Ultimate Guide to How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler
Learning to Learn Well Book Summary #1
Dear Curious Minds,
Welcome to a special edition of Learning to Learn Well.
If there's one timeless piece of wisdom that has guided countless seekers of knowledge, it's the art of reading a book. And not just reading it, but truly understanding and engaging with its contents.
In this edition, we'll delve into insights from the book that have been a beacon for readers since its publication: "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler.
The Power of Reading with Purpose:
In a world overflowing with information, the ability to read effectively is a superpower. It's not just about flipping pages; it's about dissecting ideas, discerning nuances, and extracting wisdom. "How to Read a Book" isn't just a book about reading; it's a roadmap to becoming an active, engaged, and discerning reader.
Unpacking Mortimer Adler's Legacy: Mortimer Adler, a luminary in the world of education and philosophy, penned this masterpiece to equip readers with the tools to elevate their reading prowess. His insights on the art of reading, from the stages of reading to strategies for comprehension and critical analysis, are as relevant today as they were when the book was first published.
A Treasure Trove of Wisdom:
Whether you're a seasoned scholar or a lifelong learner, you'll find valuable nuggets that can enhance your reading journey. We'll explore concepts like reading with intention, the art of questioning, and the role of active engagement in comprehension.A
Journey of Transformation:
The wisdom encapsulated in "How to Read a Book" has the potential to transform your relationship with reading.
It's not just about finishing a book; it's about embarking on a quest for understanding, enlightenment, and growth. Whether you're reading for pleasure, education, or personal development, Adler's insights will be your trusted guide.
So, fasten your seatbelts and get ready to unlock the secrets of reading like a pro. Whether you're revisiting Adler's timeless guidance or discovering it for the first time, this edition promises to be a rewarding exploration of the art and science of reading. Here's to embarking on this enlightening journey together!
I encourage you to delve deeper into Chapter 2 and beyond. To ensure uninterrupted access, a subscription is necessary. Please keep in mind that the initial chapter and preface are accessible for free and I’m confident they will provide valuable insight.
How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler
Preface
Popularity of radio, television and the internet has changed the way that we read.
The ability to read different things at different appropriate speeds, not everything at the greatest possible speed. Variable speed reading as the solution, the aim being to read better, always better, but sometimes slower, sometimes faster.
Effort is spent on reading instruction in the first six grades. Beyond that, little formal training is provided to carry students to hire and quite distinct levels of skill.
It has been shown again and again that was special tuition much older children, and also adults, can make enormous Improvement in their reading ability.
A great many pupils do poorly in high school because of sheer ineptitude and getting meaning from the printed page. They can improve, they need to improve, but they don't.
This makes sense now why copywriters have to write at a 6th grade level. Because our education system doesn't teach Beyond 6th grade reading there for when people read articles they feel much more comfortable at a 6th grade level because that is their reading skill.
Part 1: The Dimensions of Reading
Chapter 1: The Activity and Art of Reading
We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it, too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understand as too few.
Such an active skill can it be applied also to printed material in general, to any type of reading matter, to newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, articles, tracks, even advertising.
All reading must to some degree be active. Completely passive reading is impossible. We cannot read with our eyes immobilized and our minds asleep.
The more active the better.
Reading and listening are thought of as receiving communication from someone who is actively engaged in giving or sending it. The mistake here is to suppose that receiving communication is like receiving a blow or a legacy or a judgment from the court. On the contrary, the reader or listener is much more like the catcher in a game of baseball
The art of reading is the skill of catching every sort of communication as well as possible.
Successful communication occurs in any case where what the writer wanted to have received Finds Its way into the reader's possession. The writers skill and the readers skill converge upon a common end.
The ball is a simple unit. It is either completely caught or not. A piece of writing, however, he's a complex object. It can be received more or less completely, all the way from very little of what the writer intended to the whole of it. The amount the reader catches will usually depend on the amount of activity he puts into the process, as well as upon the skill with which he executes the different mental acts involved.
Given the same thing to read, one person reads it better than another, first, by reading it more actively, and second, by performing each of the acts involved more skillfully.
Reading is a complex activity, just as writing is. It consists of a large number of separate acts all of which must be performed in a good reading.
Your success in reading a book is determined by the extent to which you receive everything the writer intended to communicate.
What do you do if you don't understand a book completely? You can take the book to someone else who you think can read the book better than you, and have him explain the parts that trouble you. He may be a living person or another book, a commentary or text book.
Or you may decide that what is over your head is actually not worth bothering about, that you understand enough.
With nothing but the power of your own mind you operate on the symbols before you in such a way that you gradually lift yourself from estate of understanding less to one of understanding more.
The art of reading: The process whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside elevates Itself by the power of its own operations the Mind passes from understanding less to understanding more. The skilled operations that cause this to happen are the various acts that constitute the art of reading.
There is a distinction between reading for information and reading for understanding.
Learning or reading is meant to be for understanding War, not remembering more information that has the same degree of intelligibility as other information you already possess.
Suppose you are reading a book that seeks not merely to give you some more facts but also to throw a new and perhaps more revealing light on all the facts that you already know. Suppose there is a greater understanding of available here then you possessed before you started to read.
Oh yes, and that is the thing that I absolutely love about books is that you gain information that you may not have already known and translate in that into understanding which you can then apply and spread to other people.
Reading for understanding. There are two. The first is initial inequality in understanding. The writer must be superior to the reader in understanding, and his book must convey in readable form the insights he possesses and his potential readers lock. The second is the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree, seldom perhaps fully, but always approaching equality with the writer.
All of us, without exception, can learn to read better and gradually gained more by our efforts through applying them to more rewarding materials.
This book will not much be concerned with reading for entertainment. It is the least demanding kind of reading, and it requires the least amount of effort. Furthermore, there are no rules for it. Everyone who knows how to read all can read for entertainment if you wants to.
To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it's all about why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.
This distinction is familiar in terms of the differences between being able to remember something and being able to explain it if you remember what an author says you have learned something from Reading him. If what he says is true, you have even learned something about the world. But whether it is a fact about the book or a fact about the world that you have learned, you have gained nothing but information if you have exercised only your memory. You have not been enlightened. Enlightenment is achieved only when in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.
Being informed is prerequisite to being enlightened.
Book full Blockheads, ignorantly read. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well.
Don't are the well said statement that it is good to be widely read but rather to be well-read.
There must be Discovery, the process of learning something by research, by investigation, or by reflection, without being taught.
It would be a mistake to suppose that Discovery is active learning and instruction passive. There is no in active learning, just as there is no in active reading.
Call instruction aided discovery.
Although the teacher may help his student in many ways, it is the student himself who must do the learning.
Thinking is only one part of the activity of learning. One must also use one's senses and imagination.
The art of reading includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery, keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and an intellect trained in analysis and reflection.
Reading is Discovery too although with help instead of without it.
Many of the rules in this book also apply to listening to lectures and other things like that.
If you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking and Analysis yourself.
I completely agree with this. Books help you to discover more than what's actually inside the book If you start taking action on it. If you start experimenting with the things in the book and discovering the meanings of the book then you can go much further than what the book teaches you.
This is the first summary in a series of many more to come.
I encourage you to delve deeper into Chapter 2 and beyond. To ensure uninterrupted access, a subscription is necessary. Please keep in mind that the initial chapter and preface are accessible for free and I’m confident they will provide valuable insight.
It will take place once every single month where I will give an in-depth look into the insights of the book.
Words in bold and italics are my ideas 💡
Become a paid subscriber to access all summaries and the whole archive of in-depth articles.
Referring a friend or two or three grants you free access to a subscription. Rewards include up to 6 months for free!
⭐1-month FREE - 1 REFERRAL
⭐⭐3-month FREE - 2 REFERRALS
⭐⭐⭐6-month FREE - 3 REFERRALS
Chapter 2: The Levels of Reading
Elementary reading
Inspectional reading
Analytical reading
Syntopical reading
Inspectional reading is the art of skimming systematically.
Most people, even many quite good readers, are unaware of the value of inspectional reading.
The analytical reader must ask many, and organized, questions of what he is reading.
Francis Bacon, some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
When reading send topically, the reader reads many books, not just one, and places them in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve.
With the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of the books.
Chapter 3: The First Level of Reading: Elementary Reading
The first stage of Elementary reading is reading readiness and it corresponds to preschool and kindergarten.
The second stage is word Mastery and it corresponds to the first grade of a typical child.
The third stage of Elementary reading is vocabulary growth and the utilization of context is typically acquired at about the end of the fourth grade of elementary school and results in what is variously called fourth grade or functional literacy, the ability to read traffic signs or picture captions fairly easily, to fill out the simpler government forms.
The fourth stage of Elementary reading is attained at about the time the pupil leaves or graduates from elementary school or Junior High School. It is sometimes called eighth grade, ninth grade, or 10th grade literacy. The child is a mature reader in the sense that he is now capable of reading almost anything, but still in a relatively unsophisticated manner.
However the meaning of mature here does not mean that he has mastered all of reading, it just means that he has mastered the first level of reading, he can read on his own and is prepared to learn more about reading. But he does not yet know how to read beyond the elementary level.
Traditionally, the high schools of America have provided a little reading instruction for their students, and the colleges have provided none.
One should not have to spend four years in graduate school in order to learn how to read. Four years of graduate school, in addition to 12 years of Preparatory education and four years of college, that adds up to 20 full years of schooling. It should not take that long to learn to read. Something is very wrong if it does.
We must be more than a world of functional literate. We must become a world of truly competent readers, recognizing all that the word competent implies. Nothing less will satisfy the needs of the world that is coming.
Chapter 4: The Second Level of Reading: Inspectional Reading
The levels of reading are cumulative.
There are two types of inspectional reading:
Systemic skimming or pre-reading
If you have a limited amount of time to choose whether you want to read a book then what you must do is skim it. Your main aim is to discover whether the book requires more careful reading.
Skimming tips:
Look at the title page and, if the book has one, at its preface. Read each quickly. Especially the subtitles or other indications of the scope or aim of the book or if the author's special angle on her subject. Before completing the step you should have a good idea of the subject, and, if you wish, you may pause for a moment to place the book in the appropriate category in your mind.
Study the table of contents. This will give you a general sense of the books structure, use it as you would a road map before taking a trip.
Check the index. Make a quick estimate of the range of topics covered and of the kinds of books and authors referred to. When you see terms listed that seemed crucial, look up at least some of the passages cited.
Read the Publishers blurb. The blurbs of mini books are written by the authors themselves, of course with the help of the Publishers public relations department. It is not uncommon for authors to try to summarize as accurately as they can the main points in their book. Sometimes the blurb of can just be Puff to try and Market the book but read it first to find out whether it is Puff or not, and if it is you will ordinarily be able to discover this at a glance.
Look at the titles of each chapter. Read the opening and closing paragraph of each chapter.
Turn the pages, dipping in here and there, reading a paragraph or two, sometimes several pages in sequence, never more than that. Above all do not fail to read the last two or three pages or the epilogue.
Think of yourself as a detective looking for Clues to a books General theme or idea alert for anything that will make it clearer.
Superficial reading. Everyone has had the experience of struggling fruitlessly with a difficult book that was begun with high hopes of enlightenment. It's natural to think that that was a mistake to pick up that book in the first place, but that was not a mistake. Rather it was in expecting Too Much from the first going over of a difficult book. Approached in the right way, no book intended for the general reader, no matter how difficult, need be a cause for despair.
The right approach is used with this rule: in tackling a difficult book for the first time read through without ever stopping to look up or Ponder the things you do not understand right away.
Go right on reading past the point where you have difficulties in understanding, and you will soon come to things you do understand. Concentrate on these.
When you finish the book The First Time even after not being able to understand every single detail, you will have a much better chance of understanding it on the second reading, but that requires you to have read the book through at least once.
In other words don't allow yourself to be stopped by the first difficult passage you come to. Even if you never come back to the book, understanding half of it or 65% of it is much better than not understanding it at all.
We were told as kids to go get a dictionary or look it up on Google when we came across an unfamiliar word. We were told to go to the encyclopedia or some other reference work when we were confronted with Illusions or statements we did not comprehend. But when these things are done prematurely, they only impede our reading, instead of helping it.
The better approach is to be able to read straight through without stopping to look up words that you don't understand, finish the whole thing and then go back through and look up the words you may not understand.
Wow I just have to take a note here, that reading this book is actually very helpful because I realized many of the mistakes and problems that people are making out there when they go and try and read a book and they can't understand it. No wonder people sometimes don't like reading because they don't know how to read correctly. And it's also a process, the process is a long process to be able to become a good reader. It takes time. And most people are unfortunately not patient enough to get to that point of being a good reader or a great reader!
Many books are hardly worth even skimming, some should be read quickly, and a few should be read at a rate, usually quite slow, the allows for complete comprehension.
With regard to rates of reading, the ideal is not merely to be able to read faster, but to be able to read at different speeds - and to know when the different speeds are appropriate.
But even when you are giving a book and at elliptical reading, you should not read all of it at the same rate of speed. Every book, no matter how difficult, contains interstitial material that can be and should be read quickly.
People continue to subvocalize for years after they first are taught to read.
The mind, that astounding instrument, can grasp a sentence or even a paragraph at a Glen's, if only the eyes will provide it with the information it needs. Dust the primary task, recognized as such by old speed reading courses, is to correct the fixations and regressions that slow so many readers down.
The students can read as fast as his mind will let him, not as slow as the eyes make him.
Place your thumb and your first two fingers together. Sweep this pointer across a line of type, a little faster than it is comfortable for your eyes to move. Force yourself to keep up with your hand. You will very soon be able to read the words as You Follow Your Hand. Keep practicing this, and keep increasing the speed at which your hand moves, and before you know it you will have doubled or tripled your reading speed.
The hand or some other device used as a timer tens not only to increase your reading rate, but also to improve your concentration of what you were reading.
Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.
The two stages of inspectional reading can both be thought of as in anticipations of steps that the reader takes would he reads analytically. The first stage of inspectional reading, the stage we have called systemic skimming, serves to prepare the political reader to answer the questions that must be asked during the first stage of that level. Systemic skimming in other words anticipates the comprehension of a book's structure. And the second stage of Inspector reading the stage we have called superficial reading serves the reader when he comes to the second stage of reading an analytical level.
So basically when you do superficial reading you are almost summarizing the book in your own mind before you read it. You are anticipating what the book has to offer for you. And you can make some educated guesses as to whether the book is worth reading or not.
Chapter 5: How to be a Demanding Reader
Whether you manage to keep awake or not depends in large part on your goal in Reading.
If your aim and reading is to profit from it, too gross on the how in mind or Spirit, you have to keep awake. That means reading as actively as possible. It means making an effort, and effort for which you expect to be repaid.
Ask questions while you read, questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.
The art of reading on any level above Elementary consists in the habit of asking the right questions in the right order. There are four questions you must ask about any book.
What is the book about as a whole?
You must try to discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this mean scene in orderly Way by subdividing it into a essential subordinate themes or topics.
What is being said in detail, and how?
You must try to discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author's particular message.
Is the book true, in whole or part?
You have to know what is being said before you can decide whether it is true or not.
What of it?
If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things? Is it important to you to know them? And if the book has not only informed you, but also enlightened you, it is necessary to seek further Enlightenment by asking what else follows, what is further implied or suggested.
The four questions stated above summarize the whole obligation of a reader. No I don't necessarily agree with this because I believe there are more questions to be answered. I'm not sure exactly what those questions are but I just feel it deep down. Not to say that these questions are bad questions, but I don't think they are the only ones.
When I first saw that the book said these are the only questions that in obligated reader should ask it kind of Rose an alarm. I mean what about questions like how can I use this book to help others? I may be wrong but it's just my feeling.
An analytical reading of a book has not been accomplished satisfactorily until you have answered those last questions.
Knowing what the four questions are is not enough. You must remember to ask them as you read. The habit of doing that is the mark of a demanding reader.
People go to sleep over good books not because they are unwilling to make the effort, but because they do not know how to make it. Good books are over your head, they would not be good for you if they were not. And books that are over your head weary you unless you can reach up to them and pull yourself up to their level. It is not the stretching that tires you, but the frustration of stretching unsuccessfully because you lack the skill to stretch effectively. To keep on reading a actively, you must have not only the will to do so, but also the skill, the art that enables you to elevate Yourself by mastering what at First Sight seems to be Beyond you.
When asking questions make sure to answer them as well and right between the lines.
Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it, which comes to the same thing, is by writing in it.
Why? First it keeps you awake. Second reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. Third, writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author.
Underlining, major points, of important or forceful statements.
Vertical lines at the margins, to emphasize a statement already underlined or to point to a passage too long to be underlined.
Star, a strict, or other doodads at the margins, to be used sparingly to emphasize the 10 or dozen most important statements or passages in the book. You may want to fold a corner of each page on which you make such marks.
Numbers in the margin, to indicate a sequence of points made by the author in developing an argument.
Numbers of other pages in the margin, to indicate where else in the book The author makes the same points, or points relevant to or in contradiction of those here marked, to tie up the ideas in a book though they may be separated by many pages but Belong Together.
Circling of keywords or phrases, this serves much the same function as underlining.
Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, to record questions and perhaps answers which passage raises in your mind, to reduce a complicated discussion to a simple statement, to record the sequence of major points right through the book.
Probably you have been reading for a long time and starting to learn all over again can be humiliating. But it is just as true of reading as it is of skiing that you count kolesk a lot of different acts into one complex, harmonious performance until you become expert at each of them you cannot telescope the different parts of the job so that they run into one another and fuse intimately. Each separate act requires your full attention while you are doing it. After you have practice the parts separately, you can not only do each with greater facility and less attention but can also gradually put them together into a smoothly running whole.
Part 2: The Third Level of Reading: Analytical Reading
Chapter 6: Pigeonholing a Book
If you can read an expository book, philosophy, history, biography, then you can read an article or an excerpt very well. That's why the book only focuses on reading books.
Classifying books
You must know what kind of books you are reading, and you should know this as early in the process as possible, preferably before you begin to read.
it is not really a question of knowing which books are primarily instructive, but also which are instructive in a particular way. The kinds of information or Enlightenment that a history and philosophical work are not the same. The problems that with buy a book on physics in one on morals are not the same, nor are the methods the writers employ in solving such different problems.
The importance of titles
the chapter headings listed in the front serve the purpose of amplifying the significance of the main title.
The reader who ignores all these things has only himself to blame if he is puzzled by the question, what kind of book is this? He is going to become more perplexed. If he cannot answer that question, and if he never asks it of himself, he is going to be unable to answer a lot of other questions about the book.
Intelligent action depends on knowledge.
You may have to read a certain amount of a book before you can actually apply it.
There are other problems that no amount of the best armchair thinking can solve. What is needed to solve them is an investigation of some sort, experiments in the laboratory or research in the field, extending experience beyond the normal, everyday routine. Special experience is needed.
This does not mean that the philosopher is a pure thinker and the scientist merely an observer. Both have to observe and think but they think about different sorts of observations.
The philosopher doesn't necessarily point to experiences that are coming to all I believe that the philosopher points to experiences that are necessary for all.
You must be able to find the terms and prepositions.
You may have jacked that I am making too much of a classification of books before you have even read them. But it really is that important that you classify the book that way you can make an educated decision on whether it's worthy of your time.
The relationship between books and their readers is the same as that between teachers and their students.
Chapter 7: X-raying a Book
You can discharge that obligation honestly only by reading the whole book.
Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations
Even when you become more skilled, you will not want to read every book with the same degree of effort. You will not find a profitable to expend all your skill on some books. Even the best readers try to make a fairly close approximation to the requirements of this rule for only a relatively few books.
You are a finite, mortal creature, but a book is also finite and, if not mortal, at least effective in the way all things made by men are. No book deserves a perfect outline because no book is perfect.
The reader tries to uncover the skeleton that the book conceals. The author starts with the skeleton and tries to cover it up. His aim is to conceal the skeleton artistically or, in other words, to put Flesh on the Bare Bones. If he is a good writer, he does not need to bury a puny skeleton under a massive fat. On the other hand, neither should the flash be too thin, so that the Bones show through. It's a flesh is thick enough, and if the flabbiness is avoided, the joints will be detectable in the motion of the parts will reveal the articulation.
The Flesh of a book is as much a part of it as the skeleton. This is as true of books as it is of animals and human beings. The flesh, the outline spelled out, read out, as we sometimes saying, ads in the city show dimension
A piece of writing should have Unity, Clarity, and coherence.
Rule 4: find out what the author's problems were. The renter may or may not tell you what the questions were as well as give you the answers that are the fruits of his work. Whether he does or does not, and especially if he does not, it is your task as the reader to formulate the questions as precisely as you can.
The practice Twitter accomplishes all of the stages at once.
Nevertheless you must realize that knowing a book structure does not constitute a stage toward reading it analytically.
Chapter 8: coming to terms with an author
The full rules listed at the end of the chapter, which together allow you to tell what a book is about and the outline 2 inch structure. You are now ready to go on to the next stage, which also comprises for rules of reading. The first of these recall for short coming to terms.
Coming to Terms is usually the last step in any successful business negotiation. All That Remains is to sign on the dotted line. But in that analytical reading of a book, coming to terms is the First Step Beyond the outline. Unless the reader comes to terms with the author, the communication of Knowledge from one to the other does not take place. 480 is the basic element of communication knowledge.
A term is not a word
At least not just a word without for their qualifications.
Just look at the word communication for a moment. It's root word is related to the word common.
You must spot the important words in a book and figure out how the author is using them.
Rule 5: find the important words and through them come to terms with the author.
We can expect a good writer to do his best to reach us through the barrier language inevitably sets up, but we cannot expect him to do the job all by himself. We must meet him halfway. As readers, we must try to Tunnel through from our side of the barrier. The likelihood of a Meeting of Minds through language depends on the willingness of both reader and writer to work together.
If language is used without thought, nothing is being communicated. And thought or knowledge cannot be communicated without language.
You cannot locate the keywords without making an effort to understand the passage in which they occur. This situation is somewhat paradoxical. If you do understand the message, you will, of course, know which words in it are the most important.
From your point of view as a reader the most important words are those that gave you trouble.
The first way to spot a sign of an explicit word is the stress and author places upon certain words and not others. She may use such typographical devices such as quotation marks or italics or bold to Mark the word for you.
Or he may define the word.
The words that are important to the author should also be important for you as a reader also, but in addition to any other word whose meaning is not clear is also important to you.
The trouble with most readers is that they simply do not pay enough attention to words to locate their difficulties. They fail to distinguish the words that they do not understand sufficiently from those they do.
In addition you must make a deliberate effort to note the words you must work on to find the terms they convey. The reader who fails to ponder, or at least to mark, the words he does not understand is headed for disaster.
the book cannot Enlighten you if you do not try to understand it
Most of us are addicted to non active reading. The outstanding fault of the non active or undemanding reader is his inattention to words, and his consequent failure to come to terms with the author.
Bad books are less readable than good ones. The rules do not work on them, except to show you how bad they are.
Chapter 9: determining an author's message
The 6th rule which is about sentences in prepositions
His prepositions are nothing but expressions of personal opinion unless they are supported by reasons. But also why he thinks we should be persuaded to accept them.
The seventh rule therefore deals with all sorts of arguments.
For those of us that are no longer in school, if we want to go on learning, then we must know how to learn from books, which are absent teachers.
Some sentences Express questions. They State problems rather than answers.
They are Declarations of knowledge or opinion. That is why we call sentences that Express them decorative, and distinguish sentences that asks questions as interrogated. Other sentences Express wishes or intentions. They may give us some knowledge of the author's purpose, but they do not convey the knowledge he is trying to expound.
Some knowledge of grammar is indispensable to a reader. You cannot begin to deal with terms, prepositions, and arguments - the elements of thought - until you can penetrate beneath the surface of language.
Paying attention to the most important sentences in a book does not mean that you should not pay attention to all of the sentences. It's still very important to understand all the sentences in a book.
From your point of view as a reader, the sentences important for you or those that require an effort of interpretation because, at First Sight, they are not perfectly intelligible. You understand them just well enough to know there is more to understand.
An argument beginning somewhere, go somewhere, get somewhere. It is a movement of thought. It may begin with what is really the conclusion and then proceeded to give the reasons for it. Or it may start with the evidence and the reasons and bring you to the conclusion that follows.
This is something I need to work on. I usually come to conclusions but don't give me any examples of how my conclusion makes sense. I know my conclusion is right, but most others need to see why it's right.
Many people believe that they know how to read because they read at different speeds. But they pause and go slower over the wrong sentences. They pause over the sentences that interest them rather than the ones that puzzle them.
When you're asked to explain what the author means by a particular sentence, all you can do is repeat his very words, with some minor alterations in their order, you had better suspect that you do not know what he means. Ideally, you should be able to say the same thing and totally different words.
If you cannot get away at all from the author's words, it shows that only words have passed from him to you, not thought or knowledge. You know his words, not his mind. He was trying to communicate knowledge, and all you received was words.
There is another test of whether you understand the meaning of the author.
-Can you points to some experience you have had that the author describes or to which the proposition is in any way relevant?
-Can you exemplify the general truth that has been enunciated by referring to a particular instance of it?
So one of the best ways of remembering what you read is to internalize the meaning of the author in your own words. If you're just repeating what the author says in his or her exact words then you are more likely to forget what the author has pointed out in a book.
The seventh rule of analytical reading, which requires the reader to deal with collections of sentences.
There are no settled conventions among writers about how to construct paragraphs, or how long they must be. Some great writers write extremely long paragraphs others write relatively short ones.
It is not really about length. The point that is troublesome here has to do with the relationship between language and thought.
There are many paragraphs in any book that do not express an argument at all.
and that's why I have personally come up with the rule that when you're trying to remember what you read you should not try and remember everything because that would be pointless. The most important thing that you remember is the author's arguments and how that relates to your life. How can you put that take away into your life?
Another formulation of rule 7: find if you can the paragraphs in a book that state it's important arguments, but if the arguments are not the sex press, your task is to construct them, by taking a sentence from this paragraph, and one from that, until you have gathered together the sequence of sentences that state the propositions that compose the argument.
A good book usually summarizes itself as its arguments develop. If the author summarizes is Arguments for you at the end of the chapter, or at the end of an elaborate section, you should be able to look back over the preceding pages and find the materials he has brought together in the summary.
If you have inspected the book well before beginning to read it analytically, you will know whether the summary passages exist and if they do, where they are. You can then make the best possible use of them when interpreting the book.
another sign of a bad or Loosely constructed book is the emission of steps in an argument
In the first place, remember that every argument must involve a number of statements. Of these, some give the reasons why you should accept a conclusion the author is proposing.
In the second place, discriminate between the kind of argument that points to one or more particular facts as evidence for some generalization and the kind that offers a series of General statements to prove some further generalizations. The former kind of reasoning is usually referred to as inductive, the latter has deductive, but the names are not what is important. What is important is the ability to discriminate between the two.
In the third place, observe what things to author says he must assume, what he says can be proved or otherwise evidenced, and what need not be proved because it is self-evident.
Rule 8. Find out what the authors Solutions are.
5. Come to terms with the author by interpreting that his key words.
6. Grass book authors leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences.
7. Know the author's argument by finding them in or constructing them out of sequences of sentences.
8. Determine which of his problems the author has salt, and which he has not, and as to the ladder, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve.
Chapter 10: criticizing a book fairly
The reader is the one who has the last word. The author has already had his say.
The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging.
There is no book so good that no fault can be found within it.
No one is really teachable who does not freely exercise his power of independent judgment. He can be trained, perhaps, but not taught. The most teachable reader is, therefore, the most critical.
The reader must know how to judge a book, just as he must know how to arrive at an understanding of its contents.
The three Arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, cooperate in regulating the elaborate processes of writing and reading. Skill in the first two stages of analytical reading comes from a Mastery of grammar and logic. Skill in the third stage depends on the remaining art. The rules of this stage of reading rest on the principles of rhetoric.
Do not talk back until you have listened carefully and are sure you understand.
Rule 9. You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, I understand, before you can say any one of the following things, I agree, or I disagree, or I suspend judgment.
The only polite thing to do is to ask them to State your position for you, the position they claim to be challenging. If they cannot do it satisfactorily, if they cannot repeat what you have said in their own words, you know that they do not understand, and you are entirely justified in ignoring their criticisms.
To say I don't understand is, of course, also a critical judgment, but only after you have tried your hardest does it reflect on the book rather than yourself.
In Reading good books, failure to understand is usually the readers fault.
You should be more circumspect about saying I understand, and slower to raise your critical lance.
Kent's critique of pure reason without reading his critique of practical reason, or Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations without reading his theory of the moral sentiments, or the Communist Manifesto without Marx's kapital, or more likely than not to be agreeing or disagreeing with something they do not fully understand
Rule 10: when you disagree, do so reasonably, and not disputatiously or contentiously.
There's no point in winning an argument if you know or suspect you are wrong.
Indeed to be our duty, for the sake of maintaining the truth even to destroy what touches us closely, especially as we are philosophers or lovers of wisdom, four, while both are dear, piety requires us to honor truth above our friends. - Aristotle
He who regards conversation as a battle can win only by being an antagonist, only by disagreeing successfully, whether he is right or wrong. The reader who approaches a book in this Spirit reads it only to find something he can disagree with. For the disputation us and the contentious oh, a bone can always be found to pick a quarrel over. It makes no difference whether the bone is really a chip on your own shoulder.
What if he realizes that the only prophet in conversation, with living or dead teachers, is what one can learn from them, if he realizes that you win only by gaining knowledge, not by knocking the other fellow down, he may see the futility of near contentiousness.
He should be as prepared to agree as to disagree. Whichever he does should be motivated by one consideration alone, the facts, the truth about the case.
Regard disagreements as capable of being resolved. This one warns you against disagreeing hopelessly. Disagreement is futile agitation unless it is undertaken with the hope that it may lead to the resolution of an issue.
The language that we use to communicate is an imperfect medium, clouded by emotion and colored by interests, as well as in adequately transparent for thought.
The relatively ignorant often wrongly disagree with the relatively learned about matters exceeding their knowledge.
Inequality of knowledge is always curable by instruction.
Now I know it is my mission to help people get the most out of the books that they read so that they can be more knowledgeable and apply that knowledge in their life. But I also know that what I'm doing can help those people that are currently ignorant do become less ignorant and hopefully more intelligent people. I definitely do believe that reading is one of the solutions to ignorance, poverty, and inequality.
Arguments or disagreements can be resolved by the removal of misunderstanding or of ignorance. Both cures are usually possible, though often difficult. Hence the person who, at any stage of a conversation, disagrees, should at least hope to reach agreement in the end. He should be as much prepared to have his own mind change as seek to change the mind of another. He should always keep before him the possibility that he misunderstands or that he is ignorant on some point. No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught.
For the most part, either disagreements are apparent only, to be removed by coming to terms and Meeting of Minds, or they are real, and the genuine issues can be resolved, in the long run, of course, by appeals to fact and reason. The maximum of rationality concerning disagreements is to be patient for the long run. We are saying, that disagreements are arguable matters. An argument is empty unless it is undertaken on the supposition that there is attainable and understanding that, when it changed by reason in the light of all the relevant evidence, resolves the original issues.
How does this third Maxim apply to the conversation between reader and writer? How can it be stated as a rule of reading?
This Maxim then requires people to distinguish between genuine knowledge and mirror opinion, and to regard an issue where knowledge is concerned as one that can be resolved. If he pursues the matter further, he may be instructed by the author on points that will change his mind.
If an author does not give reasons for his propositions, they can be treated only as expressions of personal opinions on his part. The reader who does not distinguish between the reasons statements of knowledge and the flat expression of opinion is not reading to learn.
If the reader is primarily interested in the book and not the man, he should take his critical obligations seriously. These involves applying the distinction between real knowledge and mirror opinion to himself as well as to the author. Dust the reader must do more than make judgments of agreement or disagreement. He must give reasons for them.
Rule 11, respect the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by giving reasons for any critical judgment you make.
Knowledge consists in those opinions that can be defended, opinions for which there is evidence of one kind or another.
Talk back to the author, the first requires the reader to complete the task of understanding before rushing in. The second adgers him not to be disputatious or contentious. The third asks him to view disagreements about matters of knowledge as being generally remediable. This rule goes further, it also commands him to give reasons for his disagreement so that issues are not merely stated but also defines.
Chapter 11. Agreeing or disagreeing with an author
Not simply by following an author's arguments, but only by meeting them as well, can the reader ultimately reach significant agreement or disagreement with his author.
The author is making judgments about the world in which we live. He claims to be giving us theoretical knowledge about the way things exist and behave, or practical knowledge about what should be done. He can be either wrong or right. His claim is Justified only to the extent that he speaks truly, to the extent that he says what is probable in the light of evidence. Otherwise, is claimed as unfounded.
There are three conditions that must be satisfied if controversy is to be well conducted.
The first is since men are animals as well as rational, it is necessary to acknowledge the emotions you bring to a dispute, or those that arise in the course of it. Otherwise you are likely to be giving vent to feelings, not stating reasons. You may even think you have reasons, when all you have are strong feelings.
The second is you must make your own assumptions explicit. You must know what your prejudices are and prejudgments. Otherwise you are not likely to admit that your opponent may be equally entitled to different assumptions. Good controversy should not be a coral about assumptions.
The third is an attempt at impartiality is a good antidote for the blindness that is almost inevitable in partisanship. Controversy without partisanship is impossible. But to be sure that there is more light in it, and less heat, each of the disputants should at least try to take the other fellows point of view.
The ideal should never be expected from human beings. We ourselves, we hasten to admit, are sufficiently conscious of our own defects. We have violated our own rules about good intellectual menos in controversy. We have caught ourselves attacking a book rather than criticizing it, Knocking Straw Men over, denouncing where we could not support denials, proclaiming our prejudices as if ours were any better than the authors.
Here are four ways in which a book can be adversely criticized.
You are uniforms
You are misinformed
You are illogical, your reasoning is not Cogent
Your analysis is incomplete
The reader cannot make any of these remarks without being definite and precise about the respect in which the author is uniformed or misinformed or illogical. A book cannot be uniformed or misinformed about everything.
To say that an author is uninformed is to say that he lacks some piece of knowledge that is relevant to the problem he is trying to solve.
To say that an author is misinformed is to say that he asserts what is not the case. His error here maybe owing to lack of knowledge, but the error is more than that. Whatever its cause, it consists in making assertions contrary to fact.
To say that an author is a logical is to say that he has committed a fallacy and reasoning. Policies are of two sorts. There is the non-sequitur, which means that what is drawn as a conclusion simply does not follow from the reasons offered. And there is the occurrence of inconsistency, which means that two things the author has tried to say our in compatible.
You can say, as so many students and others do, I find nothing wrong with your premises, and no errors in reasoning, but I don't agree with your conclusions. All you can possibly mean by saying something like that is that you do not like the conclusions. You're not disagreeing. You're expressing your emotions or president is.
Just say that an author's analysis is incomplete is to say that he has not solved all the problems he started with, or that he has not made as good a use of his materials as possible, that he did not see all there Implications and ramifications, or that he has failed to make distinctions that are relevant to his under taking.
Men are finite, and so are their works, every last one.
The first stage of analytical reading, rules for finding what a book is about.
classify the book according to kind and subject matter.
State what the whole book is about with the utmost gravity.
Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outline the hole.
Define the problem or problems the author has tried to solve.
The second stage of analytical reading, rules for interpreting a book's contents.
Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words.
Grasp the author's leading prepositions by dealing with his most important sentences.
Know the author's arguments, but finding them in, or constructing them out of, sing Woods's of sentences.
Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which ones he has not, and of the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve.
The third stage of analytical reading, rules for criticizing a book as a communication of knowledge
do not beginning criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book. Do not say you agree, disagree, or suspend judgment, until you say I understand.
Do not disagree disputatious lior contentiously.
Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgment you make.
Show where in the author's uninformed
Show where in the author is missing forms
Show where in the author is it logical
Show where in the author's analysis or account is incomplete
You cannot read for information intelligently without determining what significance is, or should be, attached to the facts presented.
When we speak of someone as well read, we should have this ideal in mind. Too often, we use that phrase to me the quantity rather than the quality of reading. A person who has read widely but not well deserves to be pitied rather than praised.
To become well-read, in every sense of the word, one must know how to use whatever skill one possesses with discrimination, by reading every book according to its merits.
Chapter 12, aids to reading
Intrinsic reading is reading a book in itself, quite apart from all of their books. Extrinsic reading is reading a book in the light of other books.
Extrinsic AIDS can help in understanding a book Foley. In fact sometimes this is necessary.
Common experience does not have to be shared by everyone in order to be common. Common is not the same as universal.
Ask yourself whether you can give a concrete example of a point that you feel you understand.
Test yourself in this way when you are not quite sure whether you have grasped the book.
You should not feel like you should be able to understand the first book you picked up without having read others which are closely related.
Reading related books in relation to one another and in an order that renders the later ones more intelligible is a basic Common Sense maxim of extrinsic reading
The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.
Your ignorance must be like a circle of Darkness surrounded by light. You want to bring lights to the dark circle you cannot do that unless light surrounds the darkness.
You must know what you want to know
You must know in what reference work to find it
You must know how to find it in the reference work
You must know that it is considered knowable by the author's or compilers of the book
Words are physical things
Words are parts of speech
Words are signs
Words are conventional
Facts are propositions
Facts are true propositions
Facts are reflections of reality
Facts are to some extent conventional
Part 3: approaches to different kinds of reading matter
Chapter 13: how to read practical books
It consists in the underlying fact that you must ask questions when you read.
The most important thing to remember about any practical book is that it can never solve the Practical problems with which it is concerned. Theoretical book can solve its own problems. But a practical problem can only be solved by action itself.
This book cannot solve the problem for you. It can only help you must actually go through the activity of whatever the book has to offer you, not only in one action but in many others. That is what it means to say nothing but actions Souls practical problems, and action occurs only in the world, not in books.
The kind of practical judgment that immediately precedes action must be highly particular. It can be expressed in words, but it seldom is. It is almost never found in books, because the author of a practical book cannot envisage the concrete practical situations in which his readers may have to act.
The above example is exactly why so many self-help books and even some non-fiction books are so General because the author can only express his or her own experiences which may or may not relate to the readers experiences. Therefore when an author gives an example it may seem General in some way unless it is a precise how to story about how the author did something specific.
My above statement: the reader himself must add something to the book to make it applicable in practice. He must add his knowledge of the particular situation and his Judgment of how the rule applies to his or her case.
The book of practical principles may look at first like a theoretical book. In a sense it is, as we have seen. It deals with the theory of a particular kind of practice. You can always tell it is practical, however. The nature of its problems gives it away. It is always about a field of human behavior in which men can do better or worse.
Look for both sides of the argument.
Two failed to read a practical book as practical is to read it poorly.
Suppose that the end and author thinks you should seek does not seem like the right one to you. Even though his recommendations may be practically sound, in the sense of getting you to that end, you will not agree with him ultimately. And your judgment of his book as practically true or practically. Will be made accordingly.
In judging a practical book, everything turns on the ends or goals.
The first. What are the author's objectives?
The second. What means for achieving them is he proposing?
What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business. Propaganda taken in that way is like a drug you do not know you are swallowing.
You must always try to find out what an author's problems were in the case of practical books oh, this requirement becomes the dominant one.
In the case of a practical work, knowing what he wants to do comes down to knowing what he wants you to do.
Find out what the author wants you to do. Find out how he proposes that you do this.
Chapter 14. How to read imaginative literature
Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.
If you ask someone why they like the book often times you will find that they are lost for words. They don't know exactly how to explain why they liked the book. They just know they did.
Don't try to resist the effect that a work of imaginative literature has on you.
Fiction is a sort of passive action, if we may be allowed the expression, or better, active passion. We must act in such a way, when reading a story, that we let it act on us. We must allow it to move us, we must let it do whatever work it wants to do on us. We must somehow make ourselves open to it.
If we must escape from reality, it should be to a deeper, or greater, reality. This is the reality of our inner life, of our own unique vision of the world. To discover this reality makes us happy, the experience is deeply satisfying to you some part of ourselves we do not ordinarily touch.
The imaginative writer tries to maximize the latent ambiguity of words, in order thereby to gain all the richness and force that is inherent in there multiple meanings. He uses metaphors as the units of his construction just as The Logical writer uses words sharpened to a single meaning.
We can learn from imaginative literature, from poems and stories and especially, perhaps, please, but not in the same way as we are taught by scientific and philosophical books. We learn from experience, the experience that we have in the course of our daily lives. So too we can learn from the thesaurus, or artistically created, experience says that fiction produces in our imagination.
That is why it seems right to say that expository books teach primarily, while imaginative books teach only derivative Lie, by creating experiences from which we can learn. In order to learn from such books, we have to do our own thinking about experience, in order to learn from scientists and philosophers, we must first try to understand the thinking they have done.
The first group consists of rules for discovering the unity and part whole structure.
The second group consists of rules for identifying and interpreting the books component terms, prepositions, and arguments.
The third group consists of rules for criticizing the authors Doctrine so that we can reach intelligent agreement or disagreement with him.
These rules are called the structural, interpretive, and critical.
The parts of fiction are the various steps that the author takes to develop his plot, the details of the characterization and incident. The way in which the parts are arranged differs in the two cases. In science and philosophy, they must be ordered logically. In a story, the parts must somehow fit into a temporal scheme, progress from a beginning through the middle to its end.
To read a story well you must have your finger on the pulse of the narrative, be sensitive to its very beat.
Don't criticize imaginative writing until you fully appreciate what the author has tried to make you experience.
The good reader of asteroid does not question the world that the author creates, the world that is recreated in himself.
You cannot appreciate a novel by reading it passively, indeed, as we have remarked, you must read it passionately, any more than you can understand of philosophical book that way.
To complete the task of criticism, you must objectify your reactions by pointing to those things in the book that caused them. You must pass from saying what you like or dislike and why, to saying what is good or bad about the book and why.
Chapter 15. Suggestions for reading stories, please, and poems.
Imaginative reading can lead to action, but they do not have to.
Read quickly and with total immersion. Let the characters into your mind and heart, suspend your disbelief, if such it is, about the events. Do not disapprove of something I character does before you understand why he does it. Try as hard as you can to live in his world, not in yours, the things she does maybe quite understandable. And do not judge the world as a whole until you are sure that you have lived in it to the extent of your ability.
You must finish a story in order to be able to say that you have read it well.
One reason why fiction is a human necessity is that it satisfies many unconscious as well as conscious needs. It would be important if it only touched the conscious mind, as expository writing does. But fiction is important to because it also touches the unconscious.
Chapter 16. How to read history
First of all, there is the difference between history as fact and history as a written record of facts.
The essence of history is narration, that the last five letters of the word story helps us to understand the basic meaning.
History is allowed to rest somewhere in between the two main divisions of the kinds of books, then it is usually admitted that history is closer to fiction then to science. This does not mean that a historian makes up his fast. However we might get into trouble if we insist too strongly that a writer of fiction makes up his fence. She creates a world as we have said. But this new world is not totally different from our own indeed, it had better not be, and a poet is an ordinary man, with ordinary senses by and through which he has learned. He does not see things that we cannot see, his characters use words that we use. It is only in his dream that human beings create really strange new worlds.
A good historian does not, of course, make up the past.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the historian must always make up something. He must either find a general pattern in, or impose one on, events, or he must suppose that he knows why the persons in history did the things they did. He may have a general theory or philosophy, such as that Providence rules humans Affairs, and make his history fit that. Or he may observe any such pattern, and post it as it were from the outside or above, and instead insist that he is merely reporting the real events that have occurred.
To get at the truth we ought to look at it from more than one point of view.
If your view of history is limited, if you go to its to discover only what really happened, you will not learn the main thing that the author or the real person intended indeed any good historian has to teach.
History is the story of what led up to now.
The first is, if you can oh, read more than one history of an event or. That interests you. The second is, read a history not only to learn what really happens at a particular time and place in the past, but also to learn the way men act in all times and places, especially now.
If we are to read a history well, it is necessary to know precisely what it is about and what it is not about. Certainly if we are to criticize it, we must know the latter. And author cannot be blamed for not doing what she did not try to do.
We expect a historian to be informed.
The first criticism is, more important. A good historian must combine the talents of the Storyteller and the scientist. He must know what is likely to have happened as well as what some witnesses or writers said actually did happen.
Unfortunately, leaders have often acted with some knowledge of history but not enough. With the world as small and as dangerous as it has become, it would be a good idea for all of us to start reading history better.
The world is actually becoming a better place whether you think it is or not. But I do agree with the above statement because in order for the world to become better and safer people need to know about the mistakes of the past and how to avoid those mistakes as well as improve the life of every citizen.
Boswell's life of Johnson
Human beings are curious, and especially curious about other human beings.
Izaak Walton's lives
Michael Faraday in Ferriday the Discoverer
Plutarch's lives of the noble grecians's and Romans
Autobiographies present some different and interesting problems.
It is questionable whether anyone has ever written a true autobiography. If it is difficult to know the life of anyone else, it is even more difficult to know one's own. And of course all autobiographies have to be written about lives that are not yet complete.
Everybody has some secrets she cannot bear to divulge, everybody also has some Illusions about himself, which it is almost impossible for him to regard as illusions.
Read biography as history and as the cause of History, take all autobiographies with a grain of salt, and never forget that you must not argue with a book until you fully understand what it is saying. As to the question, what of it?
We would only say this, biography, like history, can be a cause of practical, or moral action. A biography can be inspiring. It is the story of a life, usually a more or less successful one, and we two have lives to lead.
The distinction between reading for information and reading for understanding that underlies everything we have said about reading. And this is that sometimes we have to read for information about understanding to find out how others have interpreted the facts. Let's try to explain what this means.
The very best articles, like the best books, cannot be condensed without loss. A summary, in this case, would function well only if it impels us to read the original.
We may not have to worry about this very much if 1000 pages are cut down to 900, say, but it 1,000 pages are cut to 10, or even one, then the question of what has been left out becomes critical.
Chapter 17. How to read Science and Mathematics
Only two kinds. The great scientific and mathematical classes of our tradition. Intelligent and well-read persons were expected to read scientific books as well as history and philosophy, there were no hard-and-fast distinctions, No Boundaries that could not be crossed.
It should still be like that.
Today, science tends to be written by experts for experts. Nowadays, philosophers sell them right for anyone except for other philosophers, economics right for economist's, and even historians are beginning to find that the kind of shorthand, monographic communication to other experts that has been long dominant in science is a more convenient way of getting ideas across that the more traditional narrative work written for everyone.
State, as clearly as you can, the problem that the author has tried to solve. This rule of analytical reading is relevant to all expertise very works, but it is particularly relevant to work in this field of Science and Mathematics.
The leading terms in the scientific work are usually expressed by uncommon or technical words. A scientist, unlike a historian tries to get away from locality in time and place. He tries to say how things are generally, how things generally behave.
The two main difficulties. One is with respect to the arguments. Science is primarily inductive, that is, its primary arguments are those that establish a general proposition by reference to observable edited.
His first difficulty arises because, in order to understand the inductive arguments in a scientific book, you must be able to follow the evidence that the scientist reports as their basis.
Obligation is not to become the pump attendants in the subject matter but instead to understand the problem.
Popular Science. First, they contain relatively few descriptions of the experiment. Instead, they merely report the results of experiments. Second, they contain relatively little mathematics.
An informed and concerned reader should know everything he can about the subject.
Chapter 18. How to read philosophy
Philosophy, According to Aristotle, begins in Wonder. It certainly begins in childhood, even if for most of us it stops there, too.
What happens between the nursery and college to turn the flow of questions, or rather, to turn it into the dollar channels of adult curiosity about matters of fact?
😊A mind's not agitated by good questions cannot appreciate the significance of even the best answers.
Why should we have to try to develop such Minds, when children are born with them?
School itself, perhaps, dulls the mind oh, by the deadweight of rote learning, much of which may be necessary. The failure is probably even more the parents fault. We are until a child there is no answer, even when one is available, or demand that he ask no more questions. We definitely can see liar irritation when baffled by the Apparently unanswerable query. All this discourages the child. He may get the impression that it is impolite to be too inquisitive.
The ability to retain the child's view of the world, with at the same time of mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare, and the person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking.
I am so pleased to read the statement above because I feel like that is almost exactly like me. Although I feel like my mind has been dulled by the system oh, that is repairable with hard work and consistency. So it is one of my goals to wake people up! Get them out of their own adult Minds and get them back into curiosity and growth.
What are these childishly simple question that philosophers asked? When we write them down, they do not seem simple, because to answer them is so difficult. Nevertheless, they are initially simple in the sense of being basic or fundamental.
This was actually one of the thoughts that I was having earlier today before I even read this passage. A lot of the solutions to a lot of the world's problems are actually quite simple but hard to accomplish. It made me such a simple solution that you would be surprised on how much it would solve. Such as the reading problem. Not many people read non-fiction books, a lot of people are stuck in the way that they live their lives. They are dulled by the system. Their minds are not curious to learn and grow.
So what would solving the reading problem cars? How would that change societies and governments? I believe, that it will make a huge difference and so I'm going to try my hardest and do everything I can up until the day I die in order to accomplish this goal.
What is involved in any change? When you learn something that you did not know before, you have certainly changed with respect to the knowledge you have acquired, but you are also the same individual that you were before, if that were not the case, you could not be said to have changed through learning.
The two groups of questions that we have discussed determine or Identify two main divisions of philosophy. The questions in the first group, the question about being and becoming, have to do with what is or happens in the world. Set the questions belong to the division of philosophy that is called theoretical or speculative.
The questions in the second group, the question concerning good and evil, or right and wrong, have to do with what ought to be done or thought, and they belong to the division of philosophy that is sometimes called practical, and is more accurately called normative.
The philosophical dialogue
The first philosophical style of exposition, first in time if not in Effectiveness, is the one adopted by Plato in his dialogues. The style is conversational, even called Creole, a number of men discuss subject with Socrates often, after a certain amount of fumbling, Socrates and Barks On a series of questions and comments that help to elucidate the subject.
The philosophical Treatise or essay
Aristotle was Plato's best pupil, he studied under him for 20 years. He said to have also written dialogue, but none of these survive entirely. What does survive are curiously difficult essays or treatises on a number of different subjects. Aristotle was obviously a clear thinker, but the difficulty of the surviving work has lead Scholars to suggest that they were originally notes for lectures or books, either air stopper home notes, or notes taken down by a student who heard the master speak. A philosophical view is developed through straightforward Exposition rather than through the conflict of positions and opinions, as in Plato.
The meeting of objections
The philosophical style developed in the Middle Ages and perfected by Saints Thomas Ocwen Us in his Summa theologica has likenesses to both those already discussed. Aquanaut style is a combination of question raising an objection meeting. The Summa is divided into Parts, treatises, questions, and articles. The form of all the articles is the same. A question is posed, the opposite answer to it is given, arguments are in support of the wrong answer, these are countered first by an authoritative text often quotes from the scripture, and finally, Queen has introduces his own answer or solution with the words, I answer that.
The systemization of philosophy
In the seventeenth Century, 1/4 style of philosophical Exposition was developed by two notable philosophers, descarte and Spinoza. Fascinated by the promised success of mathematics in organization men's knowledge of nature, they attempted to organize philosophy itself and Away acting to the organization of mathematics.
The aphoristic style
This is a more modern style but not as important as the other four. It was adopted by Nietzsche and by modern French philosophers. One of the negative or disadvantages with this style is that the author is like a hit-and-run driver, he touches on a subject, He suggests a truth or insight about it, and then he runs off to another subject without properly defending what he has said.
Thank you very much for reading this summary holds up. I hope that it was extremely valuable for you.
Please take a moment to share with people who love learning.