The Code is Technology

David Boulton: So, in a sense, writing is the enabling technology of civilization.

Dr. John Searle: It’s right, as far as it goes, to say that the written language enables civilization. But I would go a further step and say it doesn’t just enable it in the sense of making it possible, but rather, it constitutes it. It is a constitutive element of civilization in that you cannot have what we think of as the defining social institutions of civilization without having written language. You cannot have universities and schools. But not just the pedagogical institutions, but you can’t even have money or private property or governments or national elections, or for that matter, cocktail parties and marriages. You can’t even have a summer vacation or a lawsuit without a written language.

So, written language is where language acquires, not just a much greater creative power, but an enduring power, because you can create these wonderful writings that survive, that go on and on and get repeated. Think of the Constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence.

David Boulton: It’s the infrastructure of civilization.

Dr. John Searle: Indeed. It is the infrastructure, but it isn’t just the infrastructure of roads and bridges, it’s the infrastructure of human civilization itself.

Dr. John Searle: People don’t just get born into how to live as human beings, they have to learn how to live as human beings. Much of their learning — indeed, almost all of their learning is by way of language. Some is by way of brute animal imitation. But once you get really going with advanced forms of civilization like falling in love or becoming a doctor, then you must have written language.

So, the forms of civilization that we think of as essential to the distinction between humans and other forms of animal life require advanced institutional structures. You and I spend our lives locked into institutional structures. I spend my life in a university. You spend your life engaged in various kinds of linguistic and technological enterprises. All of those require language, but particularly the advanced human forms of civilizations, like universities and like governments and like national elections – all of those require writing.

David Boulton: Excellent. So, the development of writing and the complexity that’s come with writing and the dimensions with which writing can refer to itself, and so forth, has actually changed the oral language.

Dr. John Searle: Oh, well, of course. It’s changed the way we think and talk. I can’t have the kinds of feelings that I have without language, but I can’t have those without writing. So, I mentioned falling in love, but there are all kinds of other emotions that you cannot have without some way to articulate those. And that requires social forms of articulation, and they require written forms of articulation.