Thoughts on Timelessness

As I read through these ancient texts, ruminate on them, post them here, and comment on them, I am continually amazed at how similar the basic elements of human life are from one millennium to the next. I find it remarkable that something someone wrote more than 2000 years ago should be of any value at all to modern persons, and yet I continually find the most distilled wisdom in these ancient texts. It reminds me of a quote from Simone Weil: "Only what is eternal can be certain of being contemporary."

There is a timelessness to these great texts and the thoughts of their authors that makes them contemporary for all ages, precisely because they deal with the fundamental elements of human nature. This is one of the ways Adler distinguished a "great work": its staying power, or its ability to speak to us again and again regardless of changing circumstances.

Carry on and have a nice weekend!

Analytical Reading (part 1)

I've recently started reading a new book by Gavin Menzies entitled The Lost Empire of Atlantis. I thought that I would take this opportunity to give a practical walk-through of some of the steps of analytical reading as described by Adler and Van Doren in How to Read a Book. The first step centers around the idea of gathering as much basic information about the book as quickly as possible without really reading anything. (I know, it sounds counter-intuitive, but it's a good first step.) Adler and Van Doren call this "Inspectional Reading", but I think it's a good first step to take in Analytical Reading too...

Step 1: Know what kind of book you're reading. For me, this new book is non-fiction in the history genre. Gavin Menzies is a retired naval officer and has written other books about naval history. This is a good time to inspect the obvious elements of the book: title, table of contents, index, dust-jacket notes. The full title of the book is: "The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed: The astonishing true story of the rise and violent end of the Minoans, the forgotten ancient civilization that discovered America and sparked the Atlantis legend". This is a very descriptive title. The author is telling me up front that he will be linking the legend of Atlantis to the ancient Minoan civilization. He also claims that this is a "true story", and he tells us that he will claim that the Minoans discovered America. These are some bold claims for a subtitle! I don't want to type the entire dust jacket here, but it goes on to tell me that Menzies will be presenting geological, archeological, and DNA evidence.

It never hurts to know a little about your author as well, particularly on what authority he makes his claims and what others in his field think about him. The copious quotes from newspapers and book-reviewers that publishers tend to put all over the dust-jacket and the inside of a book now-a-days can give you some insight, but it is important to remember that the publisher is obviously only going to put good things in there.

The next two things you want to inspect are the table of contents and index. Browsing through the index, I notice some of the entries which occur often or have multiple sub-headings are: stars, Thera, ships, tin, pyramids, navigation, Minoans, Mycenae, languages, Lake Superior, Knossos, Homer, Ireland, India, Egypt, Crete, cotton, copper, animals, and Americas. This further supports the information I've already discovered that points to a book about a Minoan sea-faring civilization that had a vast trading empire (note all the various locations that are prominent in the index, as well as the goods which would have been traded...). The prominence of tin and copper are no surprise, as the Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization, and those are the two metals that create Bronze.

Also, Menzies provides a wonderfully analytic table of contents that really breaks his book down into logical sub-sections. The 41 chapters are grouped into six sections. I don't want to type out the whole table of contents, but I will list the six sections here, and you can see how they give the reader a good idea of where the author is going: 1) Discovery: The Minoan Civilization ; 2) Exploration: Voyages to the Near East ; 3) Journeys West ; 4) Examining the Heavens ; 5) The Reaches of Empire ; 6) The Legacy.

One last preliminary note: this is also a good time to check out maps and other auxiliary items the author might have added. In the case of my book, there are extensive maps, pictures, and timelines. All of these support the conclusions about the book that I've mentioned above.

Misinterpretation and What We Can Learn from Mr. Romney

This is not a political blog. This is a blog about books, reading, and critical thinking. However, being a widely read individual and a responsible citizen who keeps up on current affairs, I often make connections between what I observe in the world and what I find in books. This intersects with the realm of politics, but my motivation for writing it is purely academic. First a disclaimer: I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I am not impressed with either of our presidential candidates this year. If President Obama had made the error I’m about to discuss, I would be writing the same post.

As it happens, the error was Mr. Romney’s. This letter, posted in the New York Times, and written by the brilliant scholar Jared Diamond (professor at the University of California, and author of Collapse, Guns, Germs, and Steel, and other insightful, thought-provoking books) details how Mr. Romney either read Diamond’s Gun, Germs, and Steel and completely misunderstood it, or referenced said text as supporting a piece of his foreign policy position, when, in fact, the text does not say what Mr. Romney claims it said.

So one of three things is true: 1) Mr. Romney did not understand Diamond’s work; 2) Mr. Romney understood it and deliberately twisted Diamond’s meaning to suit his own purposes; or 3) Mr. Romney has never read this book, but someone on his staff pulled quotes and references that seemed to give some support to Mr. Romney’s position and Mr. Romney blindly repeated the references without looking into it himself (and, dare I suggest, learning something!).

Whichever of the three options above happen to be true, I am pointing this out for young scholars everywhere, because this is a problem that I see among my students regularly: the failure to carefully read and consider what an author is saying before attempting to deputize her or him into one’s argument as supporting evidence. I teach high school, and one of the most common mistakes I see is the mistake of a student not carefully reading a text and fully understanding it before trying to make use of it in supporting, defending, or attacking a position.

For all young scholars, let this be an object lesson: we have a duty to authors and to ourselves to carefully and thoughtfully read any material we might want to examine or explore as we try to form an argument around a topic. Adler discusses this duty that reads have toward authors in a book I’ve already discussed on this blog How to Read a Book. His discussion of analytical reading and its importance is highlighted by this example. One of the reasons we read analytically is so that we can intelligently and accurately talk about an author’s ideas.

I once heard it said that a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Mr. Romney’s failure, can be a lesson to us all.