Excellent overview of the ideas that has shaped our world.

books:

	• Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud Peter Watson Harper Perennial, 2006 - 848 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I think my brain actually grew bigger

I read this over a period of about 6 months, a few pages a day. Most of us have been over the material in this book one way or another during our lives. The thing is -- this text puts the facts and data together in a way that makes history make sense. So much of history seems like it was acted out by crazy people. It's so hard to understand why people do what they do. Watson makes the connections between what and why. And he does it in such a way that anyone can read it.

You should know though, Watson has a strong bias against all things religious. A main sub-theme in this book is "How we threw off the yoke of religion and superstition." Machts nichts to me but some find it annoying. I gave it 5 stars even so.

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Best book I have ever read

To read history as an evolution of ideas and inventions instead of a series of battles/wars or moving from one political machination to the next was most satisfying. Even more refreshing was to read a history that includes eastern as well as western innovation with many interesting asides and anecdotes. I've sent copies to my children and brother-in-law!

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Excellent overview of the ideas that has shaped our world.

I bought this book a while back ago, and since i've been on and off reading it because of the sheer volume of the book; it took me some time to get through, but hell, it was worth it.

There's alot of information packed densly inside of this brick, which is by far the best book i've ever read on history; it overviews clearly and and objectively the ideas that have been important throught history in terms of consequences, and in terms of shaping the culture of the period in question.

More importantly, however, is how all this is put togheter in a systematic contextual way, so as to leave the reader comprehending the ideas relation to one another, and finally, mr. peter watson presents us a final conclusion, which leads us to understand how all of this should be interpreted with regards to "the big picture".

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Exceptionally good of its kind

This book is the best single volume of the history of ideas that I have ever encountered. It has rich content, plenty of bibliographic detail for following up specific ideas, and is beautifully written.

Flawed but interesting

One must give Peter Watson credit where credit is due; he is not shy when it comes to examining topics of enormous scope, or at the very least craft titles that imply that this is his aim. Unfortunately, far from examining thought "from fire to Freud" Watson's work is of far more limited dimension, instead examining European cultural evolution from the early Middle Ages forward. His text examines several topics to understand their influence and development on civilization. His examination, however, proves too often limited, failing to look far enough to embrace the full range of his field. Most disappointing is his tendency to bifurcate ideas into two competing camps, and ignore the vast nuance in the middle.

For example, Watson divides thought into two opposing spheres : the physical (scientific or natural) world and the spiritual (religious). While it is true that this dichotomy exists in the West -- interestingly forced on the physical camp by the Church - far from inevitable, the division is a historical artifact created by social context. Those enchanted by Watson, and they are legion, will retort that his is not interested in the possible, but the actual, and even then only what occurred in (western) Europe. Yet even here, Watson ignores alternatives. Judaism, which Watson gives only so much attention as suits his goals, long embraced a notion of the co-existance and even integration of these two concepts. Many rabbis examined the physical world and sacred texts and sought reinterpretation of the former when they conflicted with the latter (two prime examples being Nachmanidies of Spain and Maimonidies of Egypt, two of the most significant sages of Jewish history). Watson might likewise have considered the ancient Greeks like Aristotle who sought to understand the spiritual through they physical.

When it comes to certain concepts Watson plainly tortures his topic to reach desired conclusions. Thus he imagines Freud's examination of the unconscious as on the continuum of the notion of the soul, yet this is at best forced. While it is true that Freud postulated a division between mind and body - not surprising given the technology available to him - but far from a notion of rote ritual, he developed a theory based on observation and imagined it being refined over time by experimentation. Even a cursory comparison of this with religion reveals the extreme limits of the comparison.

This brings us to the place where Watson succeeds, and in my opinion shines. His examination of the notion of the controlled experiment, that instead of being limited to observations as they occur people can create things to observe in order to test hypothesis, is nothing short of brilliant. This concept may be the driving force of the creation of modern science, a concept that allowed humanity to tame the atom and journey to the stars. Despite its other short comings, this makes Watson's book worth reading and presents an idea worthy of further consideration.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Peter Watson's hugely ambitious and stimulating history of ideas from deep antiquity to the present day—from the invention of writing, mathematics, science, and philosophy to the rise of such concepts as the law, sacrifice, democracy, and the soul—offers an illuminated path to a greater understanding of our world and ourselves.

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