Good point: books have utility beyond accuracy and immediate usefulness—it’s useful to know about historical ideas, for example. But it’s important to know about them as historical facts—these aren’t really useful sources of ideas in and of themselves (at least not in the present—there are a lot of useful ideas here that have since been picked out and refined in more useful forms).
Not every book is there to provide good ideas, just as not every staff member at a university is there to curate and develop them. I’m not too concerned about the the academic opinions of he architect, or the IT manager—they are there for different reasons.
There may be many reasons to keep a book around, but “contains terrible ideas dismissed for really good reasons” is not one of them. Each of the books you list has a significance beyond the (often horrible) ideas contain, making it worthy of shelf space. If they had no such historical import, then no, they would not be a great use of shelf space.
There may be many reasons to keep a book around, but “contains terrible ideas dismissed for really good reasons” is not one of them.
Actually, even that is. “Really good reasons” are things you want to keep track of. When they’re really good reasons against something, you want to keep track of the thing they’re against to fully understand the good reasons.
Intellectual history is a series of arguments. If any institution should remember and analyze the bad arguments, it’s academia. Consigning them to the memory hole loses information about the good arguments as well as the bad. That goes beyond the historical argument—that’s an argument based on information loss regardless of historical circumstances.
Would keep all of those books, would probably not put in modern defenses of them though. There is a difference between historical data and present-day argument. Also the inclusion of The Wealth Of Nations on that list is a bit odd.
Furthermore, in the case of the Communist Manifesto, the awfulness is not actually in the book.
I threw in a variety of books in the list, knowing that different people would find different ones horrible. I don’t find them all horrible, and which ones I find horrible weren’t really the point of the comment.
Yes, there is a difference between historically relevant books and just bad ideas, and I believe later in the thread we discuss that, but I was responding to the “filter out terrible ideas” policy. That’s a terrible idea.
Same principle. Wonderful. “Filter out terrible ideas”.
Throw out Mein Kampf.
Are throwing out the Bible and Koran yet? The Wealth of Nations? The Communist Manifesto? The Little Red Book?
The history of mankind is a history of bad ideas. Into the dumpster and burn them. Better idea—we can use them for power generation.
Good point: books have utility beyond accuracy and immediate usefulness—it’s useful to know about historical ideas, for example. But it’s important to know about them as historical facts—these aren’t really useful sources of ideas in and of themselves (at least not in the present—there are a lot of useful ideas here that have since been picked out and refined in more useful forms).
Not every book is there to provide good ideas, just as not every staff member at a university is there to curate and develop them. I’m not too concerned about the the academic opinions of he architect, or the IT manager—they are there for different reasons.
There may be many reasons to keep a book around, but “contains terrible ideas dismissed for really good reasons” is not one of them. Each of the books you list has a significance beyond the (often horrible) ideas contain, making it worthy of shelf space. If they had no such historical import, then no, they would not be a great use of shelf space.
Actually, even that is. “Really good reasons” are things you want to keep track of. When they’re really good reasons against something, you want to keep track of the thing they’re against to fully understand the good reasons.
Intellectual history is a series of arguments. If any institution should remember and analyze the bad arguments, it’s academia. Consigning them to the memory hole loses information about the good arguments as well as the bad. That goes beyond the historical argument—that’s an argument based on information loss regardless of historical circumstances.
Would keep all of those books, would probably not put in modern defenses of them though. There is a difference between historical data and present-day argument. Also the inclusion of The Wealth Of Nations on that list is a bit odd.
Furthermore, in the case of the Communist Manifesto, the awfulness is not actually in the book.
I threw in a variety of books in the list, knowing that different people would find different ones horrible. I don’t find them all horrible, and which ones I find horrible weren’t really the point of the comment.
Yes, there is a difference between historically relevant books and just bad ideas, and I believe later in the thread we discuss that, but I was responding to the “filter out terrible ideas” policy. That’s a terrible idea.