Another Short History of Linguistics (76)

Perhaps we can use computer memory to evaluate single person's knowledge and wisdom for people who lives in today. That is to say, the more you use the computer’s memory, the better or harder your mind have worked; not include the graphic memory. In this way we can roughly evaluate the work of mind for a single person. Similarly, we can use all the media of each time to evaluate the work of mind for people lived in that time.

With this concern a Chinese have questioned the truth of Aristotle. It was said that he had written three million words, during life time. But the question is, did he get enough writing carrier? How many parchment or papyrus should he use? In China 道德经 had five thousand characters. Confucius and his disciple together had fifty thousand Characters. The Bible have fifty thousand words. Shakespeare had eight hundred thousand words. How could Aristotle write three million words, in his living years?

The most probably reality is that there was a person called Aristotle who lived in Athens, who had written around one to three hundred words during life time. But where came the rest ninety percent of words? The answer is that they are the work of scholars of reinvasion because the power of church was too strong, any mistake may be the result of death by fire, on the other hand the development of capitalism required new idea, and so any new idea was expressed under the name of an ancient Greece.  So by translation, the word increased sharply. The strange thing is that if Aristotle did write so many words why we can't find even one page of them. While we can find thousands writing material that written by ancient scholar in China at that time.