5 ms·

Descartes wrote that reading great books is like having a conversation with the greatest minds who have ever lived - and even at that, hearing only the absolute

by dawg- 7y ago

Descartes wrote that reading great books is like having a conversation with the greatest minds who have ever lived - and even at that, hearing only the absolute best of their thinking. I think it's a matter of filters. On Twitter where there is almost no filter, you will be reading almost exclusively garbage. You may just be better off reading erotic romance novels than reading unfiltered Twitter. HN is a little more tightly filtered, the quality of stuff posted is generally higher, and it's probably more worth your time. But it's hard to beat hundreds or thousands of years of filtering through the best thoughts of the best minds. When you pick up the plays of Sophocles or the writings of Cicero you know that people from radically different societies and ages of history have found wisdom and insight in their thoughts. So I think there is some "magic" in books in that they have had time to age, and that thousands of very smart people have found value there.

steve1977 7y ago
If you would read 200 great books by the greatest minds, you would probably be done after one year.
slg 7y ago
Descartes lived in a time when most people couldn't even read and therefore the people who actually wrote books might well have been some of "the greatest minds who ever lived". Today almost everyone can read and almost everyone has the potential to write a book. So if we are talking about baseline quality, the magic of books has decreased a lot since the enlightenment. Today a book is just an indication of quantity of writing and not necessarily an indication of quality. And it isn't like the "great minds" aren't also on Twitter or writing shorter form articles. The quality is there too, it just might take a little extra effort to find it.
- j7ake 7y ago
  One solution is to read books that have survived the test of time (e.g., Descartes).
  - excursionist 7y ago
    The problem is many many books survived the test of time and a lot of such non-fiction books are outdated/incorrect by modern standards.
    - j7ake 7y ago
      I’ve found that the classic fiction books have revealed more fundamental truths than modern non fiction books. Even scientific books that are out of date have deep insights into nature for example the origin of species, what is life?, and origin and history of conscientious.
      - mntmoss 7y ago
        Also my sentiment. Good fictional storytelling describes the corners and in-betweens of human experience; non-fiction typically describes a mix of technical tools(basically trade skills and weaponizable knowledge) and self-promotion(the book was in some fashion written for a career purpose). The exceptions abound, of course, but categorically speaking, you only need some technical knowledge. It's the "how to lead your life" knowledge that is harder to glean, and one most resistant to taking a head-on approach like studying all the philosophers and then ranking their greatness in a spreadsheet.
  - arandr0x 7y ago
    I've got to say this: reading fiction that survived the test of time was like having thousands of substitute parents who were better at raising me than my own.
mfalcon 7y ago
You're right and it's something that's related to the Lindy effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect). "The Lindy effect is a theory that the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy."
ken 7y ago
Devil's advocate: I read some Plato earlier this year, and I confess I was unimpressed. I had always been taught that he was a great philosopher, but apparently his philosophy was: if you don't know something, just make it up, in exquisite detail. I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of it, except how much the ancient Greeks loved mathematical purity, and didn't have the scientific method. What we know in modern terms from modern books is the best thoughts of the best minds filtered down through the ages. I don't need to read the rough drafts.
- dawg- 7y ago
  Fair enough, I'm just glad you put forth the effort and then came to your own conclusions about what you read instead of thinking what everyone told you to think. Your observation that the Greeks didn't have "the" scientific method is, to me, what makes them so very interesting and what made their thought so original. Plato was one of the very first people writing down his answers to the question "How do we know things?", which is the same question that the scientific method tries to answer. You can trace his ideas throughout history and it's really astonishing to think about. Plato's thought heavily influenced early Christian theology, then you move on to people like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, who influenced the monastic orders where some of the first properly "modern" scientific experimentation began taking place in the middle ages and we move on to the Enlightenment from there. I think the value of reading the guy who started all that speaks for itself. If you don't believe me, there is always Alfred North Whitehead's famous quote to the effect that all of Western philosophy is essentially a series of footnotes on Plato.
  - ken 7y ago
    Some "footnotes"! Yes, I agree that "original" would be an apt description. Plato: Fire is obviously made of tiny tetrahedrons, because it feels sharp and stabby when you touch it, and tetrahedrons also have sharp points, QED.† † Everyone else, after Chemistry: OK so that didn't turn out to be true at all.
    - dawg- 7y ago

by dawg- 7y ago

steve1977 7y ago

If you would read 200 great books by the greatest minds, you would probably be done after one year.

slg 7y ago

Descartes lived in a time when most people couldn't even read and therefore the people who actually wrote books might well have been some of "the greatest minds who ever lived". Today almost everyone can read and almost everyone has the potential to write a book. So if we are talking about baseline quality, the magic of books has decreased a lot since the enlightenment. Today a book is just an indication of quantity of writing and not necessarily an indication of quality. And it isn't like the "great minds" aren't also on Twitter or writing shorter form articles. The quality is there too, it just might take a little extra effort to find it.

j7ake 7y ago
One solution is to read books that have survived the test of time (e.g., Descartes).
- excursionist 7y ago
  The problem is many many books survived the test of time and a lot of such non-fiction books are outdated/incorrect by modern standards.
  - j7ake 7y ago
    I’ve found that the classic fiction books have revealed more fundamental truths than modern non fiction books. Even scientific books that are out of date have deep insights into nature for example the origin of species, what is life?, and origin and history of conscientious.
    - mntmoss 7y ago
      Also my sentiment. Good fictional storytelling describes the corners and in-betweens of human experience; non-fiction typically describes a mix of technical tools(basically trade skills and weaponizable knowledge) and self-promotion(the book was in some fashion written for a career purpose). The exceptions abound, of course, but categorically speaking, you only need some technical knowledge. It's the "how to lead your life" knowledge that is harder to glean, and one most resistant to taking a head-on approach like studying all the philosophers and then ranking their greatness in a spreadsheet.
- arandr0x 7y ago
  I've got to say this: reading fiction that survived the test of time was like having thousands of substitute parents who were better at raising me than my own.

mfalcon 7y ago

You're right and it's something that's related to the Lindy effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect). "The Lindy effect is a theory that the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy."

ken 7y ago

Devil's advocate: I read some Plato earlier this year, and I confess I was unimpressed. I had always been taught that he was a great philosopher, but apparently his philosophy was: if you don't know something, just make it up, in exquisite detail. I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of it, except how much the ancient Greeks loved mathematical purity, and didn't have the scientific method. What we know in modern terms from modern books is the best thoughts of the best minds filtered down through the ages. I don't need to read the rough drafts.

dawg- 7y ago
Fair enough, I'm just glad you put forth the effort and then came to your own conclusions about what you read instead of thinking what everyone told you to think. Your observation that the Greeks didn't have "the" scientific method is, to me, what makes them so very interesting and what made their thought so original. Plato was one of the very first people writing down his answers to the question "How do we know things?", which is the same question that the scientific method tries to answer. You can trace his ideas throughout history and it's really astonishing to think about. Plato's thought heavily influenced early Christian theology, then you move on to people like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, who influenced the monastic orders where some of the first properly "modern" scientific experimentation began taking place in the middle ages and we move on to the Enlightenment from there. I think the value of reading the guy who started all that speaks for itself. If you don't believe me, there is always Alfred North Whitehead's famous quote to the effect that all of Western philosophy is essentially a series of footnotes on Plato.
- ken 7y ago
  Some "footnotes"! Yes, I agree that "original" would be an apt description. Plato: Fire is obviously made of tiny tetrahedrons, because it feels sharp and stabby when you touch it, and tetrahedrons also have sharp points, QED.† † Everyone else, after Chemistry: OK so that didn't turn out to be true at all.
  - dawg- 7y ago