colinp Posted July 22, 2013 I have wanted to share these books here for a long while but just have not had the time. Well, I got The Seekers for my birthday last month and am nearing its end (so sad to finish books you do not want to finish, alas that is another topic altogether!). Hearing Chris talk about Civilization 5 on a recent podcast reminded me of one of the things that I love about these books: they unabashedly celebrate culture, history and the arts. This is a wonderful, enlightening, encouraging and incredible series that I highly recommend people read. They do not need to be read in order, and each are full of short chapters that make them a breezy read. Daniel Boorstin was a professor, historian, attorney and writer who had been the 12th Librarian of Congress from 1975 to 1987. In 1983 he published The Discoverers, subtitled 'a history of man's search to know his world and himself.' In his own words: One of the themes of 'The Discoverers' is that the great obstacle to progress has not been ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge. The great significance of Columbus's discovery, for Europeans, of America and Vespucci and the others was that Europeans were awakened to how ignorant they were about the world, how little they knew about the number of continents. If there were two continents they'd never heard of, how much else was there in this world that they did not know of? It was that shaking-up experience that then led to the Renaissance and led people to reach back into the past as well. That is a characteristic of movement of science forward, the idea of progress. Now, one of the interesting things, of course, about the arts is that there is no progress in the arts. We don't read Aristotle for his science, nor do we read Galen for physiology, but we still admire the Parthenon, we still read Sophocles and we still read Homer. That's because there is no progress in the arts. In science, yes. But in the arts, there's only possibilities. In 1992 he released the second of the trilogy, The Creators, subtitled 'a history of heroes of the imagination'. Where The Discoverers focused on science and invention, The Creators focused on artists: I begin with the riddle of creation and creator man and then the different ways in which man has recreated the world. We start, of course, with literature, and the great literary artists have taken whatever was available to them and made something new of it. Boccaccio was confronted with a plague in the 14th century. He didn't give up and retreat. No, he made that the raw material for a hundred tales which we still delight in. When Rabelais was faced with the worst drought in French history, he didn't quit, but he made that the subject for a comic work on dipsomania and the delights of drunkenness, and so it goes. So the belief in creation encourages people to think that they can use anything, that anything can be a resource and nothing ca be an obstacle. Finally, in 1998 he last book of the trilogy, The Seekers, 'the story of man's continuing quest to understand his world.' The final focus is on religion and philosophy. Unfortunately I do not have a good quote for this one, but it has been just as interesting as the others. Has anyone read any of these? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
