Question

What is Maryann Wolf’s theory about humans’ interpretation of text? How does her theory relate to Nietzsche’s ideas?

Answer 1

Maryanne Wolf is a developmental psychologist at Tufts University after completed her doctorate at Harvard University and began her work in cognitive neuroscience and developmental psycholinguistics on the reading brain.

Maryann Wolf’s theory about humans’ interpretation of the text

Wolf explains reading is not an instinctive skill for human beings. Reading does not engrave into our genes the way speech is. We have to train our minds on how to convert the symbols into the language we understand.

She says “We are not only what we read” but “We are how we read”

wolf says the media and other technology we used to read or practicing the craft of reading plays an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brain. And various Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. We can notice this as well that the circuits woven by our use of the internet will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.

She agonizes the fact that the style of reading promoted by the internet is a format of style that puts “Productivity” and “Speediness” above all and it may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged before the age of this modern technology. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Her theory greatly resembles Nietzsche’s ideas

As in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball named typewriter. His desires are failing and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become very exhausting. He had been forced to cut back his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up on writing. But typewriter rescued him at least for time being. As he mastered typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of his friend noticed a change in his style of writing. And he wrote a letter to him that his already "to the point style" had become even tighter. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom, noting that in his own work his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”

On this Nietzsche replied

“You are right, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine