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The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View |
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The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View
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by Richard Tarnas
Sales Rank: 18431
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List Price: $17.95
$12.21
At Amazon
on 6-20-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 560 pages
Published by: Ballantine Books March 16, 1993
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0345368096
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0345368096
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
Weighs: 1.3 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Tarnas charts the development of Western thought from the ancient Greeks, throwing a sharp light on ideas central to the modern outlook.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Joseph Campbell
"The most lucid and concise presentation I have read of the grand lines of what every student should know about the history of Western thought."
Reader Reviews
This book starts well. I found the introduction to Greek philosophy rewarding in the way it made clear various strands running through the work of Plato and Aristotle. Later he piqued my interest in medieval scholastic philosophy. His summaries of Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler seem sound. In fact as far as Kant it's hard to find fault with this book. Unfortunately after Kant things become a little different. You see this is not what it purports to be - an introduction to the history of Western thought. It is the history of Western thought from the point of view of a member of a philosophy department in a Western university - and not just any philosophy department - a *Continental* philosophy department. To read this book you'd think that much of the intellectual life of the twentieth century had simply never happened. Tarnas chooses to completely ignore almost all Anglo-American empiricist philosophy in the last 100 years and clearly has little or no knowledge of sc! ! ientific developments. Almost his only mention of twentieth century scientists, besides the obvious Einstein, is a list of scientists who have prominence purely because of popular science literature - and even here Tarnas is unable to distinguish between genius and merely crackpot. The book has a chapter called the 'Crisis in Science'. Besides the obvious and well known moral issues surrounding science this chapter bears no relation to anything that I experienced as someone who grew up within the scientific tradition. In fact I am at a complete loss to know what his crisis is - unless it be the general problem that academic work (in all fields) is now so specialised that philosophers, who like to make their field *everything*, can no longer hope to understand what takes place outside their field. It's not just in the 'hard' sciences that Tarnas is out of his depth - I was astonished to find him citing the work of Sapir and Whorf in linguistics which has now been completely! ! discredited. Tarnas believes the feminist so-called critiq! ue of science to be one of the most significant advances in the philosophy of science - and yet a large number of intellectuals would find it laughable (though one might argue, of course, that this is a sign of genius). Nonetheless I have still awarded this book a generous 3 out of 5 because the earlier parts of this book are so illuminating and because, for all I know, the later parts are a genuine reflection of the author's own particular strand of Western thought if not of a major part of it. One last word: readers of this book would do well to review the epilogue first - that way they can find out just where the author is coming from.
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