Walter J Ong
- The Original Mistake (Orality and Literacy)
Through this gate duality rises out of unity. The primal moment in which two things are first distinguished (like the separation of heaven and earth in traditional cosmogonic myth) is, according to Parmenides, the birth of a language. From an original or first moment of "naming," two things rather than one only, the world of the Many flows out as a complexly ramified mistake. This mistake is enshrined in and subsequently maintained in place by linguistic reification.
