The Alphabet Versus the Goddess (Hardcover)

by Leonard Shlain (Author) "Of all the sacred cows allowed to roam unimpeded in our culture, few are as revered as literacy..." (more)
Key Phrases: iconic revolution, alphabet literacy, alphabetic book, Old Testament, New Testament, Dark Ages (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
"Literacy has promoted the subjugation of women by men throughout all but the very recent history of the West," writes Leonard Shlain. "Misogyny and patriarchy rise and fall with the fortunes of the alphabetic written word."

That's a pretty audacious claim, one that The Alphabet Versus the Goddess provides extensive historical and cultural correlations to support. Shlain's thesis takes readers from the evolutionary steps that distinguish the human brain from that of the primates to the development of the Internet. The very act of learning written language, he argues, exercises the human brain's left hemisphere--the half that handles linear, abstract thought--and enforces its dominance over the right hemisphere, which thinks holistically and visually. If you accept the idea that linear abstraction is a masculine trait, and that holistic visualization is feminine, the rest of the theory falls into place. The flip side is that as visual orientation returns to prominence within society through film, television, and cyberspace, the status of women increases, soon to return to the equilibrium of the earliest human cultures. Shlain wisely presents this view of history as plausible rather than definite, but whether you agree with his wide-ranging speculations or not, he provides readers eager to "understand it all" with much to consider. --Ron Hogan

From Library Journal
The advantages of a literate society are self-evident, but is there a dark side to language? In this extraordinary book, Shlain, a surgeon and the author of Art and Physics (LJ 9/1/91), argues that when cultures acquire literacy, the brain's left hemisphere dominates the right?with enormous consequences. Alphabetic writing, Shlain believes, "subliminally fosters a patriarchal outlook" at the expense of feminine values. Focusing on Western cultures, Shlain surveys world history and religion to illustrate how alphabet literacy fosters extremes of intolerance. Indeed, a subtheme of the book is that overreliance on the left hemisphere "initially leads a society through a period of demonstrable madness." Such aberrations as group suicide, religious persecution, and witch-hunting are the result of a dominant linear, reductionist, and abstract method of perception. While admitting that "correlation does not prove causality," Shlain presents a forceful case based on a wealth of circumstantial evidence. An absorbing, provocative, and, ironically, highly literate work that should receive considerable review attention; recommended for most public and academic libraries.?Laurie Bartolini, MacMurray Coll. Lib., Springfield, IL
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670878839
• ISBN-13: 978-0670878833
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (159 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #268,158 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating read!, June 11, 1999

By A Customer

First of all, I absolutely loved this book. It is a fascinating and beautifully written book, encompassing history, science, and religion studies. I'd like to clear up some confusion and misconceptions about the book, however. (At least, how I see it) The Alphabet versus the Goddess is NOT an argument against literacy or writing. (It's ridiculous to even entertain such an idea, considering the medium we are talking about!) Nor is it an arrogant, sweeping statement of how things are absolutely. It is simply an observation of how male/female values have changed throughout history as the advent of the alphabet is experienced by cultures around the world. The author is always careful to acknowledge that there are other theories, and that this is only his opinion, based on the facts that are presented.

The main premise is not that literacy itself is the "root of all evil" or the sole cause of the oppression of women and feminine based religions. Rather, these things occur when alphabet literacy (primarily a left-brain, masculine function) is exalted and revered to the exclusion of all else. It is when linear, concrete thinking overrides image, the abstract, and intuition that conflict arises. The key is, to put it simply, balance. The feminine and masculine sides are neither "good" nor "bad", just different facets of the mind that need each other to be complete.

I love to read, probably more than most people. It is rare to find me in a spare moment with my nose not buried in a book. And there is no denying the tremendous value and importance the written word has in our lives. Yet I see and understand the necessity of this balance. Too often people will believe the most ridiculous statements, simply because they are in written form. (The supermarket tabloids and internet rumors are two obvious examples of this.) Reading and writing are also primarily solitary pursuits, which tend to shift our focus away from the world and people around us, to the point of indifference or, in extreme cases, outright hate. Balance, balance, balance.

I cannot help but make a couple observations on the review from San Francisco - One, the comment about the author being a doctor, which makes his words gospel and infallible. Only once in the entire book (in the preface) does the author identify himself as a doctor. He does this only to explain his knowledge of the neuroanatomical portion of his hypothesis. His title is not on the cover or the copyright page or anywhere else in the book. I don't see a basis for the insinuation that the author is "throwing his weight around" as a doctor, so his opinion should of course be correct. Also, did anyone else find the line about how the "precious resource" of paper and ink were "wasted" amusing? After reading this incredible book (which you don't have to agree with to enjoy, anyway; it's fascinating stuff!) the reviewer throws in a comment which perfectly epitomizes the problem of raising alphabet literacy to divine proportions. I don't know if anyone else caught that, but gave me a chuckle or two.

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provocative Connections, November 30, 1999

By	David Natharius "davenat" (Chandler, AZ) - See all my reviews

As a professor of communication, humanities and gender studies, I am fascinated by AVG. My teaching perspective has always been to guide students towards discovering connections between and among seemingly disparate aspects of human communication behaviors. In this provocative book, Shlain offers a three stage analysis for connecting the rise and fall and rise of feminine perceptual processing. The first stage is his review of early, nonliterate cultures in which the goddess was revered and feminine ways of knowing were important aspects in many of these cultures. There is a great deal of interpretive evidence from archaeology and cultural anthropology suggesting that these preliterate cultures were often matriarchal and it was the women who guided and directed the movement, settlement and structure of the culture. Shlain offers a representative view of this evidence. The second stage is the development of written languages and the alphabet. Again, there is a significant amount of evidence that all cultures, when becoming literate, shift to or maintain patriarchal control and Shlain offers a selective review of this evidence. The third stage, or the one we are moving into now, according to Shlain, is the return to feminine ways of knowing, created by the shift in information processing created by the increase of electronic visual imagery in our society. It is this suggestion that creates the most intriguing and provocative part of the book. His argument is based, partly, of his knowledge of the neurological processes of the brain - the researched different functions of the right and left brain. His thesis, that feminine (or right brain) ways of perceiving will again become prominant in our culture, is a profound assertion worthy of continued discussion and examination. I am also fascinated by some of the remarks of his negative critics who argue that, from their perspective (though they do not claim it as a perspective but rather as the "truth") Shlain's research is "sloppy scholarship," "full of unsupported assertions," "psuedo history." They also find specific errors which, in their opinion, negate the entire thesis of the book. In an interesting way, many of the negative comments reflect the biases towards masculine, patriarchal, compartmentalized thinking - exactly the kind of linearity explored in AVG. If Shlain's critics had, indeed, read his book carefully, I suspect they would have realized that he offers ONE perspective (NOT the "truth") that invites the reader to think about the connections between written literacy, linear thinking, and the diminishment of feminine perceptual processes in our past and present cultures. From my perspective, he gives us a lot to think about even if some of his evidence does not pass the test of scholarly precision.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Dr. Shlain may be a good surgeon, but he is a poor historian, March 18, 1999

By A Customer

I started this book with high hopes, intrigued by Dr. Shlain's analysis of the evolution of humans and his explanation of our physiology.

However, as he delved into the historical record. I found myself more and more disappointed. He makes broad sweeping assertions without analysis, and he falls into the classic amateur historian's trap of focusing solely on events that bolster his case without even mentioning contrary evidence, nor considering whether there may be alternate explanations for the events he claims support his theory. He argues in one place that the Akkadians conquered the Sumerians, adopted their writing (cuneiform) and it was this adoption that gave rise to their patriarchialism - never considering that it may have been a patriarchal structure that enabled them to conquer Sumer in the first place. Then, to demonstrate this patriarchy, he shifts in mid-sentence and without explanation or transition from Akkad to Babylon.

He casually accepts as proven facts interpretations that are even today highly controversial or that have simply been proven wrong. For example, he writes about the JEPD(R) documentary hypothesis for the development of the Hebrew Scripture without ever once conceding that it IS a hypothesis which is still controversial and undergoing revision. He quotes without question Josephus' story of Pompey visiting the Second Temple and being astonished that its sanctum sanctorum was empty; we know from Roman records that Pompey never set foot in Jerusalem.

I was also nonplussed by his implication that grammar is a function of writing, not speech, an assertion casually tossed off as though he had never heard a mother correct her child's chatter. But where he finally lost me for good was in his discussion of rites of passage; while admitting that the Bible and the Talmud never once discuss the concept of a bar mitzvah, he then blithely asserts that the bar mitzvah proves that ancient Judaism valued literacy more highly than physical stamina in their young men. The bar mitzvah ceremony is at most 300 years old!

Anachronistic back-dating is hardly uncommon among polemicists, but no serious historian would be so sloppy. From the evidence of his earlier chapters, Dr. Shlain knows medicine, and that is what he should stick to.