--- title: 'Geary and the orthodox view of writing/reading' url: 'https://rethunk.englishup.me/geary-default' markdown: 'https://rethunk.englishup.me/geary-default.md' date: '2026-10-30' description: 'Geary and the orthodox view of writing/reading David C. Geary recounts, in Greg Ashman''s Filling The Pail podcast, that his inspiration for his model of two types of knowledge - biologically primary and biological secondary, is based on an orthodoxy in linguistics: "..went to a lecture by one of o…' --- # Geary and the orthodox view of writing/reading David C. Geary recounts, in Greg Ashman's Filling The Pail podcast, that his inspiration for his model of two types of knowledge - biologically primary and biological secondary, is based on an orthodoxy in linguistics: > "..went to a lecture by one of our alumni, a guy named Lieberman who did language and language evolution. And he was talking about language evolution and he just mentioned reading and he said "Oh that's just **secondary** to language" and I thought that's it." (Geary, Filling The Pail Podcast 04:20 -04:39, , emphasis added) The orthodoxy in linguistics that the above shows is: > "Speech is the default mode by which we share our thoughts with others" (Lieberman, 2015) This default mode view says that writing is a representation of speech as opposed to writing being a way to get linguistic functions that are different from sound. Roy Harris has argued that > "These assumptions have their roots in pedagogic programmes developed for initiating children into the rudiments of alphabetic literacy, where a basic one-to-one correspondence between 'letters' and 'sounds' has been taught for many centuries, with cases of non-correspondence being dismissed as 'exceptions'. However effective such programmes may have been pedagogically, that does not make the assumptions...any more acceptable semiologically." (Harris, 2000: 185-186) > > "Their pedagogic effectiveness has been, and continues to be, a debatable issue. But that is irrelevant to the point being made here. All kinds of effective training programmes may be based on simplifying assumptions which turn out to be or are known to be false." (Harris, 2000: 186) For an integrationist like Roy Harris writing is a form of communication in its own right. There also seems to be an elision in the discussion of Geary's model of naturalness with untutored. For example the podcast mentions that the Piraha count 1,2, 3 and more. > "So would that suggest that understanding 1, 2, 3 or more is a kind of primary response that you need to navigate the world but after that we are into the terrain of biologically secondary?" (Ashman, Filling The Pail Podcast 12:10 - 12:26, ) However to call the Piraha counting 1, 2, 3, more, biologically primary or "natural" does not mean they were untutored. > "What we find natural i.e. easily memorised, readily recognised, simple to repeat, is not or not necessarily what is untutored. It is unnatural for us, though not for everyone in the world, to count 1,2,3,4,5,many. We just don't go on in that way... A fortiori, at more advanced levels of concept formation the fact that a certain procedure strikes us as natural (that we feel comfortable with it) will depend more and more upon our training, education and existing practices. Furthermore, one can always ask ‘natural for what?’ and ‘natural, in what circumstances?’... Consequently, one should neither overestimate the importance of considerations of naturalness in concept-formation, nor mislocate its importance. (Baker and Hacker, 2009: 342) Another way to see what the above quote from Baker and Hacker (after Wittgenstein) is showing is that Geary's argument using language partly turns on the universality of speech i.e. speech is found everywhere while writing is not. Here universality applies not to speech as such but to the conditions which gave rise to speech. These conditions apply to writing as well. So consider speech & writing to walking & carrying things on your head (after Tim Ingold) - is the fact that everyone can walk but most Westerners cannot carry things on their head mean walking is primary & carrying things on your head secondary? **References** Baker, G. P., & Hacker, P. M. S. (2009). Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity: Volume 2 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Essays and Exegesis §§ 185-242 (Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons. Harris, R. (2000). Rethinking Writing. London, Athlone. Lieberman, P. (2015). Language Did Not Spring Forth 100,000 Years Ago. PLoS Biol 13(2): e1002064. --- ## Navigation - Previous: [Focusing and proto-standards](https://rethunk.englishup.me/focusing.md) - Next: [The ghost of Integrationism](https://rethunk.englishup.me/ghost-of-integrationism.md)