纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 015早期的写字板(7)

The creation of new sound signs was probably quite a fast-moving process,

创造新表音符号的过程很可能极快。

and as they developed, the signs would have had to be listed-the earliest dictionaries if you like,

随着符号逐渐增多， 便有了将其全部列出的必要性，可以称之为最早的词典。

beginning an intellectual process of categorising things and relationships, that has never stopped since.

由此也开始了一个将词汇、物品及其之间的关系分类记录的过程，这一过程现在还在延续。

Our little beer-ration tablet leads directly, and swiftly, to a completely different way of thinking about ourselves and about the world that surrounds us.

这块记录啤酒配给的写字板直接而迅速地让我们获得了一种重新思考自己、思考周围世界的新方式。

But what does it do to the human mind when writing becomes part of culture? We asked John Searle, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley:

加州大学伯克利分校的哲学教授约翰瑟尔描述了当文字成为文化的一部分时，人脑发生了怎样的变化：

I think you don't understand the full import of the revolution brought by writing if you think of it just as preserving information into the future.

文字是我们所认为的现代文明产生的关键。它具有我们无法了解的创造力。如果你认为它只是保存信息的一种方式，那你并没有真正理解文字革命所带来的巨大影响。

There are two areas where writing makes an absolutely decisive difference to the whole history of the human species.

它在两个方面决定性地改写了整个人类历史。

One area is complex thought.

其一是复杂的思考能力。

There's a limit to what you can do with the spoken word.

口述的能力是有限的。

You cannot really do higher mathematics or even more complex forms of philosophical argument of the kind that I am interested in,

人类无法进行高等数学运算或是更复杂的哲学辩论。

unless you have some way of writing it down and scanning it.

如果没有一个记录并能反复查看的方式，

So it's not adequate to think of writing just as a way of recording, for the future, facts about the past and the present.

因此仅仅认为文字是一种为未来记录现代和过去的方式是不够的。

On the contrary, it is immensely creative.

相反，它具有无限的创造力。

But now a second thing about writing, which I think is just as important as that,

至于第二点也很重要：当你用文字书写时，

and that is when you write down you don't just record what already exists, but there are elements in which you create new entities.

你并不只记录了巳存在的内容,还创造了新的实体

You create money, you create corporations, you create governments, you create complex forms of society, and writing is essential for all of that.

金钱、组织、政府、社会的复杂形式。文字是这一切的关鍵。