I'm about halfway through reading Bertrand Russell's amazing and voluminous A History of Western Philosophy. Philosophy in general and the history of the evolution of thought has been a blind spot of mine. I blame everyone except myself of course -- my teachers, college requirements, family, cat, etc. For some reason nobody told me that it might be important to study how people think, and know, and know why they know.
I discovered this blind spot by reading Karen Armstrong's The History of God (which is also a great book that I will comment on in more depth in another post). Not surprisingly, it turns out that thinking about the supernatural is just another kind of thinking; and that how we think about things like knowledge is influenced by, and a part of how we think about our relationship to the universe.
That all seems like a complex and not-so-succinct way of saying that I believe we could all benefit from reading up a bit on philosophy in general, and the history of philosophy in particular. It's been said that "there's nothing new under the sun." While I don't think that's quite right, it's probably not too great an exaggeration to say that any interesting thoughts you have, so did Plato or Socrates 2000+ years ago.
Russell's book is a great read because he takes the time to explain the history of the times in which his subjects were working. However is does go on and on. Rumor has it that he wrote all his books essentially in one pass -- churning out the complete text in long hand and then sending it off to be published. True or not, it could use with a bit of editing. A much more succinct account of a similar topic is Richard Osborne's Philosophy for Beginners. It takes a comic book (or "graphic novel") approach to the same topic. The two books could not be more different in their approach, but each is greatly valuable and enjoyable.
I discovered this blind spot by reading Karen Armstrong's The History of God (which is also a great book that I will comment on in more depth in another post). Not surprisingly, it turns out that thinking about the supernatural is just another kind of thinking; and that how we think about things like knowledge is influenced by, and a part of how we think about our relationship to the universe.
That all seems like a complex and not-so-succinct way of saying that I believe we could all benefit from reading up a bit on philosophy in general, and the history of philosophy in particular. It's been said that "there's nothing new under the sun." While I don't think that's quite right, it's probably not too great an exaggeration to say that any interesting thoughts you have, so did Plato or Socrates 2000+ years ago.
Russell's book is a great read because he takes the time to explain the history of the times in which his subjects were working. However is does go on and on. Rumor has it that he wrote all his books essentially in one pass -- churning out the complete text in long hand and then sending it off to be published. True or not, it could use with a bit of editing. A much more succinct account of a similar topic is Richard Osborne's Philosophy for Beginners. It takes a comic book (or "graphic novel") approach to the same topic. The two books could not be more different in their approach, but each is greatly valuable and enjoyable.
Despite all the accolades given Bertrand Russell, I can't get past his colossal failure, "Principia Mathematica." I only postulate that he was so far out on a limb that even though he may have known that this work was doomed for failure, he continued to patch this work, only to cause more problems. At least Frege knew to give up, though it send him into a deep depression. The peak moment of maximum suckiness was probably in 1931 when Godel published his famous proof on undecidability. (Or maybe that moment was when Russell himself feared he was doomed for failure when he stumbled upon what became known as Russell's Paradox but couldn't prove he was doomed.)
Normally, I refrain from such commentary and let the man rest in peace. However, the previous post on FAIL was just too ironic for me to resist.