eBook Western Intellectual Tradition: From Leonardo to Hegel download

Before I speak to the book directly I must make comment on the copy itself. I read the paperback edition. The font size is approximately what you would expect for a book this size I found the printing quality to be very uneven in the footnotes to be blotchy. If nothing else my mistake was in not buying this as an electronic book. At this time there is no Kindle edition you may have be able to find e copy through another source.

Bronowski and Mazlish conceived of the Western Intellectual Tradition as a joint effort not only in terms of dual authorship but in terms of bringing together several different fields areas of academic expertise-ranging from history to mathematics to philosophy. It is probably not an accident that the project was originally developed at MIT through a department that deliberately seeks to fuse the humanities with the sciences. The book very much reads like it was intended to be a series of lectures presented in a course. There is a very evident professorial style but the result is not so formal and academic is to make this unreadable for a more general audience.

Going directly to what I like most about this book was the deliberate effort to show how arts and sciences fed off each other and in turn the sciences fed philosophy which in turn produced the subspecialty of political philosophy or as we know it now political science. The approach the authors use for crossing 500 years of Western thought is to tie each development to a number of individuals. Some get their own chapters others are more briefly mentioned as part of a sequence of writers who helped lead from one major thinker to the next.

While it is made it very clear that a number of these key thinkers were influenced or motivated by their religious beliefs overall this is not a religious history of European thinking. The emphasis is on humanism and Rationalism with the principal modes of thought being the emergence of analytical thinking, backed by experimentation. One of the earliest themes is the emergence of what we now call science or more particularly the scientific method. Indeed the authors pick out a quotation by Galileo as the exact moment when science and religion would become two alternative ways of thinking. Fundamentally the idea would be that however God of works his/her mysteries the actions of nature follow particular laws and by using a rational and systematic approach these laws can be determined and decoded. "Methinks that in the discussion of natural problems we ought not to begin at the authority of places of Scripture but at sensible experiments and necessary demonstrations."

Depending on the century and the personalities involved they would be, initially direct even violent confrontations with the church. Later there would be better appreciation of the spiritual value of religion versus the more mechanical value of the scientific process. For these two authors one of the great victories of the Western tradition would be the emergence of the English analytic and empirical traditions with a nod to French Cartesian dualism back to England the for Newtonian influences and with a few more stops peeking as it were with the Germans: Kant and Hegel.

Part of what makes this 500 page book readable is the time taken to give not only a brief biography of each of the major characters but to firmly place each philosophy in a context and in a sequence that makes clear and logical why the preceding thinker was a necessary contributor before the next thinker could take up the next line of logic. The result is that the various great thinkers chosen for this text emphasize the sequential, iterative and logical progression from contributor to contributor. Implicit in this approach is that no matter how greatly Newton, for example, may have lit the way before him one of his effects on the thinking of his day was to move away from experimentation. That is, following Newton created new ways of thinking but also created an opportunity to seek out the weaknesses in his proposals and ultimately go beyond limits he may not have understood.

Recommending this book to a general audience is not the same as saying this is a casual read. Initially I found this book to be frustrating. The total absence of illustrations is a mistake. There are certain words that were not well explained. For example "Condottiere" was used by the authors to describe the kinds of leadership that some (Machiavelli) with regard as necessary and desirable but would later to become more generally disrespected. A strict definition of this term would be a captain of mercenary forces. The term would be in common use in the Renaissance however in this text it is used more broadly but never very well defined. Elsewhere there is a contrast between Cartesian thinking in non-Cartesian thinking but the discussion of this in my mind was incomplete. I raise these points not in an effort to devalue this book but to emphasize the need for the reader to be willing to focus more attention than might be typically applied to lite fiction.

The Western Intellectual Tradition is not likely to impress the professional student of European history or the history of European philosophy. This is more than an introductory text but neither especially demanding nor demonstrably original in its interpretation. Most of the footnotes represent the bibliography for the text and many readers will choose to skip them. There are more than a few that contain some useful additional content. I intend to keep my copy and refer to it in future. I recommend it to a reader desiring to have a better understanding of what is meant when we refer to the Western intellectual canon.

I did buy a used hardbound version. I enjoy reading Bronowsky very much. As expected from Dr. Bronowsky, this leans toward the development of scientific thought as the center of our intellectual tradition, the philosophical and religious are mentioned only in their support of scientific tradition, but the book does a good job of placing the developments in our scientific tradition into the context of the religion and politics of the time in question. I do now have a much better appreciation of what we owe the puritans for our rational and scientific methodologies. But where did the "modern" descendants of these puritans go astray. Today their fundamentalist spawn are anti intellectual and factious, they exhibit de-evolution, in a intellectual sense.

The review of the new paperback.
The printing is horrible in the new paperback version. The "eyes" of the e's and a's are obscured is some parts. Looks like the ink bled a bit after printing. I read another review that said the same thing, but ignored it. The publisher is Harper Perennial. I will avoid that label in the future unless I can see the book in advance. My friend has this same book under the Harper Torchlight label (1960) and the printing is fine.

So, the 1960 Harper Torchlight and the hardbound are both superior to the new paperback.

I had this book as a required text in my freshman year of college, too many years ago. Since then I have taken it out and re-read it every three to five years as a 'refresher' on our important ideas and the people who brought them about. I finally had to buy a new copy of it a couple of years ago, my old one totally tattered and falling apart. This book puts into context many, many movements and the political and economic forces that caused them. A really important book for those who wish a deeper and broader understanding of our cultural history.

REBORN

I purchased this book to replace the paperback copy of mine that has fallen to pieces. This book is still very useful in my current adult ed. courses at my local recreation center adult ed. programs. Complete and accessible.

Very readable and coherent analysis of the intellectual tradition of the West.

The item is as it is described. Saves me alot. Book is clean and no highlights oor tears and ofcourse prime shipping is the best.
Very happy with purchase.

As promised

A book that must be read.so many years after enjoying the ascent of man this book does give a coherent romp through some great ideas in history