the visual function of language was given extraordinary 
extension and power by literacy. And this is a factor in the 
experimental method which may have been overlooked just 
because it was inconvenient to manage. But given intense and 
exaggerated action, “the disturbance produced in the whole 
organism or in a special function” is equally observable.

     Man the tool-making animal, whether in speech or in 
writing or in radio, has long been engaged in extending one or 
another of his sense organs in such a manner as to disturb all 
of his other senses and faculties. But having made these 
experiments, men have consistently omitted to follow them 
with observations.

     J. Z. Young, writing on Doubt and Certainty in Science,  
notes (pp. 67­8):