and literal (this seems to be common, and understandable, in
oral cultures). Aristotle took an earlier writer, Empodocles, to task for
offering the statement that sea water must be the sweat of the earth because
is was salty along with other literal statements.

Walter Ong makes the suggestion that all the fuss about transubstantiation
was due to a similar lack of cultural sensitivity to differences in
accuracy.

You wrote:
In any event, natural language and various practical classification schemes
have bee