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1001 Ideas That Changed the Way We Think (2013) General Editor Robert Arp: A Pre-read

★★★★☆

Title, Subtitle, Publication Date, Preface, Introduction

Title: 1001 Ideas That Changed the Way We Think

Publication Date: 2013

Despite the current fashion of criticizing Liberal Arts education, this book is proof enough that we have no reason to favor Science and Technology over the Humanities. Ideas that change the world as as likely to come from Religion or Philosophy or Architecture as they are from Chemistry or Astrophysics. And more importantly, it's when those disciplines work in concert that the real magic happens.

Moreover, studying big ideas from a wide array of sources is intellectually challenging, mentally broadening, and just plain fun. As we face an uncertain future it's most likely that the ideas that shape it will stand on the shoulders of the giants found herein.

What is an idea? Interestingly the definition isn't so simple, as is so often the case with words that are nearly universal and self-apparent. Plato used the word to refer to the real Form from which everything in the universe was a copy of varying quality. Christian Philosophy through the Middle Ages, thought that these Forms, or ideas, lived in the mind of the Christian God. It wasn't until the later part of this period that idea began to take on the connotations of a 'concept' or 'object of thought' rather than this 'real' thing one could consider through the mind. By the 17th century, evidenced clearly in the writings of some of the earliest Modern Philosophers, idea no longer had the implication of a Platonic Form but instead was "the object of the understanding when a man thinks". This idea, philosophically at least, held fast through the twentieth century when Mortimer Adler (author of [[][one of my Great Books]]) added the caveat that in order for an object of thought to be a proper idea the object of thought in question must be held in common between at least 2 people. Today, the word has "several connotations and denotations, many of which are aligned to these historical conceptions." In line with Modern Philosophy, an idea may be the image brought to your mind when a concept (like General Relativity) or entity (like the Eiffel Tower) is mentioned to you. An idea may be considered a synonym for 'concept' as well, such as 'digestion' or 'cost-benefit analysis' or 'addition'. Finally, an idea could be a 'goal, end, aim, or purpose'.

This book aims to collect 1001 of the most influential ideas throughout human history. Our actions are driven by our thoughts and our thoughts are made of ideas. When a new idea is unleashed upon the world, the effects can be enormous.

This book organizes ideas into 6 categories: Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, Science and Technology, Politics and Society, and Art and Architecture. Each entry should contain a description of exactly what the idea is, an account of its origin, a quotation that uses or is about the idea, and a brief explanation of why the idea is important. The ideas themselves are organized chronologically in as much as is possible, wherever possible using their earliest recorded date of the idea to place them. There are chapters for the Ancient World (2,000,000 BCE to 499 CE), The Middle Ages (500 to 1449), Early Modern (1540 to 1779), Late Modern (1780 to 1899), Early Twentieth Century (1900 to 1949), and Contemporary (1950 to 2013).

Some of the entries might sound more like inventions (Kinetoscope, the telephone, the map). These entries nevertheless try to discuss the idea behind the invention rather than the invention itself as much as possible.

Table of Contents

The table of contents is exactly as the editor said it would be. One neat feature though is the Index of Ideas by Category which is an alphabetical index but with the sub-categories broken out.

I'll record the page numbers so the relative space given to each period can be easily seen.

Ancient World 20

The Middle Ages 268

Early Modern 312

Late Modern 428

Early 20th Century 606

Contemporary 738

General Index 942

Index/Bibliography

The categories in rough order of coverage:

Science & Technology

Politics & Society

Philosophy

Religion

Art & Architecture

Psychology

Since each idea is covered in essentially the same detail as any other idea I'll simply record a list of ideas here that I found to be intriguing.

Art & Architecture

Krumping

Don Quixote

Feng Shui

Homophony

Hero

Panopticon

Postmodernism

Sewer System

Philosophy

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Banality of Evil

Lifeboat Earth

Deconstructionism

De Morgan's Laws

Infinity

Pragmatism

Skepticism

Space

Politics & Society

Ageism

Amazon.com

Art of War

Counterculture

Consumerism

Godwin's Law

Leninism

Male gaze

Morality of Terror

Restorative Justice

Sexting

Stages of History

Supermarket

Wikipedia

Psychology

Behaviorism

Child development

Lateral Thinking

Nature vs. Nurture

Pavlov's dog

Personality Indicator

Religion

Adam & Eve

Age of Reason

Atheism

Biblical textual criticism

Chakras

Feminist biblical exegesis

Kabbalah

Quakerism

Transubstantiation

Zen

Science & Technology

Abortion

Animal Magnetism

Archimedes Principle

Assembly Line

Binary code

Butterfly Effect

Clothing

Cybernetics

Electricity

Fifth element

Hippocratic oath

Light

Mathematical function

Paradigm shift

Pi

Speciesism

Theory

Symbols

Wine making

Zero

There's no bibliography.

Publisher's Blurb

This is a comprehensive guide to the most interesting and imaginative ideas from the finest minds in history, ranging from Confucius and Plato to today's cutting edge thinkers. You'll find many (and conflicting!) answers to some of life's enduring questions. There are also many entries that are remarkable from their sheer weirdness. "Supported by a wealth of striking illustrations and illuminating quotations, 1001 Ideas The Changed the Way We Think is both an in-depth history of ideas and a delightfully browsable source of entertainment."

Notable Chapters and Statements

Since there's no central argument I simply dipped in to some of the ideas I thought would be interesting.

The entry for Zero (attractive because of my deep love for Seife's work) was interesting at least for tracing the origination of Zero, one of my favorite parts from the book, which is stunning in how late it arrives to the Western World. However, it's explanation of what the import Zero is was so brief as to be nearly non-existent.

The Personality Indicator entry did accurately record the origination of the idea but the explanation wasn't quite right and it failed to record the controversy of the system compared to more modern systems like The OCEAN Model.

Banality of Evil, on the other hand, was covered quite well, discussing the historical context from which it came as well as the areas of humanity that have been affected by it.

The entry for De Morgan's Laws does accurately describe De Morgan's Laws but I wasn't left with any sense of why they changed the way we think.

The Abortion entry was good, accurately capturing the origination and development of the technology and the controversy around the practice.

I also thought the Restorative Justice entry was informative.

Overall though I would definitely say that while this book is a collection of quite a few important ideas, to actually gain much information about them (or maybe even an accurate understanding of them!) you'd really need to look elsewhere.

What is 1001 Ideas That Changed the Way We Think about, as a whole?

The book is about collecting 1001 Important Ideas from Human History into one volume so that important ideas can be discovered by curious minds.

What is being said in detail, and how?

Ideas from Science & Technology, Politics & Society, Religion, Philosophy, Art & Architecture, and Psychology are outlined from 2,000,000 BCE to 2013 BCE. Each attempts to define the idea, describe its origin, provide a quote regarding it or its use, and point at why it is considered important. However, the quality of each entry varies.

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The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs: Second Edition (1992) by John Simpson and Jennifer Speake: A Pre-read

★★★★☆

Title, Subtitle, Preface, Introduction

Title: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs: 2nd Edition

This book intends to provide a brief history of all proverbs in common use in Twentieth-Century Britain, or are at least 'particularly prevalent' in their country of origin (United States or elsewhere).

The authors intend 'proverb' to be a technical term, narrower than it has appeared in popular use and more specific than it has been historically. "A proverb is a traditional saying that offers advice or presents a moral in a short and pithy manner." (p. ix) It's also expected to be a complete sentence rather than "metaphorical phrases, similes, [or] descriptive epithets". These proverbs, then, fall into 3 main categories: 1. An "abstract statement expressing general truths", 2. "specific observations from everyday experience to make a point which is general", and 3. "sayings from particular areas of traditional wisdom and folklore."

Despite this stringent definition, some metaphorical phrases (e.g. "Cut off your nose to spite your face") are included because they are often encountered in 'proverb form' ("Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.").

Interestingly the role of proverbs has changed significantly over time. Classically they were thought to be universal truths and could thus be relied upon in scholarly debate to finalize an argument or as a rebuttal to a line of reasoning. Around the Eighteenth Century, though, we begin to see evidence that thinkers have turned on them because of their often contradictory nature and because of their necessary 'common sense' approach to wisdom which often fails to reflect (in themselves) the weirdness of the world. The reason this is mentioned at all is because the usage examples for each proverb often 'descend' from major, well-known, classical writers to minor or newspaper/magazine writers as the primary place for proverbs to survive is as a 'simple commentary' on life rather than as iron-clad logical proofs. It's also interesting to note just how many proverbs are recent in origin, another indicator of their enduring appeal to humanity.

On the subject of ordering and location, this dictionary has chosen to arrange the proverbs alphabetically according to their first significant word. So "All cats are grey in the dark" is found under "cats" and "You cannot put an old head on young shoulders" is under "old". To assist further in locating a proverb you know or can partially remember, cross references for as many significant words in the proverb are provided at their alphabetical position. So the first example is cross-referenced at "grey" and "dark" and the second at "head", "young", and "shoulder".

The selection of illustrative uses always attempts to locate the first recorded use of the modern form of the proverb. This is especially important for English proverbs as so many of them originated in other languages and obviously mutate over time. Proverbs which did originate in other languages have their originating quotations bracketed before their first English usage.

Much effort was spent on quotation verification, especially via primary sources, as many verification efforts previously had relied simply on showing quotations in earlier dictionaries which themselves were then unverified.

Quotations source titles have been modernized but the quotations other than Shakespeare themselves have not. References are generally by chapter when available and by some other consistent method when the work is not subdivided in that way. Contractions that occur frequently in medieval sources have been silently expanded.

One of the additions to the 2nd edition is a thematic index which should help readers find proverbs that they're unfamiliar with by subject matter rather than by word or by reading from front to back.

Table of Contents

The Table of Contents is uninteresting, other than pointing out that there's a bibliography.

Index/Bibliography

associates, friends

ways & means

great & small

good & evil

money, riches, wealth, inherited

work

necessity

hope & despair

prudence, thrift

speech & silence

women

trouble, misfortune

wrong-doing

weather

wisdom

truth, reality & illusion

tact

taste

thought

time

reciprocity

reputation

self-preservation

similarity & dissimilarity

society

patience & impatience

human nature, nature & nurture

love, marriage, blighted or rejected, prosperous

old age

luck

possibility & impossibility

poverty

manners

death

children, children & parents

food & drink, health, hunger

ignorance

life

fools

future

gains & losses, winners & losers

action & consequence, action & inaction, words & deeds

adversity, prosperity

decision & indecision, choice

discretion

efficiency

employers & employees

error

experience

fairness

appearance, deceptive, significant

beginnings & endings

boldness, courage

buying & selling

circumstance

contentment

The bibliography provides full citations for all cited works from the first edition of the work.

Publisher's Blurb

New proverbs are being created all the time. This work compiles over 1000 proverbs in use in the twentieth century with an explanation of their meaning if this isn't immediately obvious with numerous examples of usage.

Notable Chapters and Statements

He who is absent is always in the wrong.

There is no accounting for tastes.

As you bake, so shall you brew.

As you begin, so shall you proceed.

If you're born to be hanged then you'll never be drowned.

Commonly used to qualify another's apparent good luck.

Conscience makes cowards of us all.

Confess and be hanged.

Every elm has its man.

All is fish that comes to net.

Everything can be used to advantage.

Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

You cannot have your cake and eat it.

A hungry man is an angry man.

A liar ought to have a good memory.

Life isn't all beer and skittles.

Marry in haste and repent at leisure.

May chickens come cheeping.

The proverb literally means that the weakness of chickens born in May is apparent from their continual feeble cries.

Old sins cast long shadows.

Prevention is better than cure.

If you run after two hares you will catch neither.

It is too late to shut the stable-door after the horse has bolted.

We must learn to walk before we can run.

Young folks think old folks to be fools, but old folks know young folks to be fooled.

What is The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs: 2nd Edition about, as a whole?

This book aims to collect and provide illustrative uses of over 1000 proverbs in use in the English Speaking world in the twentieth century, together with an explanation of what a proverb actually is.

What is being said in detail, and how?

Proverbs are arranged by in alphabetical order according to their first significant word, together with a collection of verified published uses from their origination in English (or their original language if the proverb doesn't originate in English) through to the evidence for their usage in the twentieth century. There is also a thematic index to aid in discovering unfamiliar proverbs by topic rather than by word.

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Girls and Sex (2016) by Peggy Orenstein: A Pre-read

★★★★☆

Girls and Sex (2016) by Peggy Orenstein is an incredible and enthralling survey of the sexual landscape bequeathed to the women of the America (and perhaps the rest of the western world). It's written, quite self-consciously, by an outsider. Someone who stands roughly a generation removed from today's culture who nevertheless stridently believes in the progress made by feminism towards an egalitarian society, or at least the promise of said progress. What is so refreshing about the work, at least to me, is the honesty with which it questions the new dogmas surrounding sexual behavior and the so-called liberating effects that it's had. Orenstein is able to deftly ask the question of whether we're really making progress at all or whether we're running sideways as fast as we can towards somewhere with at least as many problems (novel though they may be) as the heavy-handed patriarcalism of the past we're running from. With chapter titles such as "Are We Having Fun Yet?" and "Matilda Oh Is Not an Object — Except When She Wants to Be", I found the book to be honest, direct, and insightful, regarding the paradoxes we've asked this generation of women to operate under.

The focus on first-hand accounts and interviews is also an important choice Orenstein makes. Rather than this being a book that is overly prescriptive or 'researchy', the author positions herself first as a listener, eager to understand how real girls think, feel, and experience sexual activity and expectations in all their forms.

Anyone who wishes to understand the pressures, fears, goals, and aspirations of our culture on women's sexuality should consider this book required reading. I'm even more excited than I was already to engage with Boys & Sex, Oreinstein's newer book aimed to listening to boys on the same subject.

Title, Subtitle, Preface, and Introduction

Girls & Sex: Navigating The Complicated New Landscape.

First: This is a book about girls and sex, not women and sex. That points necessarily at two things: 1. There's a generational gap hinted at here. The author is a listener and the speakers are primarily between the ages of 15 and 20, and 2. The subject being discussed is, unashamedly, unabashedly, and explicitly, sex. Not relationships write large or career aspirations or life goals but their experience of and thoughts towards sexual 'intimacy' (even if that word is almost laughable in the relation to how most sexual activity is describe herein).

Second: This book believes that the sexual landscape has changed. The world is different than it's been as the fallout of the sexual revolution continues to create seismic shifts in the fabric of our society. Furthermore this book is opinionated regarding the new landscape. While most of the public testimony regarding today's sexual culture is unwaveringly positive, speaking of it only in terms of liberation, empowerment, and self-expression while decrying only the vestiges of older misogynist culture like aggressive advances and double standards. But this book, right in the subtitle, calls the new landscape 'complicated', and its opinions of the landscape are just that: complicated.

There is no preface.

The introduction outlines where the impetus for this book came from. Orenstein is a mother of a rapidly aging daughter who was suddenly struck with the fact that while many others would consider her an expert on the matter, she herself felt woefully under-prepared and in the dark over how to help her daughter enter adulthood successfully and confidently.

It highlights the complexity of her own feelings regarding today's sexual culture. For instance: "Even as girls outnumbered boys in college, as they 'leaned in' to achieve their academic and professional dreams, I had to wonder: Were we moving forward or backward? Did today's young women have more freedom than their mothers to shape their sexual encounters, more influence and more control within them? Were they better able to resist stigma, better equipped to explore joy? And if not, why not?"

The author also talks about the inherent narrowness of the interviews conducted for the book, with most girls interviewed being in college or college bound, while at the same time referencing the breadth of the representation of the subjects.

Finally, and I think this is important, the introduction touches on the fact that how participants in this culture describe how they feel about the culture doesn't always line up with how they perceptively feel nor how those listening to them feel. "Even in consensual encounters, much of what the girls described was painful to hear." This book reflects my own feeling (though in a weaker form) that much of the so-called progress we've made is a sad mirage.

Table of Contents

The Table of Contents is quite poor and uninformative. One of the reasons this is a four-star book.

Index

Rape, Sexual Assault, Consent

Drinking

Relationships

Sexual Orientation and Identity

Colleges and Universities

Hookups, hookup culture

Sex Education

Virginity, Sexual Intercourse

Birth Control, Condoms, Contraception

Internet, Social Media

Cunnilingus, fellatio, oral sex

Orgasm

There's an extensive selected bibliography section.

Publisher's Blurb

Right at the top the book is emphatic that there's a wide generational gap between prior generations and today's generation of girls in terms of the sexual landscape they're faced with. That is a core theme of the book: Orenstein left grappling with a culture that she's simultaneously supportive of, baffled by, and concerned about.

This book is sourced from first-hand interviews with over 70 young women as well as a wide array of psychological, academic, and expert sources.

Topics covered include:

The effects the Porn industry is having on sexual expectations and understanding.

What it means to be "the perfect slut".

Why 'virginity' has become a pejorative.

What hookup culture is and what makes it complicated.

The prevalence of rape and assault on campus (and earlier).

While the book is opinionated, it nevertheless tries to hold back on being prescriptive, instead opting to open channels for dialog based on facts.

Notable Chapters and Statements

The book isn't organized around a progressive argument. Each chapter can more or less be read in isolation.

Chapter 1 covers self-objectification and whether that's empowering, belittling, or something else or in between. Chapter 2 covers the problematic reality that while sexual activity of one kind or another (mostly fellatio) has become quite common, it's also become emotionless. Pleasure and enjoyment are still largely a male privilege, despite the girls reporting a large degree of felt autonomy. Chapter 3 covers the complexity around the terminology used and also the lines that girls draw around appropriate, inappropriate, and intimate behavior. Chapter 4 covers hookup culture and the problem of assault and consent. Chapter 5 covers LGBTQI+ realities. Chapter 6 addresses rape and consent directly. Finally, Chapter 7 details problems and complexities around sex education and also the ever present specter of 'going Dutch', trying to bring some of that endlessly tempting culture in the Netherlands here.

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