Work done in the wake of the pioneering studies of Goody and Watt, Havelock, and others has put on the agenda a series of evidently crucial, if highly obscure, questions. If we can all agree that the existence of written records and other types of texts makes a difference, the issue is: what difference? The key questions include: who is in control; who makes the texts; who has access to them; who uses them; and for what purposes? How are those who do the writing recruited and trained? How and by whom is the ability to read them acquired? Who is responsible for the transmission and dissemination of texts or for deciding which texts are for more general, which for only restricted, circulation? What, indeed, did “circulation” consist of, and what, more generally, were the occasions on which the texts were used or their contents performed? We shall certainly not be in a position to appreciate the differences literacy makes in a given society at a given period until we have some idea about the answers to questions like those – not that that list is meant to be exhaustive. To get a sense of those differences, we need, ideally, to take a range of different societies and periods into account: we need, in fact, a comparative approach.

Let me explain my agenda. What were the different effects, on ancient Chinese and Greek science, of the modes of literacy for which we have evidence?