![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joculumThe discussion on crowleycrow LJ of "A smell of petroleum prevails throughout" has revealed the sheer variety of versions of this anecdote that exist on the Web. I am still ninety per cent certain that it was William James who wrote down this remarkable revelation of the secret of the universe just before lapsing into unconsciousness in experiments with ether (unless it was nitrous oxide) but in that case we need a reliable textual source, which we do not have. Surely someone out there with university connections can log onto a William James searchable database and produce chapter and verse?
The round robin of slowly altering anecdotes is nothing short of remarkable. (Bertrand Russell told the story with the punchline above, rather than "A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout," a common variant, and ascribed it to an anonymous individual; there is at least one website on which it has become Russell who had the experience, and the revelation was another commonly cited quotation).
Oral cultures are said by some to preserve, rather than alter, transmitted sayings. Presumably (just as Plato's Socrates tells us that Thamus predicted when Thoth invented writing), when literate individuals transmit the stories they remember, they show that their capacity to recall things accurately has gone to hell in a handbasket. (I had to look up the passage from Plato because, well, I only semi-remembered it and had thought it was in the Hermetic writings where one would expect to find a story about Thoth.)
The round robin of slowly altering anecdotes is nothing short of remarkable. (Bertrand Russell told the story with the punchline above, rather than "A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout," a common variant, and ascribed it to an anonymous individual; there is at least one website on which it has become Russell who had the experience, and the revelation was another commonly cited quotation).
Oral cultures are said by some to preserve, rather than alter, transmitted sayings. Presumably (just as Plato's Socrates tells us that Thamus predicted when Thoth invented writing), when literate individuals transmit the stories they remember, they show that their capacity to recall things accurately has gone to hell in a handbasket. (I had to look up the passage from Plato because, well, I only semi-remembered it and had thought it was in the Hermetic writings where one would expect to find a story about Thoth.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
nested quotes...
Date: 2008-01-07 07:58 pm (UTC)Seems to be Bertrand Russell's quote of William James's quote of some anonymous nitrous addict.
Try this (http://books.google.com/books?id=uIRi0BOvTi4C&pg=PA254&lpg=PA254&dq=%22smell+of+petroleum+prevails+throughout%22&source=web&ots=WvNZgGbCmP&sig=aN6r7WWZwE7pWGmuwIGS3726wwA)
Heidi
http://www.virushead.net/vhrandom/
Re: nested quotes...
Date: 2008-01-07 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 08:19 pm (UTC)And, for that matter, why spoken language changes faster than written language does.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 08:50 pm (UTC)Glad to know my original common sense view turns out to be right.