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Gateway To The Great Books
''Gateway to the Great Books'' is a 10-volume collection of classic fiction and nonfiction literature edited by Mortimer Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins, with Clifton Fadiman credited as associate editor, that was published by Encyclopædia Britannica in 1963. The set was designed to be an introduction to the ''Great Books of the Western World'', published by the same organization and editors in 1952. The set included selections of short stories, plays, essays, letters, and extracts from longer works by more than one hundred authors. The selections were generally shorter and in some ways simpler than the full-length books included in ''Great Books of the Western World''. Authors A number of authors in the ''Great Books'' set – such as Plutarch, Epictetus, Tacitus, Dante, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin and William James – were also represented by shorter works in the ''Gateway'' volu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is often dubbed the "father of American psychology." Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James. James trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard, but never practiced medicine. Instead, he pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy. He wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are '' The Principles of Psychology'', a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology; '' Essays in Radical Empiricism'', an important text in phil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; 1660 – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, merchant and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translations. He has been seen as one of the earliest proponents of the English novel, and helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson. Defoe wrote many political tracts, was often in trouble with the authorities, and spent a period in prison. Intellectuals and political leaders paid attention to his fresh ideas and sometimes consulted him. Defoe was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than three hundred works—books, pamphlets, and journals—on diverse topics, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural. He was also a pioneer of business journalism and economic journalism. Early life Daniel Foe was probably born in Fore Street, London, Fore Street ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portraitist
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better represents personality and mood, this type of presentation may be chosen. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer, but portrait may be represented as a profile (from aside) and 3/4. History Prehistorical portraiture Plastered human skulls were reconstructed human skulls that were made in the ancient Levant between 9000 and 6000 BC in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. They represent some of the oldest forms of art in the Middle Eas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Great Conversation
The Great Conversation is the ongoing process of writers and thinkers referencing, building on, and refining the work of their predecessors. This process is characterized by writers in the Western canon making comparisons and allusions to the works of earlier writers and thinkers. As such it is a name used in the promotion of the ''Great Books of the Western World'' published by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. in 1952. It is also the title of (i) the first volume of the first edition of this set of books, written by the educational theorist Robert Maynard Hutchins, and (ii) an accessory volume to the second edition (1990), written by the philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. According to Hutchins, "The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day". Adler said, What binds the authors together in an intellectual community is the great conversation in which they are engaged. In the works that come later i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syntopicon
''A Syntopicon: An Index to The Great Ideas'' (1952; second edition, 1990) is a two-volume index, published as volumes 2 and 3 of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.’s collection ''Great Books of the Western World''. Compiled by Mortimer J. Adler, an American philosopher, with the help of Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, the volumes were billed as a collection and guide to the most important ideas, clustered under 102 "Great Ideas", of the Western canon. The term “syntopicon” as well as "Great Ideas" were coined specifically for this undertaking, the former a Neo-Latin word meaning “a collection of topics.” The volumes catalogued what Adler and his team deemed to be the fundamental ideas contained in the works of the ''Great Books of the Western World'', which stretched chronologically from Homer to Freud. The ''Syntopicon'' lists, under each idea, where every occurrence of the concept can be located in the collection's famous works. The ''Syntopicon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and Education reform, educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. The overriding theme of Dewey's works was his profound belief in democracy, be it in politics, education, or communication and journalism. As Dewey himself stated in 1888, while still at the University of Michigan, "Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous." Dewey considered two fundamental elements—schools and civil society—to be major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality. He asserted that complete democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights but also by ensuring that there exists a fully formed public opinion, accomplished by communication among citizens, experts, and politicians. Dewey was one of the primary figures associ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence formula , which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for . Born in the German Empire, Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his German citizenship (as a subject of the Kingdom of Württemberg) the following year. In 1897, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss ETH Zurich, federal polytechnic school in Zurich, graduating in 1900. He acquired Swiss citizenship a year later, which he kept for the rest of his life, and afterwards secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. In 1905, he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich. In 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Virginia Woolf was born in South Kensington, London, into an affluent and intellectual family as the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen. She grew up in a blended household of eight children, including her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. Educated at home in English classics and Victorian literature, Woolf later attended King’s College London, where she studied classics and history and encountered early advocates for women’s rights and education. After the death of her father in 1904, Woolf and her family moved to the bohemian Bloomsbury district, where she became a founding member of the influential Bloomsbury Group. She married Leonard Woolf in 1912, and together they established the Hogarth Press in 1917 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at age 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father John Dickens, John was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years, he returned to school before beginning his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years; wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and nonfiction articles; lectured and performed Penny reading, readings extensively; was a tireless letter writer; and campaigned vigor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of Philosophy, philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between ''émigré ''Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as ''The Portrait of a Lady''. His later works, such as ''The Ambassadors'', ''The Wings of the Dove'' and ''The Golden Bowl'' were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their compos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, ; ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the great writers in the French language and world literature. His extant works include comedies, farces, Tragicomedy, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets, and more. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed at the Comédie-Française more often than those of any other playwright today. His influence is such that the French language is often referred to as the "language of Molière". Born into a prosperous family and having studied at the Collège de Clermont (now Lycée Louis-le-Grand), Molière was well suited to begin a life in the theatre. Thirteen years as an itinerant actor helped him polish his comedic abilities while he began writing, combining Commedia dell'arte elements with the more refined French comedy. Through the patronage of aristocrats inclu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
