Sophic

Sophic is a term used by Mormon apologist, scholar, and author Hugh Nibley to explain the shift from the tradition of oral-formulaic composition to that of the written word—sophic corresponding to the written word, the word "mantic" corresponding to the oral formulaic tradition. According to his theory, the mantic was a tradition relying entirely on God and prophets for knowledge. A person in that time period could go directly to the wise man, who simply asked God, the great spirit, or the universe and shared his directive. The mantic experience was a communal one—information was oral in mantic societies because everybody needed to be able to repeat and remember knowledge together. Sacred memories and information were encoded in a way that the community could take part in them together. The shift to the sophic tradition meant a more individually centered society, gleaning knowledge from more of the scientific method-type mindset. This individual crusade for knowledge necessitated a way to transmit knowledge to others who may have the same question, leading to a written tradition. This also led to more standardized and replicable acquisition of knowledge. For example, an experiment in a laboratory ideally must be replicated several times in different laboratories to be considered valid.