Our Journey, Day 68

Posted to Note-Making, since it's mostly about that.

After reading Adler and Van Doren's How to Read a Book, I have become very interested in seeing what Adler and his associates did in the creation of the Great Books of the Western World. The first three volumes of the 54-book set are a small introduction called The Great Conversation, followed by two thousand pages of The Syntopicon, divided into two books. The first covers 50 of the 102 topics into which the editors of the Great Books divided all Western thought in the 1940s.

I bought volume 1, because the topics are alphabetical and I thought it would be interesting to see what they had to say about History. I am not entirely sure what to expect. Although the editors of the series and authors of The Syntopicon were erudite scholars, as far as I know they were not professional historians. And even if they had been, the state of the profession in the 1940s when they were working was quite a bit different. The Consensus period was about to begin, which would be followed by the new social history in the 1960s and then the explosion of specialty disciplines such as environmental history, women's history, and post-colonial history that grew out of it. So in a sense, The Syntopicon represents a sort of time capsule, at least for history.

I can look at other sections too, of course. The fifty topics begin with "Angel" and end with "Love". Yes, I had a similar reaction to my friend Chris (mentioned in the book club meeting last Saturday) and almost slammed the book shut when I saw "Angel". So I suppose that means I ought to look more closely at that section at some point and see how the authors came to believe that topic was one of the 102 most important in Western culture.

In any case, whether I agree with them or not, the effort was monumental. In a way, this was sort-of the classic (final) project of late modernity. Classifying, indexing, and cross-referencing all the important ideas of a civilization that over the generations between the Renaissance and the twentieth century grew to global prominence both socially and culturally. Maybe that's a western conceit -- perhaps there were hundreds of millions of people living somewhere in 1950 who were unaffected by the west. But where? Certainly not in India or China, which were both breaking free from over a century of colonialism. They may have had their own cultures, but they were certainly affected by the empires that were the product of western thought.

I suppose that's a way of saying that as I'm exploring this volume I'll be aware of its place in history. But I don't think that admitting the limitations imposed on people's thinking by a time and place disqualifies their thought from our consideration. It would be ridiculous and arrogant to imagine the same constraints don't apply to us, here and now. And, as I said, this book is a monument to the belief that there was value in understanding and comparing the foundational elements of our culture.

While it might be interesting to do (and document) a multi-year exploration of the entire Great Books series, I'm not undertaking that just yet. For now, I'm going to explore The Syntopicon, and maybe suggest ways it could be used as a starting point for a new scholar. Also, there are obvious opportunities to think about ways new technologies and tools could be applied to such a study. So, over the next few weeks I'll start working on what Adler might call an analytical reading of this book. Maybe a comparative (my word for "syntopical") reading, if I imagine new media such as Obsidian vaults also as texts. I imagine this proceeding in a series of steps. First, reading and highlighting the volume I bought. Then making notes about the passages that stood out to me. Then building those observations and comments into a thesis and argument or narrative. Then responding.

When I was confronted with Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten and Scott Scheper's "Antinet" ideas, that prompted me to think through my own ideas about how to do and teach note-making. The result was my handbook, How to Make Notes and Write. I suppose the ultimate result of this exploration will probably be another expansion. So stay tuned for How to Read, Make Notes, and Write, maybe coming in 2024.