A History of Knowledge Past, Present, and Future

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ISBN: 9780345373168 | 0345373162
Cover: Paperback
Copyright: 3/17/1992

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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 Club

Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Author to Reader	p. xv
Progress in Knowledge	p. xv
Kinds of Progress in Knowledge	p. xvi
Universal History	p. xvi
Primitive Man	p. xviii
Knowledge of Particulars	p. xix
General Knowledge	p. xix
Certain Knowledge	p. xxi
Knowledge and Happiness	p. xxiii
Outline of the Book	p. xxiii
Wisdom of the Ancients	p. 3
Egypt	p. 4
India	p. 6
China	p. 7
Mesopotamia	p. 9
Aztec and Inca	p. 11
Human Sacrifice	p. 13
Judaism	p. 15
Christianity	p. 16
Judaism and Christianity Compared	p. 18
Islam	p. 19
Judeo-Christianity and Islam Compared	p. 20
Buddhism	p. 21
Lessons from the Past	p. 23
Alphabets	p. 25
Zero	p. 27
The Greek Explosion	p. 29
The Problem of Thales	p. 30
The Invention of Mathematics: The Pythagoreans	p. 34
The Discovery of Atomic Theory: Democritus	p. 38
The Problem of Thales: The Ultimate Solution	p. 41
Moral Truth and Political Expediency: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle	p. 42
The Fallacy of the Consequent	p. 44
Greece versus Persia: The Fruitful Conflict	p. 48
The Tragedy of Athens	p. 51
Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Invention of History	p. 53
The Spirit of Greek Thought	p. 56
What the Romans Knew	p. 60
Greek Theory, Roman Practice	p. 65
Law, Citizenship, and Roads	p. 67
Lucretius	p. 70
Cicero	p. 72
Seneca	p. 77
Tacitus	p. 81
What the Romans Did Not Know	p. 84
Light in the Dark Ages	p. 86
The Fall of Rome	p. 86
Post-Roman Europe	p. 88
The Triumph of Christianity: Constantine the Great	p. 91
The Promise of Christianity: Augustine	p. 92
After the Fall	p. 95
The Middle Ages: The Great Experiment	p. 98
The Struggle for Subsistence	p. 98
A World of Enemies	p. 99
The Problem of God	p. 100
The Science of Theology	p. 100
Theology in Other Religions	p. 102
Principles of Theocracy	p. 103
Empire and Papacy	p. 105
Monasticism	p. 106
Crusaders	p. 109
Millennial Fears, Postmillennial Achievements	p. 110
The Dispute about Truth	p. 112
Boethius	p. 113
Pseudo-Dionysius	p. 113
Avicenna	p. 114
Peter Abelard	p. 115
Bernard of Clairvaux	p. 116
Averroes	p. 117
Thomas Aquinas	p. 119
The Pyrrhic Victory of Faith over Reason	p. 122
Dante's Dance	p. 124
What Was Reborn in the Renaissance?	p. 127
The New Style in Painting: Perspective	p. 128
Man in the Cosmos	p. 129
The Revival of Classical Learning: Petrarch	p. 130
Inventing the Renaissance: Boccaccio	p. 132
The Renaissance Man	p. 134
Renaissance Men: Leonardo, Pico, Bacon	p. 137
The Renaissance Man and the Ideal of Liberal Education	p. 141
Renaissance Humanism	p. 142
Montaigne	p. 144
Shakespeare	p. 146
Cervantes	p. 148
The Black Death	p. 151
Gutenberg's Achievement	p. 153
Renaissance Cities	p. 155
Nation-States	p. 156
The Crisis of the Theocratic State	p. 158
Erasmus	p. 159
Thomas More	p. 160
Henry VIII	p. 161
Martin Luther	p. 163
Tolerance and Intolerance	p. 165
Man at the Center	p. 166
Europe Reaches Out	p. 168
Mongol Empires	p. 169
Marco Polo	p. 170
Voyages of Discovery	p. 172
Columbus	p. 174
Sailing Around the World	p. 177
The Birth of World Trade	p. 178
Trade in Ideas	p. 179
Homage to Columbus	p. 182
The Invention of Scientific Method	p. 184
The Meaning of Science	p. 184
Three Characteristics of Science	p. 187
Aristotelian Science: Matter	p. 190
Aristotelian Motion	p. 191
The Revolt Against Aristotle	p. 192
Copernicus	p. 195
Tycho Brahe	p. 196
Gilbert	p. 197
Kepler	p. 198
Galileo	p. 199
Descartes	p. 203
Newton	p. 205
Rules of Reason	p. 209
The Galilean-Cartesian Revolution	p. 211
An Age of Revolutions	p. 213
The Industrial Revolution	p. 213
Human Machines and Mechanical Humans	p. 214
An Age of Reason and Revolution	p. 216
John Locke and the Revolution of 1688	p. 218
Property, Government, and Revolution	p. 220
Two Kinds of Revolution	p. 222
Thomas Jefferson and the Revolution of 1776	p. 223
The Declaration of Independence	p. 224
Property in Rights	p. 226
Robespierre, Napoleon, and the Revolution of 1789	p. 228
The Rise of Equality	p. 232
Mozart's Don Giovanni	p. 234
Goethe's Faust	p. 238
The Nineteenth Century: Prelude to Modernity	p. 243
The Difference Money Makes	p. 244
Economic Life Before 1800: The Peasant	p. 245
The Lord	p. 247
The Cleric	p. 248
The King	p. 248
The Merchant	p. 249
The Rise of the Labor Market: Economics	p. 251
Faustian Development	p. 255
Marxism: Theory and Practice	p. 257
Marxian Insights	p. 261
Economic Facts: Steam Power	p. 264
Equality in the Muzzle of a Gun	p. 266
The Magic of Electricity	p. 269
Magical Mathematics	p. 271
New Ways of Seeing	p. 273
The End of Slavery	p. 275
Shocking the Bourgeoisie	p. 278
Darwin and Freud	p. 280
The World in 1914	p. 284
Economic Divisions	p. 284
The Study of War	p. 285
Colonialism	p. 287
The Boer War	p. 289
The Powder Keg of Europe	p. 289
Character of the 1914-1918 War	p. 291
Thoughts on War and Death	p. 292
Causes of War	p. 295
The Twentieth Century: The Triumph of Democracy	p. 297
The Progress of Democracy	p. 299
Communism	p. 304
Totalitarianism	p. 307
Theocracy in the Twentieth Century	p. 311
Economic Justice	p. 313
Why Not World Government?	p. 314
One World, One Human Race	p. 317
The Twentieth Century: Science and Technology	p. 321
Greek Atomic Theory	p. 321
The Revival of Atomic Theory	p. 323
What Einstein Did	p. 325
What the Bomb Taught Us	p. 327
The Problem of Life	p. 328
The Science of Heredity	p. 329
How DNA Works	p. 330
The Size of the Universe	p. 332
Galaxies	p. 332
The Smallness of Earth	p. 334
The Big Bang and the Primordial Atom	p. 334
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle	p. 337
Uncertainties of Knowledge	p. 338
One Giant Step	p. 341
Green Rebellion	p. 342
The Terrestrial Greenhouse	p. 343
Digital Computers and Knowledge	p. 345
Turing Machines	p. 348
Technological Dependence	p. 350
Triumphs of Medicine	p. 351
Drug Cultures	p. 353
The AIDS Challenge	p. 354
The Twentieth Century: Art and the Media	p. 356
The Media and Their Messages	p. 356
A Visual Revolution: Picasso, Braque, Cubism	p. 359
Pollock, Rothko, and the Hexagonal Room	p. 361
Urban Revolution: The Bauhaus and Le Corbusier	p. 363
Literary Prophets: Yeats	p. 365
A Passage to India	p. 366
The Castle and the Magician	p. 367
Waiting for Godot	p. 369
Mass Media and Education	p. 370
The Next Hundred Years	p. 375
Computers: The Next Stage	p. 377
The Moral Problem of Intelligent Machines	p. 379
Companion Computers	p. 379
The Birth of Thinking Machines	p. 381
Three Worlds: Big, Little, Middle-sized	p. 383
Chaos, a New Science	p. 384
Mining Language: Ideonomy	p. 386
Exploring the Solar System	p. 387
The Message?	p. 390
Man as a Terrestrial Neighbor	p. 392
The Gaia Hypothesis	p. 395
Genetic Engineering	p. 397
Eugenics	p. 398
Mapping the Genome	p. 400
Democracy and Eugenics	p. 402
Speed	p. 403
Addictions	p. 406
War in the Twenty-first Century	p. 408
Computer Revolt	p. 410
Index	p. 413
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

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A History of Knowledge Past, Present, and Future

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Table of Contents

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