"Over the years, I have become convinced that Hellenism as a culture represents not a static condition of uniform sublimity mysteriously achieved and maintained as an effect of some racial advantage. Rather it should be understood as an evolving process, governed by a dynamic of change, as both language and thought underwent transformational alteration caused by a transition from orality to literacy. The instrument of change is discerned to be the invention of the Greek alphabet, at a quite late stage in the history of developing cultures."
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"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_A._Havelock
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Eric A. Havelock
Eric Alfred Havelock (3 June 1903 – 4 April 1988) was a professor at the University of Toronto and was active in the academic milieu of the Canadian socialist movement during the 1930s. In the 1960s and 1970s, he served as chair of the classics departments at both Harvard and Yale.
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