Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.Note: This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on a link and purchase an item, we will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. 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 FadimanSelected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club Covers every aspect of knowledge-scientific, intellectual, and historical-from the beginning of the human experience into the twenty-first century and beyond.
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. "About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.īook Description Paperback. Van Doren has distilled the ideology of scientific progress into a neat, short drink that should win him a place on every library shelf.Ĭopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. 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.
Ultimately, the best knowledge for him is Western scientific knowledge since it is cumulative, meaning that better theories nearly always replace worse ones. He warns that some good knowledge is unpleasant: we must now control our technology. The Chinese gave us Confucius, but Van Doren notes their main legacy seems to be good recipes for tyranny. 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. Van Doren, once editorial director of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, has produced a miniature encyclopedia, organized to show that there is progress in knowledge.
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