ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates the thinking of Vygotsky and Luria by making explicit their understanding of the different thinking capabilities nurtured by different modes of language, in particular, the differences between oral modes of thinking with concrete complexes of spontaneous concepts and a textualised mode of thinking with abstract, logical or scientific concepts. During the scribal era in Western Europe, the ancient Greek texts became the source of a Christian manifestation of analytical thinking which was directed at theological objects. Eric Havelock's analysis of the textualisation of ancient Greek epic poetry is another. It suggests how textualisation yield new kinds of objects of knowledge, of the spare, distinct, decontextualised, dematerialised kind that would become necessary for the emergence and flourishing of modern analytical thinking and, subsequently, of capitalism. Scribal textualisation, while limited in its general effects, had subject-constituting consequences for those undergoing an apprenticeship in reading-writing-learning.
