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It's hard to compare ancient books whose influence is clearly enormous -- e.g. analects of confucious and the new testament -- to more recent books whose influe
by Tloewald 13y ago
It's hard to compare ancient books whose influence is clearly enormous -- e.g. analects of confucious and the new testament -- to more recent books whose influence is hard to estimate, especially in the longer term, so it's necessarily a silly but interesting exercise. And, is a book influential for being famous or having an impact or simply acting as a standin for influence that clearly exists? E.g. I doubt Einstein's influence stems from his book on relativity.
- gruseom 13y agoThere's no doubt that many of these books are standins for personal influence. It's sort of a convention for lists like that.
- ganeumann 13y agoBut it would be easy to make a long, long list of other works and of important people who were influenced by the Analects or by the New Testament. Or indeed, by most of the books on this list. A list of works and people influenced by Gurdjieff would not be very long. I would be curious to see his reasoning here, because without an explanation it brands the whole list as personal opinion.