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A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future :: 0345373162
Description
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A one-voume reference to the history of ideas that is a compendium of everything that humankind has thought, invented, created, considered, and perfected from the beginning of civilization into the twenty-first century. Massive in its scope, and yet totally accessible, A HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE covers not only all the great theories and discoveries of the human race, but also explores the social conditions, political climates, and individual men and women of genius that brought ideas to fruition throughout history.
"Crystal clear and concise...Explains how humankind got to know what it knows."
Clifton Fadiman
Selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book ClubEditorial Descriptions are usually submitted by the manufacturers, publishers and authors. Contact us if you are one of them, and wish to change the above description. |
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Author: Guest
Mr. Van Doren is both famous and infamous and that of course adds to the allure, but the first time I read this(easily 15 or more years ago) I had not heard of Charles Van Doren. But it quickly became one of my favorite reads; and now, all these years later, I still love it. He offers a wonderful perspective on World History that still plays itself out today.
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Author: Guest
This is a well written book by a true authority. Van Doren has pointed out some of the more important insights of western knowledge. I say western knowledge considering that is all he really covers. That is also why I didn't award the book five stars. Yet for someone to say that the information within doesn't apply would be stupid; the book is completely applicable.
Bottom line is: if you want to get a good grasp on important concepts throughout western history this is the book to get. You'll learn many new things and probably understand the things you already know even better than before.
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Author: Guest
I really enjoyed this book. It pulled a lot of history together in one great book. Excellent!
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Author: Guest
This book should more aptly be titled a History of Western Knowledge for it is sadly lacking in anything Eastern. This is a collection of one author's views of what constitutes the accumulated knowledge of world history. A monumental task that is not really possible to cover in one book of moderate length.
The author has advanced degrees in literature and mathematics but no real historical credentials. He does a decent job of putting into simple terms history as we know it from a western perspective. If he were a more informed historian I would think he definitely held biases but it isn't bias. It is actually an ignorance of certain historical realities.
His insights into the causes of war are really, really poor. One example of this is the two theories he purports for the cause of WWI. One is Freud's explanation that man needs war so it is inevitable; the other is that the world was simply bored. There is very little dedicated to the Franco-Prussian war and nothing on the Schlieffen plan. The Schieffen plan is what is directly responsible for WWI; there are no other theories that even come close.
When he starts getting into the future of mankind and computers taking over it starts getting too flaky. Also his guess on the progression of war is way off as we are witnessing in the age of terrorism.
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Author: Guest
...the future part was a different story. More on that later.
Van Doren's 'A History of Knowledge' is a truly remarkable book. He breaks down a number of key philosophies and religions and makes them palatable to the reader and also demonstrates their influence over time. It is a very well written book - very enjoyable to read.
He is particularly good at succintly describing why the end of the Roman Empire was such a disaster for knowledge and explaining why the Church was afraid of the astronomy discoveries of the Renaissance.
Problem areas:
-He almost exclusively focuses on Western Thought. Very little Asian philosophy, except for Confucious. How can it be a History of Knowledge when it leaves out most Asian thought?
-Sometimes he blithely labels things as fact. For example, he claims that Jesus was born on December 25th while every Christian church body on the planet merely claims that it is the observed day of his birth.
-He asserts that Martin Luther wanted his religious opponents to be murdered in the Thirty Years War. I know that Luther railed against his opponents but he also railed against religious war. Perhaps Van Doren is confusing Luther's strong support for a violent response to the incredibly violent Peasant's Uprising of his younger days. That was not so much a religious war as a response to the brutal treatment the peasants received. Luther was not sympathetic to the peasants since they had burned churches and killed priests.
-Van Doren goes onto shaky ground when discussing Darwin's Theory of Evolution when he supports it by saying that breeds of dogs are a great proof of this theory. I say that this is shaky ground because different dog breeds are not new species. This same argument is used by racists who claim that the different races are fundamentally different from each other due to breeding. It was an especially poor choice of an argument.
Van Doren's book goes off track when he gets to his future section. Until I reached that section, I had been telling my wife and my friends that I had been reading a phenomenal book - wonderfully thought out and written. Then Van Doren indulges in silly speculations about the future. His predictions about computer technology completely missed the direction that we took. He is very concerned about Artificial Intelligence, a field that is not nearly as hyped as it was when he wrote his book. Unfortunately, he sounds like he's a supporting writer for the movie 'I, Robot' rather than a serious writer.
He also advocates the need for a World Government, but the arguments he makes sound flat when compared to the history that he has just written - a history that warns of the dangers of concentrations of power. What is the old saw about learning history so as not to repeat it?
So, if I were grading the first 85% of the book, it'd be a solid 5 stars. However, that last 50 pages is truly awful and the overall score is dropped.
Despite the fact that most of this book deals with problems I have with the book, I do heartily recommend the book - just not the last section.
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