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It’s Time to Make a List
Powerline has publicized Amazon de-listing a book from its retail site, effectively “disappearing” it. Amazon may yet reverse its action and claim some form of “error” in the de-listing. But it has happened before and may become a regular occurrence in the future.
In response it is appropriate to ask the following question: If it was your responsibility to preserve the ability for society to “rediscover” the ideas necessary to reformulate Western Civilization, readily accessible by the folk of the future (not solely scholars) with the smallest library of physical books, what would your list be?
One may say this is wholly unnecessary. But who would have thought they would be coming after Washington and Lincoln? It’s time to consider the unthinkable, and plan the strategy for reformulating society.
Published in General
The complete works if Thomas Sowell would be a good start.
Although that blows your “small library” plan…
Amazing! This sentence is very much how one of the most beloved professors at my alma mater described the college’s mission : Our goal is to educate you so that if it ever becomes necessary for you to re-start Western Civilization, you could do it.
But that was a long time ago, in a culture far, far away…
How the Scots invented the Modern World.
Okay, you take care of the knowledge, I’ll work on the re-populating. :-)
Just ordered it.
So, vintage Playboy magazines make the list?
Good thinking.
How small?
In 1960’s “The Time Machine,” at the end Rod Taylor’s character has taken 3 books into the future to basically bring civilization back to the Eloi.
The Bible, ESV translation
The Hebrew Old Testament
A Hebrew lexicon
A Hebrew grammar book
The Greek New Testament
A Koineh Greek lexicon
A Koineh Greek grammar book
The Bible, King James translation
A volume with at least 5 Shakespeare plays
Michael Paulsen’s book on the Constitution
Plato’s Republic
Augustine’s Confessions
Virgil’s Aeneid
A combined Homer: Iliad and Oddysey
Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration and Second Treatise
A volume of long selections from Aquinas’ Summa Theologica
Milton’s Paradise Lost
Dante’s Divine Comedy
LOTR
Something from Martin Luther
C. S. Lewis: big book of non-fictions
C. S. Lewis: big book of Narnia books
I thought it was the Irish.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_the_Irish_Saved_Civilization/KJfZw8djFIoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
Maybe I’d better check out what the Scots were up to.
The Heidleberg Disputations.
Yes, but the three books are not identified, and that event was not included in the story that Wells wrote.
The Irish preserved the best of the old civilization, and Scottish Enlightenment principles built the new one.
(I think.)
A good list, but the problem remains that a lot of these books require scholarship to make them accessible to a potential audience. On the other hand, popular summaries untethered to original sources leave much to the invention of the summarizer. I guess my question is what works focus the average mind in the direction of enlightened thought.
Add some Aristotle (Basic Works of Aristotle compilation since we’re limited), poetry (Robert Frost, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Shakespeare Sonnet 18), music books (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin) and at least one recording of early Elvis Presley. And something that has E = mc2 .
I think most of these books actually do that. The ones I’ve bolded anyway.
But yeah–the best intro books to philosophy, to Shakespeare, to the Bible, to history, to physics, to biology, to engineering, etc. would make a darn good list. The only intro books I have in that list are the Paulsen and the Lewis.
Yes, but I was giving a short list.
It’s reasonable to kick off someone and throw in Aristotle and Beethoven. (Sigh. Maybe Lewis could go if it has to be that short. I don’t want to decide.)
True, but it gives something to think about, which is also how the movie ends.
Could we include:
The Way Things Ought to Be, Limbaugh
See, I told you So, Limbaugh
Liberal Fascism, Goldberg
Witness, Chambers
Liberty and Tyranny, Levin
In Fifty Years We’ll All be Chicks, Corolla
Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman
The Strange Death of Europe, Murray
Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt
Mere Christianity, Lewis
The Prince, Machiavelli
God’s Debris, Adams
And maybe, when none of it makes any difference, Sailing Alone Around the World, Slocum
Pride and Prejudice… Because if it comes down to that, I need something to escape to. For the Bible,KJV, because the words I read need to match what is sung in my copy of The Messiah.
Probably need to include Isaac Asimov’s Understanding Physics.
Or better, jump ahead to Rovelli’s Reality is Not What it Seems.
Adam Smith: The wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments.
It says Amazon has dropped it from its Audible site, too. So if someone already purchased it for his Audible library, does that mean they ripped it out of the library, too? That would seem to be a problem. If I had it on my phone now I presume it would stay on my phone, but what about when I buy a new phone and need to move my library? It had better be available for download for people who’ve already bought it.
Audible is trying to push people into its rental system where instead of buying books you sort of rent them by paying a flat monthly fee. This possibility is one reason I’m not going along with it. (There are also other reasons.)
I always download Kindle books to my computer so that Amazon can’t take them back like they did some years ago when someone claimed they didn’t have proper permission to sell Orwell’s 1984 (talk about irony!)
The Scots gave us concept of Happiness as the individual fulfillment of God’s will as in “Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness”. They gave us what we think of as a University. The Constitution (separation of powers). Economics from Adam Smith. The industrial revolution (James Watt). Road Systems (John McAdam). Even the theological inspiration for the idea of America, the covenant, and exceptionalism.
Don’t forget Reidian commonsense epistemology!
Locke is English. Did he get some of his ideas from the Scots?
I can’t believe I left that out. Absolutely required.