468- Alphabetical Order
468- Alphabetical Order
11/30/21 by Daniel Semo, Joe Rosenberg
Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/132021017
Episode: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/stitcher.simplecastaudio.com/3bb687b0-04af-4257-90f1-39eef4e631b6/episodes/a1ce92f9-bc95-4feb-966b-eb65ff8f76ac/audio/128/default.mp3
In much of the western world, alphabetical order is simply a default we take for granted. Itβs often the one we try first — or the one we use as a last resort when all the other ordering methods fail. Itβs boring, but it works, and itβs so ingrained that itβs hard to imagine not using it. But despite its endurance for most of its history, the alphabet wasnβt initially used to order much of anything. Judith Flanders, author of A Place For Everything, a history of alphabetical order, says that in societies like ancient Rome and early medieval Europe, writing implements were still rare. So what mattered most was organizing knowledge in a way that helped you to memorize it. And that was usually much easier to do in the order you naturally came across the information, like: chronologically, or by size, or geography, or region, or hierarchically. Alphabetical Order