THE THINKERS, THE THOUGHTS, AND THE THEORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD WE LIVE IN.
With A World of Ideas, you can get to the bottom of the big bang theory; find out where Freud's ideas were coming from, and where Einstein's might take us; demystify surrealism and structuralism, communism and capitalism. Prepared with the assistance of an academic board of leading scholars, this invaluable reference includes
- Hundreds of entries, alphabetically arranged, with key words and concepts highlighted and cross-referenced--more than two thousand in all
- A special emphasis on multicultural influences and contemporary thought
- A comprehensive index giving easy access to all essential terms and names
A World of Ideas is an indispensable resource for the curious reader.Chris Rohmann is the former editor and project manager for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
From the Hardcover edition.It all began with dialectical materialism. I was aware of the term, had seen or
heard it used a hundred times. But one day, finding it mentioned in a magazine
article, I realized I had no idea exactly what it is and couldn't accurately
define it. The brief dictionary definition didn't help much, and it didn't appear at all
in my desk encyclopedia.
It occurred to me that lots of other concepts, old and new, were vaguely
familiar but elusive: ideas I'd heard of or learned something about in school
but now had a faded impression of, at best.
Wouldn't it be great to have a dictionary of ideas, I thought--not things
or events, but those intangibles that fuel our thoughts: theories, philosophies,
beliefs, ideologies, and the thinkers who have articulated them. That set me
on a search through bookstores and libraries for the volume I had in mind: a
compact, alphabetical guide to significant ideas and thinkers, with entries
long enough to enlighten but short enough to digest, covering all fields of
thought and written in ordinary English.
I couldn't find it, so I wrote it.
The book you are holding represents the fruits of what I now think of as
my second college education, one pursued outside a formal institution (but
with the crucial assistance of numerous scholars) and which took as long as
the first one. My ambition was not only to get a grasp on a world's worth of
concepts but to explain them in terms that I, a nonacademic, and others like
me could understand. It was a daunting but exhilarating challenge.
Ideas, I appreciated anew, are the foundations of our culture. They inspire
our thoughts and inform our beliefs. Many of them form the very basis of our
identity. Some, such as those from non-Western traditions, are only now entering our awareness as our society becomes more genuinely multicultural.
While the ideas of the past have shaped the social, political, and religious institutions of today's world, new concepts continually challenge our perceptions, fuel debate, and pave our way to the future.
The topics of A World of Ideas' 444 entries were chosen in
consultation with a number of respected scholars in the various fields covered. The process, of course, was one of exclusion as much as selection from a nearly
limitless field of possibility. In making our decisions on which ideas and
thinkers to include in this relatively small volume, we were guided by two
main criteria: their influence on human thought and their continuing relevance
in today's discourse. The fields of knowledge gathered here include philosophy, psychology, politics, history, economics, sociology, religion, science, and the arts. Entries on ideas in these areas define them and briefly explain their history, implications, and wider significance. The 111 profiles of major thinkers provide outlines of their most influential ideas rather than pur
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