The gutenberg galaxy 131 and postulates of their geometry their basic assumption of congruence, and yet…it is among the most fundamental things in Greek geometry, and plays a determining role in its form, its power, and its limitations.” (p. x) Congruence was a new and exciting visual dimension, unknown to audile- tactile cultures. As Ivins says in this regard, “Unlike the eye, the unaided hand is unable to discover whether three or more objects are on a line.” (p. 7) It is very obvious why Plato might have insisted that “no one destitute of geometry enter” his academy. A similar motive leads the Viennese musician Carl Orff to forbid children to study music in his school if they have already learned to read and write. The visual bias so attained he feels makes it quite hopeless to develop their audile-tactile powers in music. Ivins goes on to explain why we have the illusion of space as a kind of independent container, whereas in fact space is “a quality or relationship of things and has no existence without them.” (p. 8) Yet in comparison with later centuries, “the Greeks were tactile minded and…whenever they were given the choice between a tactile or a visual way of thought they instinctively chose the tactile one.” (pp. 9–10) Such remained the case until well after Gutenberg in Western experience. Considering the history of Greek geometry, Ivins observes: “… again and again during a period of six or seven centuries they went right up to the door of modern geometry, but that, inhibited by their tactile-muscular, metrical ideas, they were never able to open that door and pass out into the great open spaces of modern thought.” (p. 58) When technology extends one of our senses, a new translation of culture occurs as swiftly as the new technology is interiorized. Although the main theme of this book is the Gutenberg Galaxy or a configuration of events, which lies far ahead of the world of alphabet and of scribal culture, it needs to be known why, without alphabet, there would have been no Gutenberg. And, therefore, we must get some insight into the conditions of culture and perception that make first, writing, and 9 then, perhaps, alphabet possible at all. 9 The Koreans by 1403 were making cast-metal type by means of punches and matrices (The Invention of Printing in China and its Spread Westward by T.F.Carter). Carter had no concern with the alphabet relation to print and was probably unaware that the Koreans are reputed to have a phonetic alphabet. Wilson’s account of the years of perceptual training needed to enable adult Africans to be able to see movies has its exact analogue in the difficulties which Western adults have with “abstract” art. In 1925 Bertrand Russell wrote his ABC of Relativity, pointing out on the first page that: