Umberto Eco on Lists

September 23, 2018 11:11 AM

"The list is the origin of culture," said Umberto Eco About the exhibition on the history of the list he curated at the Louvre. "It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often."
posted by MovableBookLady (9 comments total)

Even though he's dead, I still don't want to get in an argument with Umberto Eco. I can't really argue with this, although I'd point out that the making of lists led to the creation of mathematics.
posted by acrasis at 1:00 PM on September 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

Hmm. Written lists are just orthographical or pictographical ways to represent grouped items. Items are grouped according to all sorts of thematic relationships. They fundamentally represent a repetition of the implied word “and” to link concepts.

It’s probably safe to say that verbal lists coincided with the earliest of language development, and surely were being made before writing developed. Writing them down was done for the same reason other things were written down: to preserve or transport one’s thoughts faithfully.

I’m reminded of the classic Sesame Street segment that’s been stuck in my brain since the ‘70s: “A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter. If you can’t remember, I’ll write it down for you.”

I would have loved to spend a few hours getting lost in Eco’s library...
posted by darkstar at 1:24 PM on September 23, 2018

For the computer programmers in the house...
"Every sufficiently complex application/language/tool will either have to use Lisp or reinvent it the hard way."
posted by kokaku at 2:30 PM on September 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

It’s probably safe to say that verbal lists coincided with the earliest of language development

Pretty safe. I'd say the main risk is wandering off into a daydream wherein paleolithic cave-dwellers are taking attendance before the hunt, with the cheif's assistant ticking off names on the moose-antler equivalent of a clipboard.
posted by sfenders at 3:01 PM on September 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

> Even though he's dead, I still don't want to get in an argument with Umberto Eco.

I think Borges could probably take him.

My second-favourite list: Before, behind, between, above, below.
posted by Leon at 3:43 PM on September 23, 2018 [8 favorites]

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death!
posted by clew at 10:54 PM on September 23, 2018

Borges could probably take him

Borges is absolutely number one on the list, the question in my mind is whether Eco or Calvino is number two.
posted by Segundus at 11:18 PM on September 23, 2018

Rabelais, the 16th century French author, would have lists, long lists, in his marvelous Gargantua & Pantagruel. Lists of games, books, types of fools, etc. I’m reading once more a John Barth novel, The Sotweed Factor, from the early 60’s. It has a similar list. I think Rabelais is the father of literary lists.
posted by njohnson23 at 3:19 PM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Even though he's dead, I still don't want to get in an argument with Umberto Eco.

Frankly, now is the perfect time.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:47 PM on September 25, 2018