A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future: Amazon.ca: Charles Van Doren: Books

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Van Doren's provocative, encyclopedic guide to great thinkers, concepts and philosophical trends was a BOMC and History Book Club selection in cloth.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Van Doren, once editorial director of the Encyclopedia Brittanica , has produced a miniature encyclopedia, organized to show that there is progress in knowledge. He praises Columbus for giving us "a world well on the way to the unity it experiences today." India is mentioned as the source of the caste system. The Chinese gave us Confucius, but Van Doren notes their main legacy seems to be good recipes for tyranny. He warns that some good knowledge is unpleasant: we must now control our technology. Ultimately, the best knowledge for him is Western scientific knowledge since it is cumulative, meaning that better theories nearly always replace worse ones. An avid reader of Popular Mechanics who went to sleep in Peoria, Illinois in 1920 and awoke today with this book in her/his hands would probably find their ideals intact, needing only new technical knowledge and preparation for Van Doren's predicted revolt of intelligent machines. Van Doren has distilled the ideology of scientific progress into a neat, short drink that should win him a place on every library shelf.
- Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa, Canada
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
BY THE TIME written history began, some fifty centuries ago, mankind had learned much more than our primitive ancestors knew. Read the first page

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Concordance

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index

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Customer Reviews

57 Reviews

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4.0 out of 5 stars (57 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Only Religious Fools Could Hate This Book!, Mar 18 2004

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"jkfreund2000" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future (Paperback)

This book is both concise AND well written. It gives a thorough compilation of all the major achievements of the human race - in the areas of science, art, technology, medicine, politics, etc....

The only poor reviews given to this book are from those who feel threatened by its anti-religious overtones. But why shouldn't it have such subtext? Has not religion and religious beliefs remained a hindrance towards the acquisition of ALL great knowledge?? Just look at how the Catholic Church has demonized great men like Copernicus and Galileo.

Anyone who believes that religion is antiquated and that factual knowledge as well as logic and truth should be held in higher regard than humanity's need for an "all knowing father-figure," should read and enjoy this book.

And for those who are still caught in the web of religion, please read Freud's "Future of an Illusion," and have the courage to drop the safety net under your feet.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Author clearly favors socialism and less technology, July 10 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future (Paperback)

The fellow gives substantial credit to the Greek and Roman contributions to knowledge, but rather than simply lauding Aristotle's achievements and recognizing the limits of some of his theories, he frequently returns to his mistakes to point out that the lack of womens rights and slavery until the last century or so are largely his fault because he believed slaves and women to be inherently inferior and the rest of civilization agreed.

Other dubious claims:

- Technology is causing people to lose touch with the pastoral ideal living standard
- Machines will one day revolt against humans and have human reasoning abilities
- Some redistribution of wealth is important
- Modern, anti-structure art forms (cubism) were progress
- Freud, Marx, Hegel, Kant, Mann, Kafka and the ilk were visionaries of truth
- Uncertainty in life is so substantial so as to make the pursuit of precision pointless
- All of the chaos / uncertainty / unknowability therorists are visionaries
- The French revolution was one of the greatest of all time

Although I enjoyed the first half of the book, I start to question its validity given the author's bias to the irrational demonstrated in the second half of the book. I become suspect that he might have omitted or misinterpreted facts in the first half as well.

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5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent primer on history., May 31 2003

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Gaetan Lion - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future (Paperback)

A friend of mine recommended this book to me this way: "this book is like going back to school, and remembering everything you forgot. You will be taught by fabulous history teachers who will make sense out of whole of human history. Because historical events will make sense, you will understand and remember them so much better than the first time around, when you thought they were just random and boring."

My friend was absolutely right. I have been on a history kick ever since.

Charles Van Doren is really a tragic character. He is of "Quizz Show" fame. This movie described the historical events, whereby a young, attractive U of Columbia teacher (Charles Van Doren) got caught in the scandal of the TV game show 21, and was ousted of university circles for ever.

The only way he was still able to teach was through this book and others. After reading this book, you will agree he succeeded and redeemed himself.

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Most recent customer reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars More Fiction than Fact
Charles van Doren attempts the daunting task of summarizing and cataloguing all of recorded history in 412 pages. Read more

Published on Feb 26 2004 by Schuyler Peterson

1.0 out of 5 stars This guy is nuts
He makes WAY too many mistakes and states everything like it's fact!! He says that Shakespeare's plays weren't even written by Shakespeare himself, but by someone else and... Read more