Is writing natural?

[Space60]

While writing systems may be artificially constructed, I'd say it is natural for humans to construct writing systems in order to be able to use language without speech.

[Linguoboy]

While writing systems may be artificially constructed, I'd say it is natural for humans to construct writing systems in order to be able to use language without speech.

On what grounds?

[akam chinjir]

What do you mean by "natural" in this context? One way of looking at it, everything actual is natural (i.e., consistent with the laws of nature).

[dɮ the phoneme]

Another way of looking at it is to take the word 'natural' to mean not just part nature generally, but part of our nature. As in, a behavior humans have an inherent, cross cultural propensity to do. In which case no, writing is clearly not natural.

[Darren]

Another way of looking at it is to take the word 'natural' to mean not just part nature generally, but part of our nature. As in, a behavior humans have an inherent, cross cultural propensity to do. In which case no, writing is clearly not natural.

It's not natural for the majority of people, but it has arisen independently three or four times (depending on whether you count Rongorongo), and has been adopted by a very large number of peoples so I wouldn't call it "unnatural", more "unusual." However, there are lots more examples of people hearing about writing and developing their own system (e.g. Cherokee Syllabary, another example I can't remember from either far north America or northern Russia) which implies that people are more likely to develop it having found out about it beforehand. This argument is I think more in terms of definitions than statistics though - would you count other human inventions like spoken language, fire, tools as natural or unnatural?

[Pabappa]

The Yukaghir had writing, but the only attested inscriptions are maps and love letters. That may be who youre thinking of ... I dont know if it's known for sure that they developed it with no knowledge of Russian writing, though it is clear that it isnt derived from Cyrillic.

There's also the Micmac writing system in New England ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi%EA%9E% ... ic_writing .... which is pretty much the same thing ... it was seen by early white settlers and it seems quite likely that it existed before white settlers arrived, but it cant be proven.

seems the yukaghir claim has detractors: https://books.google.com/books?id=fRqKr ... er&f=false

[Curlyjimsam]

I don't think it's any more natural than the wheel or wrought iron. Societies tend to make use of it once they've got it (though even there it takes a long time for a society to become mostly literate), but plenty have done without it.

Conworld idea: culture where writing (a recent invention?) is vocally condemned as unnatural by a segment of the population.

[masako]

While writing systems may be artificially constructed, I'd say it is natural for humans to construct writing systems in order to be able to use language without speech.

It's no more or less natural than a beaver dam, bird nest, or orangutans using a stick to hunt ants.

[Space60]

In hunter-gatherer societies language without speech is rarely needed, so writing is not developed. But then even in those prehistoric times they used cave paintings which is kind of a precursor to writing.

[Linguoboy]

In hunter-gatherer societies language without speech is rarely needed, so writing is not developed. But then even in those prehistoric times they used cave paintings which is kind of a precursor to writing.

I think that's very disputable. Is fine art in the contemporary world also a "precursor to writing"? Or does it coexist with it as a different technology which fulfills different purposes?

[Whimemsz]

In reply to Masako, writing is clearly less natural than a beaver dam or bird nest, because beavers build dams and birds build nests instinctively, and every beaver builds a dam and every bird builds a nest, while human writing is not hard-wired and not all humans or human cultures use or have developed writing. Curlyjimsam's comparison to wheels and iron is more apt: writing is a kind of technology. Your comparison to great apes using tools is also more apt, since that's also cultural (not all apes of a given species use a given tool in a given way -- each community that uses tools at all passes that knowledge down to each new generation, or one ape just idiosyncratically makes up its own new tool on the spot as needed).

In reply to Pabappa, the Mi'kmaq hieroglyphs were invented by a missionary in the post-contact period, using an older, much less developed Mi'kmaq mnemonic character system as an inspiration and a base. There's no evidence it existed as a fully functioning writing system before then.

[masako]

and every beaver builds a dam and every bird builds a nest

Sorry, nope. Beavers in shallow water ways build lodges or burrow, and penguins (yes, a bird) do NOT build nests.

writing is a kind of technology

As is nest and dam building. Granted, this is using the broadest sense of "technology" as an adaptive technique/instrument for a given environment. How is it adaptive? Glad you asked...as modern humans spread further out, and hunted/gathered in more organized packs, symbols and monuments were used to mark migratory paths. I would argue that this basic symbolism was - much like cave paintings describing hunts - a very proto form of non-lingual communication that ""instinctively"" led to writing (even in the most basic form). Even Neanderthal jewelry has been found to have rudimentary markings, suggesting some level of abstract thought.

[missals]

and every beaver builds a dam and every bird builds a nest

Sorry, nope. Beavers in shallow water ways build lodges or burrow, and penguins (yes, a bird) do NOT build nests.

Completely pedantic and irrelevant. Whimemsz obviously didn't mean "all known species of...", they clearly meant it in the sense of "Every healthy individual (for a species that does do it) will do it given the available resources" (no bird's nest without twigs/grass, etc). I.e. dam-building and nest-building is instinctual - the beaver/bird does not need any other member of its species to teach it, all the "knowledge" necessary to do it is located within itself.

writing is a kind of technology

As is nest and dam building. Granted, this is using the broadest sense of "technology" as an adaptive technique/instrument for a given environment. How is it adaptive? Glad you asked...as modern humans spread further out, and hunted/gathered in more organized packs, symbols and monuments were used to mark migratory paths. I would argue that this basic symbolism was - much like cave paintings describing hunts - a very proto form of non-lingual communication that ""instinctively"" led to writing (even in the most basic form). Even Neanderthal jewelry has been found to have rudimentary markings, suggesting some level of abstract thought.

Of course all human behavior, including all human technology, is ultimately enabled by human "instincts" and inborn biological capacities - e.g. we couldn't build a space shuttle if we didn't have the mental capacity for planning and creative thought - and course most human technology and culture is adaptive in one way or another. But that doesn't mean technology and culture can be collapsed into instinct - if we label all behavior as instinctual, then to label a particular behavior as "instinctual" is meaningless. When (most) linguists say writing is a "technology", they mean it is a product of culture - knowledge that requires instruction (sometimes explicit instruction) from another human to acquire. If not provided with knowledge of a particular technology by another human, a given human will have to conceptualize and create that technology all by themselves if they are ever to use it.

And yes, writing is an example of symbolic thinking, which is a fundamental human capacity. But you can't cite the existence of symbolism in communication as evidence for the "instinctual" nature of writing - all human societies have communication and symbolic thought, but until recently the overwhelming majority of human languages were never written at all. As noted, writing was only independently invented four times, and societies that do not use writing at all persist until this day. Writing is very clearly a cultural technology that emerged under particular social and material circumstances, and spread among particular human societies due to social and material circumstances, unlike the instinctual animal habits of creating shelters.

[xxx]

writing is artifact...
as natural as computers...

[Darren]

writing is artifact...
as natural as computers...

I think writing is a lot more natural than computers. Computers were developed by a relatively small group of people in only one case, occurring only after a long series of technological developments. Writing or proto-writing has been developed multiple times by very different cultures in completely separate events, and isn't associated with a specific level of technology. I'd agree that writing isn't entirely natural, but it's definitely more natural than computers.

[masako]

*thoughtful and insightful response*

I never really said that writing was instinctive. I said that "non-lingual communication ""instinctively"" led to writing". And I knew full well what Whim did and didn't mean...I'm just an opportunist and an unapologetic typophile.

[zompist]

writing is artifact...
as natural as computers...

I think writing is a lot more natural than computers. Computers were developed by a relatively small group of people in only one case, occurring only after a long series of technological developments. Writing or proto-writing has been developed multiple times by very different cultures in completely separate events, and isn't associated with a specific level of technology.

Hmm? I see more parallels than differences. Writing was developed by a relatively small group of people in a very small number of cases, occurring after a long series of social/technological developments. E.g. in the Sumerian case you have agriculture, animal husbandry, kingship, massive temple bureaucracies, clay accounting tokens, reed pens, tablets, stone carving. There is also a centuries-long development within writing system themselves, moving from very weak to very good representation of the language, and from very restricted to very general uses. And it's absolutely associated with a specific level of technology: writing appears when a people are at the kingdom level, with a need for accounting for large enterprises. Agricultural villages, nomadic peoples, and hunter-gatherers don't develop writing, except under the influence of agricultural kingdoms.

[Pabappa]

I see this as a debate over semantics, so really, everyone's right, because "nature" isn't well defined. I have said, for example, that guns are natural, because they are simply very advanced tools, and that being nutritionally dependent on cooked food is natural, because there are other animals out there with even weirder diets than us, such as the moth that eats disposable plastic bags. (My favorites are the animals like this one that can *only* live on food items that humans produce ... i think bookworms are a sort of intermediate stage).

But if everything is natural, then nothing is, so I only use that definition when I am talking philosophically. In normal situatuons I use "natural" to just mean anything that either wasnt created by humans or has become a dependency for humans to survive on. so, for us, cooked food is still natural, but writing is not.

edit: also, the pompom crab provides an example of an animal in which the use of a weapon that one could not themselves create is also natural.

[Darren]

writing is artifact...
as natural as computers...

I think writing is a lot more natural than computers. Computers were developed by a relatively small group of people in only one case, occurring only after a long series of technological developments. Writing or proto-writing has been developed multiple times by very different cultures in completely separate events, and isn't associated with a specific level of technology.

Hmm? I see more parallels than differences. Writing was developed by a relatively small group of people in a very small number of cases, occurring after a long series of social/technological developments. E.g. in the Sumerian case you have agriculture, animal husbandry, kingship, massive temple bureaucracies, clay accounting tokens, reed pens, tablets, stone carving. There is also a centuries-long development within writing system themselves, moving from very weak to very good representation of the language, and from very restricted to very general uses. And it's absolutely associated with a specific level of technology: writing appears when a people are at the kingdom level, with a need for accounting for large enterprises. Agricultural villages, nomadic peoples, and hunter-gatherers don't develop writing, except under the influence of agricultural kingdoms.

I can see the parallels, and it does require some level of technology and development over time. However, when exposed to writing systems, even peoples without those previous developments can make writing systems. If a person who had never seen a computer before suddenly found out that some people were using them, they certainly wouldn't be able to replicate even the most basic form of one. I still think that some things can be more natural than others without either being 100% natural or unnatural. Writing is by no means 100% natural but it's more natural than computers.

[xxx]

usually new artifacts are more naturally imported than built locally ...
it was so with writing...
and computers...