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Aug 14, 2021Liked by Sean Munger

The idea of what's been forgotten really is captivating. Think of all those Sophocles plays, the incredible rediscovery of classic texts after centuries through finding a translation of a translation in some obscure corner of an abbey, or the heartbreak of burnt libraries.

I'm curious about 2 phrases: 'Considering that more knowledge was probably forgotten during medieval times than has been discovered (or rediscovered) in the centuries since the Renaissance' and 'we, the human species, have forgotten far more knowledge in the past than we possess in the present, even in our haughty "Information Age."' Could you expand on that a bit? It seems so counter-intuitive, when recording and transfer of information was so painstaking and limited, and travel so slow and dangerous. How would such a thing be measured? Is it my bias for writing, that I'm not giving oral history/literature enough credit? Or perhaps my definition of knowledge is too narrow.

There is a fuzzy half-remembered quote rattling around the back of my brain about information overload - something about there being more information in a modern copy of the Sunday New York Times than an average person of the seventeenth? sixteenth? century would encounter in their entire life. But perhaps I imagined that, mis-remembered, or it was wildly off base?

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