Perhaps there should be an ‘Open Thread’ link between ‘Top’ and ‘Comments’ above, so that people could get to it easily. If we’re going to have an open thread, we might as well make it accessible.
Anyways, I was looking around Amazon for a book on axiology, and I started to wonder: when it comes to fields that are advancing, but not at a ‘significant pace’, is it better to buy older books (as they’ve passed the test of time) or newer ones (as they may have improved on the older books and include new info)? My intuition tells me it’s better to buy newer books.
Assuming total ignorance of the field (absent total ignorance, I could probably distinguish between good and poor books), I’d choose newer editions of older books.
Perhaps there should be an ‘Open Thread’ link between ‘Top’ and ‘Comments’ above, so that people could get to it easily. If we’re going to have an open thread, we might as well make it accessible.
Anyways, I was looking around Amazon for a book on axiology, and I started to wonder: when it comes to fields that are advancing, but not at a ‘significant pace’, is it better to buy older books (as they’ve passed the test of time) or newer ones (as they may have improved on the older books and include new info)? My intuition tells me it’s better to buy newer books.
Assuming total ignorance of the field (absent total ignorance, I could probably distinguish between good and poor books), I’d choose newer editions of older books.
That’s a good point.