacking in the heroes of the Iliad.  They still do not have what we would call a consciousness, however.  It is their own constituent parts that make demands.  Parts of the human, such as phrenes, nous, and psyche, were the ones dictating action.  Odysseus’ nous might demand that he feel jealousy, or his phrenes might state that the gods do not agree.  Ancient man did not think of the brain itself as the seat of our minds.  They saw different parts suited to different things.  Sometimes these would still be associated with specific gods, or spirits, but they were internal to man, not external.  Jaynes explains how today, we judge psychosomatic responses in people that would have been very familiar to the people of the Odyssey.  When we are stressed out, our stomachs feel curdled, bile rises in our throat, and we get the “butterflies.”  To ancient man, just developing the faculty of consciousness, this made sense.  When scared, our heart starts beating faster.  Our blood pressure rises.  Our skin gets cold and tight.  Ancient man saw this as evidence that the heart controlled certain emotions, much as the stomach controlled others, and the bowels controlled even others.  There is a wide gap between the mentality evident in the Odyssey and the mentality seen in the Iliad. 

            The second section of this book details the progression from the Bicameral Mind to our current consciousness, tracing the history of our gods, temples and rituals associated with bicameral thinking. Jaynes describes how Mesopotamia was the first example of modern consciousness, something which must have been very strange for those few humans who innately accepted their internal “I”.  Even the tales in Genesis describe this transition from bicameral thinking to our current sense of self.  The author traces the story from the ancient Greeks down to the nomadic tribes which were prevalent after the mass genocide period.  It was these tribes which practiced a new monotheism, replacing the pantheon of gods with one deity, and which led to our current Abrahamic religions and their strict morality, most of which is based on refuting the old bicameral gods and our ways of communicating with them.

            The last section of this masterwork seeks out the vestiges of the bicameral mind within our modern world.  Humanity went from each one of us hearing the gods’ voices directly, to the gods only speaking to select priests and oracles, and then to the gods becoming totally silent, letting their desires be known solely through omens, or the revelation of “prophets.”  Julian Jaynes backs up every one of his observations with rigorous science, and explores the role that our bicameral mind still plays in the creation of poetry, art, and music.  Many creators describe how a piece of art, or music, or poem came to them unbidden, as if the universe was speaking to them directly.  This is an example of how our two brains communicate, with one side dominant, and the other not so.  Jaynes explores hypnosis and the mechanisms used to incite it, mechanisms and techniques extremely similar to those used by ancient priests when selecting new oracles.  Basically, the less self-aware you are, the easier it is to be hypnotized.  The same goes for deeply devout religious belief. 

            This book blew me away.  I wish I could cover everything that Julian Jaynes discusses in greater detail, but that would take an entire other book!  It is a humbling thing to understand that our species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, lived for over a hundred thousand years in the bicameral state.  It is only in the past 2,500 years that what we call human consciousness came to be.  There is no guarantee that our individual conscious selves will continue into the future.  It may be that a bicameral mind is better suited for long-term survival on Earth, and we will all soon revert back to that state.  There are no rules stating that evolution is a progressive, directional force.  Animals and plants evolve in all directions, both “forwards” and “backwards.”  It is our ego that makes us believe we are the epitome of life, that we are the best living creature created in our Universe.   That very ego may destroy us all.  I look forward to acquiring this book for my own personal library, and jumping back into its amazing pages in the future.  It is books such as this one that made me a book lover, and keep me a book lover.  What a glorious achievement.

(This book can be downloaded from the Internet Archive here: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes )

Dr. Irving Finkel Speaks on Dead Languages and the People Who Study Them

 

The Future of Dead Languages: Dead Languages, Living Stories – A Lecture by Dr. Irving Finkel

 

            In a bit of a detour from the usual path followed by RXTT’s Book Journey, this review will cover a lecture given by the pre-eminent Assyriologist and Curator of the Middle East Department at the British Museum, Dr. Irving Finkel.  On November 3, 2025 Dr. Finkel spoke at the University of Houston’s Dudley Hall, on the subject of dead languages, the difficulty of translation, and the history of this most human endeavor, trying to understand our ancestors through the written texts they left behind.

            Dr. Finkel first came to my attention through the videos posted by the British Museum, specifically a series titled “Ask a Curator.”  As the pre-eminent expert on Assyrian language, cuneiform, and all sorts of topics relating to ancient and dead languages, I found him to be a kindred spirit, someone who seeks to understand big things, and to absorb vast amounts of information in order to do so.  Upon hearing that he would be visiting and lecturing, I geeked out and signed up for the lecture.

            As a child I was fascinated with the story of the Rosetta Stone and its importance in allowing us modern humans to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. This was achieved because on the Rosetta Stone the very same text is repeated in three different writing systems.  The top is ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.  The middle section is written in Demotic script, the “everyday” form of Egyptian writing, and the third section is written in Ancient Greek, the one language we knew how to read and translate.  Because of this, the whole world of the Egyptian written word opened up and it increased our knowledge of the ancient Egyptians exponentially. 

            Dr. Finkel discussed the importance of the Rosetta Stone, and the differences between Egyptian writing systems and the cuneiform writing system used in Mesopotamia.  Whereas in hieroglyphs, individual symbols stood for whole words and ideas, and in modern English the letters stand for individual sounds, in cuneiform the individual marks held many concurrent meanings, making it super difficult to translate.  Cuneiform is a writing system, NOT a language, and it was used to write down many ancient languages, all with the same wedge shapes.  Much like one can use Arabic letters to write words in German, English, French, or Spanish, cuneiform was originally used to write in Sumerian, the language of ancient Mesopotamia, and then other concurrent languages, such as Akkadian, Elamite, Assyrian, and ancient Persian.  Because the same symbols were used for different languages, translation of cuneiform was and remains a most difficult endeavor.

            An important point made by Dr. Finkel stated the importance of wide-ranging knowledge, hard work, and dedication to the art of translation, especially as it applies to long-dead languages.  The intellectual giants who made progress on deciphering cuneiform were intellectually brilliant humans, people who devoted decades of their lives to reading, researching, exploring, and analyzing ancient clay tablets, all with the hope to one day translate them and open up the ancestor’s world to our modern humanity and understanding.  Dr. Finkel stated his belief that, while computer programs can help translate already known languages, they are unable of thinking creatively, which is what is required to translate ancient dead languages.  This is a job for the human brain, not a machine algorithm.

            Dr. Finkel delivered an amazing talk.  It is a testament to him and his powers of oratory.  It is a rare thing to hear one of your intellectual heroes speak on their chosen field of study in the flesh.  I have been very fortunate to hear such idols of mine as Stephen Hawking, Art Spiegelman, Paul Mooney, Buzz Aldrin, and now Dr. Irving Finkel, speak in person.  To see this intellectual vigor in a septuagenarian is an inspiration.  Dr. Finkel stated that he started working at the British Museum in 1979 and is the longest-tenured member of that organization.  He said his secret is not answering emails or phone calls, which, as he joked, means his supervisors think he already left!  Hilarious!  I was unable to personally greet Dr. Finkel but hearing him speak has been one of the intellectual highlights of my life.  Here’s to dead languages and the people who love them!

What are Words for when no one listens anymore?

 

The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages – Frederick Bodmer (1914)

SUN RA Reading List

 

            The great Sun Ra has yet to let me down.  Previously, I ran across an article listing some of Sun Ra’s favorite books, or at least books that he felt were important to read.  The first two I read were amazing.  The first, Alexander Hislop’s TheTwo Babylons, explored the ways in which organized Christianity (the Catholic church specifically) merely redressed Babylonian “pagan” religion into a new outfit, presenting it as new and couching it in the ideas of Jesus of Nazareth. The second book I read from Sun Ra’s list was P.D. Ouspensky’s A New Model of the Universe: Principles ofthe Psychological Method in its Application to Problems of Science, Religion,and Art.  This book was even denser than the previous, as Mr. Ouspensky explored the ways in which humanity has sought to understand, and disseminate, what many see as eternal wisdoms, using modern science and psychology to dissect the paths to wisdom offered by churches, esoteric mystics, and occult organizations throughout human history.

            In many ways, this current book, The Loom of Language, is equally as broad, for it seeks to not only describe the evolution of written and spoken Language, but it also hopes to educate the reader in how best to learn foreign languages. As a bi-lingual person (Spanish / English) I know the amazing benefits of speaking/reading/writing more than one language.  Mr. Bodmer, writing in the early 1900’s, also saw this benefit.  In this attempt to create a new method of language instruction, he saw international communication as the driving force for learning new languages. Ahead of the horrors of totalitarian Europe in the 30’s and 40’s Bodmer saw the correlation between a populace that does not expose itself to its neighbors or their language, and the slide into jingoism and deluded nationalism. This is what is happening in the USA currently, where anyone speaking Spanish, a language spoken in 90% of all New World countries, is assumed by ignorant people to be a criminal, “illegal alien” or poor and uneducated.  This leads to the worst kinds of overt racism.  It is even worse for the many Americans who hail from nations other than Latin America.

            Too many people see Language as a static creation, when in fact it is an ever-evolving set of ideas.  Mr. Bodmer discusses the difference between a written language and a spoken language and how this affects how language is passed on to succeeding generations.  For example, in the Roman Empire there existed at the least two separate Latin languages.  One was the formal, codified, rigid Latin of the ruling class, religion, and the highly educated.  The other was an informal, spoken Latin, used by the masses in their day-to-day lives.  It was this informal spoken Latin that slowly morphed through time and distance into what are called the Romance Languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian).  Meanwhile, the Church, education, science, utilized the rigid formal Latin and politics for centuries after Rome fell.  In many parts of Europe, until the late 1800’s, university education was conducted in Latin.  Today many Roman Catholic Church services still hold Mass in Latin. (Funny aside, no one really knows how to pronounce anything in Latin, as it has been a dead language for centuries.  Even so, priests continue to vocalize what they feel is Latin-sounding pronunciations of their Mass.)

            Mr. Bodmer not only does an amazing job of describing how languages morph and evolve, he constantly provides examples and word lists to detail how linguists came to know what they know, how they connected languages that seem disparate but come from common sources, and how they are able to explore seemingly dead languages by comparison to living ones.  This is just the beginning, for the bulk of the book deals with learning the actual languages, or at least learning the tools by which a reader can begin to explore new languages.  Long chapters provide detail on the grammar of Anglo-American English.  English as we know it today is very far removed from its Teutonic roots, having absorbed words and phrases from so many languages.  French, Spanish, and Greek are among the many languages that have found their place in the English vocabulary. 

Bodmer details the many prefixes and suffixes found in English describing which ones are from what root tongue.  This mish-mash of language makes English a bit complex, as words that sound the same in the ear may mean completely different things, based on the source language.  For example, the Latin phrase “ante” means “before,” as in the words anteroom, antecedent, etc.  The Greek phrase “anti,” pronounced exactly as the Latin “ante,” means “against/not,” as in the words antipodes, antifascist, antagonist, etc.  While this makes English a tough language for a non-speaker to master, it allows an English speaker to understand foreign words much more quickly.  This may be why English has spread throughout the world as the unofficial language of international business.

The evolution of Teutonic and Romance languages is thoroughly explored.  At all turns Mr. Bodmer reiterates the need for an international language, capable of fostering communications between the people of the world.  This was his lofty goal.  It is scary to think that, just a few years later the horrors of totalitarianism, nationalism, and bigotry would turn much of the world into a war zone.  It would probably make Mr. Bodmer sick to know that, decades after surviving the cataclysm, our “leaders” continue to push our nations into authoritarian, jingoistic, nationalistic fervors.  “Us” versus “Them” is a pointless exercise, meant only to divide the people while those in power maintain their death grip on us.  Just like all human beings, all human languages, when traced back, come from the same place.  We are all together in this world, and languages add to that beauty.  It is upon each of us to try to learn more than one language, and by extension, to understand each other better.  I can see why a visionary like Sun Ra would recommend this book.  Anyone seeking to learn new languages would be well-off reading this.  We must continue to fight the good fight against willfully proud ignorance and intellectual blindness.

(This book can be read/downloaded here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/255464/07f8d71c7c840bec709cf5a38e7da300.pdf )

I love Etymology and Etymology Loves Me

 

Dictionary of Word Origins – John Ayto (1991)

            I have always enjoyed learning about the sources of words and the changes in meaning and use over the centuries.  As I am Puerto Rican, I was raised speaking Spanish, and when our family moved to Texas I learned the English language.  I found it very interesting how English, more so than most languages, is a conglomerate of borrowed words and terminology drawn from a very wide range of languages, both dead and alive.

            While many dictionaries also include small sections on etymology, this Dictionary of Word Origins shares the known origins, as well as the possible origins, of over 8,000 English words.  This is in no way an exhaustive list, as the average English speaker uses around 15,000 English words.  The highly literate can have over 100,000 words in their vocabulary.  Sticking to just 8,000 words allows each origin to be fully explored.

            This book not only provides the immediate precursor words to a specific term, but also explores the evolution of the word from its earliest source.  English owes a lot to the Germanic and Latin languages, but has created something different.  Sometimes words are misused, due to similarities in pronunciation.  Other times the very earliest uses of a word are lost in ancient time.  Basic, and seemingly universal words like mama, papa, baby, etc., seem to arrive as phonetic sounds, first uttered by developing children.  The ongoing creation of the English language is a fractal thing, and it allows for the constant evolution that has seen English rise as the international language of business and politics.

            Language is a tricky thing.  We try to be specific in what we say, but words never have just one meaning.  We try to force meaning on words, leaving us poorer for it.  Knowing about a person’s history and background helps inform us greatly, and the same goes for knowing the origins of words we all use daily.  Many writers discuss how they use words very carefully, seeking specific meanings and shades of definition.  On the other hand, many people use words haphazardly, unaware of the many differing messages their words can actually convey.  Books such as this one are a boon for anyone who loves language and the magic unlocked when we share words and ideas together.

            Language, or the use of vocal/visual symbols to communicate, is humanity’s greatest invention, and allowed the development of everything we value as Human.  Society, culture, learning, and history are all better served because we can all communicate through space and time using symbols.  Just as I love reading a work from 100 years ago and letting the author-chosen symbols lead me to new adventures or education, I also hope that by writing and sharing these reviews of the books I read I am somehow connecting to future readers.  Hopefully the internet-webs will still be around in 100 years.  It is a great thrill to imagine someone reading my words in 2120 and gaining something from it.  We all stand on the shoulders of all of those that came before us.

(This book can be purchased from the publisher : https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/arcade-publishing/9781611450538/dictionary-of-word-origins/ )

I have always wanted to know everything

The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, the Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick, and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Feats of Genius – Andrew Robinson (2006)

            A Polymath is a person who through experience, study, and thought becomes highly educated in a wide and seemingly disparate variety of subjects.  The common term “Renaissance Man” implies polymathy, such as in the case of Leonardo DaVinci, who became a master painter, engineer, sculptor, and draughtsman, as well as being a very competent mathematician, botanist, anatomist, geologist, and astronomer, among countless other subjects.  His personal notebooks, held mainly by the Vatican in Rome, contain the basic fruits of a deeply fertile mind, one that was curious, flexible, and obsessive when it came to gathering knowledge.  The British physician, physicist, mathematician, linguist, and Egyptologist Thomas Young is another such genius.  He is not as famous as DaVinci, but that may be due to the fact that much of DaVinci’s well-known work is in the form of art, capable of being seen and understood by the whole of humanity.  Thomas Young’s work was more esoteric than DaVinci’s, and more critical to the future development of the various sciences affected by his genius.

            This book is an awesome exploration of Thomas Young’s life, and of the way he went about his intellectual explorations.  It describes the manner by which he became a physician, and first explaining the method by which our eye adjusts the light entering it to project a focused image on our retina, something no one had been able to understand before.  It talks about how Thomas Young’s explorations into light and it’s properties helped explain what we now call “polarization” and finally proved conclusively that light/energy behaved as wave function, something which corrected a misconception by Isaac Newton.  Thomas Young learned to read and write in many ancient languages, and it was because of this interest that he was able to definitely prove that the hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians was not just symbolic, but also sometimes phonetic, reaching a climax when he was first able to translate the writing on the Rosetta Stone, something that had stumped scientists and linguists since the stone was brought back to Europe by Napoleon several decades earlier. 

When the Encyclopedia Britannica was first being put together, Thomas Young was asked to write some articles for it.  He penned over 66 different, highly researched and informative articles on subjects as varied as “Egypt”, “Bridges”, “Chromatics”, “Carpentry”, “Tides”, “Languages”, “Herculaneum”, and “Weights & Measures”, many of which are still standard texts studied by University students.  These were major surveys of the then-current state of knowledge in these fields, and in many of these articles Thomas Young actually contributed his own original ideas and work.  He wrote over 40 biographies for the encyclopedia, on men of science mainly.  As the author states, “Very few specialists nowadays would dare to attempt more than one, or at the most two, such major surveys for the Encyclopedia Britannica, even with the help of a co-author.”  Thomas Young did the research, and wrote the articles, all; while doing his other scientific explorations and lecturing at a University.  For the biographies of the scientists he would actually read (or re-read) all of their published work, so as to better aggregate the information for the encyclopedia.  This is a man who truly loved to learn, and whose mind could not only absorb the widest range of knowledge, but could re-arrange it and see new worlds and ideas to explore in that knowledge.

I am personally attracted to anyone whose willpower leads them to explore the different corners of their intellectual curiosity. These types of humans are usually derided by their contemporaries, mainly by denigrating their contributions to any specific field as being those of a “dilettante,” someone who is not serious enough to spend all their time focused solely on one field.  Thomas Young’s harshest critics were people who had labored for years on a subject, only to have Thomas Young come by and, with his deep learning and uncommon insight, propose correct and groundbreaking solutions to problems they had yet to even understand.  He made the so-called experts appear ignorant, or just second-rate.  This bias still exists.  Many experts will dismiss the ideas of someone who does not possess the exact same level of educational “achievement” as them, as if someone without an advanced degree could never possibly hope to contribute anything of value.  Fucking assholes all.  It takes the waters of time to wash away the prejudices and the biases and show the true geniuses for what they are.   The lowly minds, the second-rate intellects, are left in the dust along with their second-rate work.  The existence of men like Thomas Young only serves to shine a light on the vacuity of the “experts” and encourages any of us to explore what piques our curiosity, wherever that may lead.

(This book can be purchased here:  The Last Man Who Knew Everything  )

Borges' stories are indeed like labyrinths constructed out of words.

Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings – Jorge Luis Borges (1964)

           

There are a few giants in the world of short-story writing.  Edgar Allan Poe is one of the first, having essentially created both the modern detective story and the modern horror story through his demented tales.  Poe’s stories are not in the vein of the gross-out, blood-filled, carnage-laden tales which are seen as horror these days.  They instead were more of the meditative, eerie, unnerving type of story.  These are the kind of tale that pull you in and haunt your thoughts afterwards, if done right.  Jorge Luis Borges is just such an author.  He made his name with short stories, poetry, and essays, and in doing so changed the world of literature. 

            Borges’ stories are like minimalist puzzles. They are the epitome of the old short-story writing axiom that nothing should be in the story that does not propel the story forward.  While novels allow the author countless pages to explore motivations, digressions, and setting, short stories, especially Borges’ very concise stories, need to get their point across as fast as possible, without feeling like pure plotting with no emotional connection for the reader.  Using a rich vocabulary gleamed from his far-ranging and esoteric reading Jorge Luis Borges writes short stories that feel almost holographic, as if all parts contained the whole.  His work feels like stepping into an alternate reality where the wisdom of the ancients is meshed with the troubles of the modern world.  They are not quite mathematical, as much as rigorously constructed.

            Borges wrote in Spanish, and while I can read Spanish I do not have the education in Spanish needed to understand Borges’ writing without constantly interrupting myself to check a word in the dictionary.  Therefore, I have read him in translation.  This collection, Labyrinths, has made me appreciate Borges’ mind and his ability to aggregate the wisdom he encounters in his readings into his stories.  Borges was, like me, someone who preferred to read the fringes of literature, seeking and studying ancient writings, near-forgotten philosophers, and the classics of ancient antiquity.  He sought to explore the world of the Gnostics, of the Greek Idealists, of the Persian scientists, etc.  I too seek out old books and old ideas to read, and to see what wisdom or entertainment may be found within.  I enjoy learning for learning’s sake, something else I share with Borges.

            Jorge Luis Borges went blind around age 47 and never learned to read Braille.  What a horror for someone whose whole life was about the joy found in reading.  I can imagine that he found it pointless to do so, as the books and literature he sought was of a type not to be found in Braille editions, which are usually just the classic canon and more modern fare.  Losing that connection to the ancient world that literature gave Borges must have been quite rough.  Someday, if my Spanish gets better, I will attempt to read him in our native tongue.  Until then, I am glad that good people took the time to translate these cool stories for me.

(To read Borges' Labyrinths in PDF format, click here: 
https://wizchan.org/hob/src/1449201237263-0.pdf )