A one-voume reference to the history of ideas that is a compendium of everything that humankind has thought, invented, created, considered, and perfected from the beginning of civilization into the twenty-first century. Massive in its scope, and yet totally accessible, A HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE covers not only all the great theories and discoveries of the human race, but also explores the social conditions, political climates, and individual men and women of genius that brought ideas to fruition throughout history. "Crystal clear and concise...Explains how humankind got to know what it knows." Clifton Fadiman Selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club
What is the history of knowledge? This engaging and accessible introduction explains what is distinctive about the new field of the history of knowledge (or, as some scholars say, ‘knowledges in the plural’) and how it differs from the history of science, intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge or from cultural history. Leading cultural historian, Peter Burke, draws upon examples of this new kind of history from different periods and from the history of India, East Asia and the Islamic world as well as from Europe and the Americas. He discusses some of the main concepts used by scholars working in the field, among them ‘order of knowledge’, ‘situated knowledge’ and ‘knowledge society’. This book tells the story of the transformation of relatively raw ‘information’ into knowledge via processes of classification, verification and so on, the dissemination of this knowledge and finally its employment for different purposes, by governments, corporations or private individuals. A concluding chapter identifies central problems in the history of knowledge, from triumphalism to relativism, together with attempts to solve them. The only book of its kind yet to be published, What is the History of Knowledge? will be essential reading for all students of history and the humanities in general, as well as the interested general reader.
In this book Peter Burke adopts a socio-cultural approach toexamine the changes in the organization of knowledge in Europe fromthe invention of printing to the publication of the FrenchEncyclopédie. The book opens with an assessment of different sociologies ofknowledge from Mannheim to Foucault and beyond, and goes on todiscuss intellectuals as a social group and the social institutions(especially universities and academies) which encouraged ordiscouraged intellectual innovation. Then, in a series of separatechapters, Burke explores the geography, anthropology, politics andeconomics of knowledge, focusing on the role of cities, academies,states and markets in the process of gathering, classifying,spreading and sometimes concealing information. The final chaptersdeal with knowledge from the point of view of the individualreader, listener, viewer or consumer, including the problem of thereliability of knowledge discussed so vigorously in the seventeenthcentury. One of the most original features of this book is its discussionof knowledges in the plural. It centres on printed knowledge,especially academic knowledge, but it treats the history of theknowledge 'explosion' which followed the invention of printing andthe discovery of the world beyond Europe as a process of exchangeor negotiation between different knowledges, such as male andfemale, theoretical and practical, high-status and low-status, andEuropean and non-European. Although written primarily as a contribution to social orsocio-cultural history, this book will also be of interest tohistorians of science, sociologists, anthropologists, geographersand others in another age of information explosion.
This book presents a new way of thinking about the history of science and technology, one that offers a grand narrative of human history in which knowledge serves as a critical factor of cultural evolution. Jürgen Renn examines the role of knowledge in global transformations going back to the dawn of civilization while providing vital perspectives on the complex challenges confronting us today in the Anthropocene, the present geological epoch shaped by humankind. Covering topics ranging from evolution of writing to the profound transformations wrought by modern science, The Evolution of Knowledge offers an entirely new framework for understanding structural changes in systems of knowledge and a bold, innovative approach to the history and philosophy of science.
How did the fact become modernity's most favored unit of knowledge? How did description come to seem separable from theory in the precursors of economics and the social sciences? Mary Poovey explores these questions in A History of the Modern Fact, ranging across an astonishing array of texts and ideas from the publication of the first British manual on double-entry bookkeeping in 1588 to the institutionalization of statistics in the 1830s. She shows how the production of systematic knowledge from descriptions of observed particulars influenced government, how numerical representation became the privileged vehicle for generating useful facts, and how belief—whether figured as credit, credibility, or credulity—remained essential to the production of knowledge. Illuminating the epistemological conditions that have made modern social and economic knowledge possible, A History of the Modern Fact provides important contributions to the history of political thought, economics, science, and philosophy, as well as to literary and cultural criticism.
A Wolfson History Prize Finalist A New Statesman Book of the Year A Sunday Times Book of the Year “Timely and authoritative...I enjoyed it immensely.” —Philip Pullman “If you care about books, and if you believe we must all stand up to the destruction of knowledge and cultural heritage, this is a brilliant read—both powerful and prescient.” —Elif Shafak Libraries have been attacked since ancient times but they have been especially threatened in the modern era, through war as well as willful neglect. Burning the Books describes the deliberate destruction of the knowledge safeguarded in libraries from Alexandria to Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets to the torching of the Library of Congress. The director of the world-famous Bodleian Libraries, Richard Ovenden, captures the political, religious, and cultural motivations behind these acts. He also shines a light on the librarians and archivists preserving history and memory, often risking their lives in the process. More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries support the rule of law and inspire and inform citizens. Ovenden reminds us of their social and political importance, challenging us to protect and support these essential institutions. “Wonderful...full of good stories and burning with passion.” —Sunday Times “The sound of a warning vibrates through this book.” —The Guardian “Essential reading for anyone concerned with libraries and what Ovenden outlines as their role in ‘the support of democracy, the rule of law and open society.’” —Wall Street Journal “Ovenden emphasizes that attacks on books, archives, and recorded information are the usual practice of authoritarian regimes.” —Michael Dirda, Washington Post
One of the foremost historians of intellectual life and education in Germany, Fritz Ringer has brought together in this volume several of his articles, most of which are not easily available are published here in English for the first time. They focus on a whole range of contemporary and historical debates about the relationship between ideas and their context, the role of education and middle-class consciousness, the social role of academics and intellectuals, and competing ideals of learning, science, and history.
The ‘knowledge turn’ in curriculum studies has drawn attention to the central role that knowledge of the disciplines plays in education, and to the need for new thinking about how we understand knowledge and knowledge-building. Knowing History in Schools explores these issues in the context of teaching and learning history through a dialogue between the eminent sociologist of curriculum Michael Young, and leading figures in history education research and practice from a range of traditions and contexts. With a focus on Young’s ‘powerful knowledge’ theorisation of the curriculum, and on his more recent articulations of the ‘powers’ of knowledge, this dialogue explores the many complexities posed for history education by the challenge of building children’s historical knowledge and understanding. The book builds towards a clarification of how we can best conceptualise knowledge-building in history education. Crucially, it aims to help history education students, history teachers, teacher educators and history curriculum designers navigate the challenges that knowledge-building processes pose for learning history in schools.
"The foundations of modern knowledge--philosophy, math, astronomy, geography--were laid by the Greeks, whose ideas were written on scrolls and stored in libraries across the Mediterranean and beyond. But as the vast Roman Empire disintegrated, so did appreciation of these precious texts. Christianity cast a shadow over so-called pagan thought, books were burned, and the library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of classical knowledge, was destroyed. Yet some texts did survive and The Map of Knowledge explores the role played by seven cities around the Mediterranean--rare centers of knowledge in a dark world, where scholars supported by enlightened heads of state collected, translated and shared manuscripts. In 8th century Baghdad, Arab discoveries augmented Greek learning. Exchange within the thriving Muslim world brought that knowledge to Cordoba, Spain. Toledo became a famous center of translation from Arabic into Latin, a portal through which Greek and Arab ideas reached Western Europe. Salerno, on the Italian coast, was the great center of medical studies, and Sicily, ancient colony of the Greeks, was one of the few places in the West to retain contact with Greek culture and language. Scholars in these cities helped classical ideas make their way to Venice in the 15th century, where printers thrived and the Renaissance took root. The Map of Knowledge follows three key texts--Euclid's Elements, Ptolemy's The Almagest, and Galen's writings on medicine--on a perilous journey driven by insatiable curiosity about the world"--Pages [2-3] of cover.
The theory of knowledge, or epistemology, is often regarded as a dry topic that bears little relation to actual knowledge practices. Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History addresses this perception by showing the roots, developments and prospects of modern epistemology from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to the present day. Beginning with an introduction to the central questions and problems in theory of knowledge, Steve Fuller goes on to demonstrate that contemporary epistemology is enriched by its interdisciplinarity, analysing keys areas including: Epistemology as Cognitive Economics Epistemology as Divine Psychology Epistemology as Philosophy of Science Epistemology as Sociology of Science Epistemology and Postmodernism. A wide-ranging and historically-informed assessment of the ways in which man has - and continues to - pursue, question, contest, expand and shape knowledge, this book is essential reading anyone in the Humanities and Social Sciences interested in the history and practical application of epistemology.
