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The Big Picture: The Power Of Ideas

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If you are interested in today's politics, it is important to understand the power of ideas. It is extremely helpful to have concrete examples of how ideas drive actions. That is the realm of the history of ideas. How cultures have viewed reality, how men know things, and how men should act have driven history.

Competing philosophies have dominated in various eras. At the bottom of this post is a listing of Wilhelm Windelband's eras. The following list of books cover some or all of the eras.

1. Start here...

"A History Of Knowledgeir?t=thecharlott00-20&l=ur2&o=1" by Charles Van Doren: Though the latter part of the book gets into some suspect ideas, the majority of the book provides a simple and clear review of ideas and their impact on history from the ancients to today. Highly recommended. His eras are very similar to Windelband's.

National Geographic: Milestones Of Scienceir?t=thecharlott00-20&l=ur2&o=1: Which eras produced the greatest scientific advances? Which eras had limited advances? This is a beautiful illustrated coffee table book which covers in an integrated manner scientific advances through the eras. Similiar eras to Windelband and Van Doren.

The Aristotle Adventureir?t=thecharlott00-20&l=ur2&o=1 by Burgess Laughlin: What ideas were almost lost completely and drove Man into the Dark Ages? How were those ideas kept alive to pull Man out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance? Like a detective story!

A World Lit Only By Fireir?t=thecharlott00-20&l=ur2&o=1 by William Manchester: A fascinating look at the sliver of time covering the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance -- some of the ideas and men who drove the change.

The Capitalist Manifestoir?t=thecharlott00-20&l=ur2&o=1 by Andrew Bernstein. The historic, economic, and philosophic ideas which released Man from the final chains of Dark Age feudalism to freedom and wealth. These are the ideas of the Enlightenment.

2. Going Deeper: Same eras, just a deeper look

A History Of Philosophyir?t=thecharlott00-20&l=ur2&o=1 by Wilhelm Windelband:

1. The Philosophy of the Greeks: from the beginnings of scientific thought to the death of Aristotle, -- from about 600 to 322 B.C.

2. Hellenistic-Roman Philosophy: from the death of Aristotle to the passing away of Neo-Platonism, -- from 322 B.C. to about 500 A.D.

3. Mediaeval Philosophy: from Augustine to Nicolaus Cusanus, -- from the fifth to the fifteenth century.

4. The Philosophy of the Renaissance: from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century.

5. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment: from Locke to the death of Lessing, -- 1689-1781.

6. The German Philosophy: from Kant to Hegel and Herbart, -- 1781-1820.

7. The Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century.

Objectivism: The Philosophy Of Ayn Randir?t=thecharlott00-20&l=ur2&o=1 by Leonard Peikoff. The epilogue is "The Duel Between Plato and Aristotle": a short review of the history of ideas.

For The New Intellectualir?t=thecharlott00-20&l=ur2&o=1 by Ayn Rand. A review of the history of ideas from Ancient Greece to the present using her unique concepts of type of men (and the ideas they held) who drove history.

Various recorded lectures by Dr. John Ridpath and others on the history of ideas.

The Sleepwalkers : A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universeir?t=thecharlott00-20&l=ur2&o=1 is an in-depth look at how Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton broke out of medieval thinking and discovered the truth about the universe.

http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000629.html

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