Interpreting Texts and Interpreting Nature: The Effects of Literacy and Epistemology

Abstract

In this paper it is argued that literacy has its cognitive effects indirectly, through the conceptual distinctions and social practices that it fosters, rather than directly, through the actual activities of reading and writing. The conceptual distinction examined in particular is that between what is given, whether in texts or in nature, and what is inferred or interpreted by the reader or observer. Children’s acquisition of this distinction is decisive, it is argued, to the development of a literate mode of thought.