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Syntopic reading can also bring disillusionment: once you have read “the” book on a subject you’ll notice that other books on the subject or touching upon it ar
by leokennis 5y ago
Syntopic reading can also bring disillusionment: once you have read “the” book on a subject you’ll notice that other books on the subject or touching upon it are a bleak extract of it at best, and mostly bullshit at worst.
And then you start to question all the knowledge you thought you’d gained from the books you read that weren’t “the” books.
It’s similar to being an expert in a field and shaking your head when a newspaper article completely butchers that subject. Do you then still trust that newspaper’s articles on anything else?
- alimov 5y agoI would say that once you read “the” book on some topic (or a series of such books) and then encounter snippets of the material here and there, you (I) begin to notice how much information is recycled and repackaged for different audiences, or like you say becomes “bleak extract at best, and mostly bullshit at worst.”
- gjadi 5y agoThat is not how Mortimer J. Adler defines syntopic reading in "How to Read a Book". For him, Syntopic Reading is about finding a new understanding that didn't exist in any of the books you are reading, but that you, as a reader, create. My take of Adler's method is that, if you can't find a new message in the books you are reading either: 1) you aren't putting enough effort in your reading 2) the books are not good enough (hence not worth your time to read)
- walterbell 5y agoWhen the book reads you.
- thewakalix 5y agoThat last paragraph, for those interested, is describing Gell-Mann amnesia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmn...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- alimov 5y agoI hadn’t heard of this before, thanks for sharing.