history of ideas.

[jojojojoanne]

what are peoples' views on the history of ideas?(obv. v. vague-can be looked at from 'any' perspective.)

[WaldoMcFroog]

Someone had one and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone had an original one which upset all the previous ones and he went off on his own but then he found someone else who liked his one and they took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else and then someone had an original one which upset all the previous ones and he went off on his own but then he found someone else who liked his one and they took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else went back to one of the much earlier ones and said that was better than all the new ones that had come out lately and then another idea got used as the justification for killing people even though it wasn't meant for that at all and that upset a lot of people so someone else and then someone had an original one which upset all the previous ones and he went off on his own but then he found someone else who liked his one and they took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else took that and changed it a bit and then someone else...

[jojojojoanne]

thats funny,(i like the way it is in one long monotonus paragraph too) any other ideas?

[wizard69]

laughing my b0!!0cks of at Waldo...
hahaha

[WaldoMcFroog]

Sophie's World is a pretty good primer in the history of major philosophical movements from the ancient Greeks right up into the 20th century, though the later part of the book is less satisifying since (as I recall - it's been about a decade) it misses out people like Wittgenstein and glosses over things like Nietzsche almost entirely.

It also has a really terrible, obviously pro-Christian element to the denoument that really doesn't satisfy at all, since it's obviously the author's personal beliefs being shoehorned in at the expense of the internal logic of the book. Please note, I'm not slagging it off because the author is a Christian, but because the ending is really unsatifying from a literary perspective and very clumsily done.

[China Doll]

Agree witht the ending to Sophie's World. Very clumsy.

You could try 'Memoires of a Gnostic Dwarf'... that's got some interesting ideas (and practices) on religion in there.

The film Dogma has a nice line in it about religion... basically along the idea that religion is about having 'a good idea'... can't remember the exact quote alas.

If you think about it all though most things are based on an idea surely anyway? (Well except the 1980's, there was no idea behind that). For example maths, when you get right down to it always appears to me as a phillosophy, it's an abstract idea to my way of thinking. (But then I am very bad at maths).

Leonardo De Vinci is another one. A great artist but he also did a model of the first helicopter too. Which at the time must have seemed a little nuts and yet look at us whizzing around in them now... well not literally at this moment but you know what I mean!

Where does the seperation between an idea and something that you can prove and becomes part of our daily lives happen?

But I like the idea of a 'history of ideas'... do you think we've run out of ideas for the present and the future then? ;0)

[Theland]

The history of ideas is the long story of Mans' attempts to explain the world in which he finds himself, and therefore, before beginning the task of asking the fundamental questions, has to decide not only which questions to ask, but but which qustions are legitimate to ask, what can be answered in fact. And then in his infinite wisdom, man puts himself in the centre of all, and proceeds from that starting point.
But nothing beats engineers for ideas. And they're more interesting than philosophers, or accountants!

[jojojojoanne]

hi
,
i have got a copy of 'sophies world' though never got round to reading it properly , the other mentioned 'works' seem surreal! (the art of surrealism)

i don't think that you can seperate idea and proof of an idea (prob. the nearest is studying the (considered?) 'arts' of ancient civilisation perhaps?)

i don't think 'we' have run out of ideas for the present or future, as that is what man does isn't it: think?

[sebtred]

I attempted to read Sophie's world too, but I found the style a little patronising.
"Sophie was SO tired out and excited by all that philosophy that she when straight to bed"! (read in an enthusiastic little-kid lisp). However it did seem to be a good introduction to the history of ideas.
I didn't get far enough to find the Christian bias. Was it really that bad? Or was it just not fashionably anti-christian enough? (No, I'm not a Christian! I just believe in balanced and equal-opportunities debunking of all religious dogma - while also being able to appreciate the "good ideas" that many religions include).