The Discoverers

By addebook • Jun 24th, 2008 • Category: Astronomy & Geography

The Discoverers

The Discoverers
By Daniel J. Boorstin
Publisher: Random House
Number Of Pages: 768
Publication Date: 1983-10-12
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0394402294
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780394402291
Binding: Hardcover

Perhaps the greatest book by one of our greatest historians, The Discoverers is a volume of sweeping range and majestic interpretation. To call it a history of science is an understatement; this is the story of how humankind has come to know the world, however incompletely (”the eternal mystery of the world,” Einstein once said, “is its comprehensibility”). Daniel J. Boorstin first describes the liberating concept of time–”the first grand discovery”–and continues through the age of exploration and the advent of the natural and social sciences. The approach is idiosyncratic, with Boorstin lingering over particular figures and accomplishments rather than rushing on to the next set of names and dates. It’s also primarily Western, although Boorstin does ask (and answer) several interesting questions: Why didn’t the Chinese “discover” Europe and America? Why didn’t the Arabs circumnavigate the planet? His thesis about discovery ultimately turns on what he calls “illusions of knowledge.” If we think we know something, then we face an obstacle to innovation. The great discoverers, Boorstin shows, dispel the illusions and reveal something new about the world.

Although The Discoverers easily stands on its own, it is technically the first entry in a trilogy that also includes The Creators and The Seekers. An outstanding book–one of the best works of history to be found anywhere. –John J. Miller

Book Description:

An original history of man’s greatest adventure: his search to discover the world around him.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Summary: A good read, but some disturbing tendencies
Rating: 3

The Discoverers is a facinating book, and tackles a very big topic: in effect, the history of knowledge of our world. The book is very readable, and Boorstin uses generally conversational, rather than pedantic, language.

All that being said, I was somewhat disappointed by Boorstin’s constant portrayal of the Western Church as perhaps the single greatest obstacle to the advancement of knowledge. [Disclosure: I am a devout Catholic who has some familiarity with both the beauties and flaws of the Church.] While it is easy to play to common understandings — and perhaps comfortable bigotries — I would expect more from a scholar of Boorstin’s reputation.

Boorstin never makes clear whether the Church, as he sees it, promoted ignorance deliberately as some nefarious program (in the spirit of the tendencious The Di Vinci Code) or more innocently out of its own intellectual limitations. In any case, he proceeds to neglect some obvious facts that run counter to his theme, the most notable of which is that the medieval church more than any other institution sponsored and guided the development of the university. This is not the sort of thing one would expect from an instution seeking to thwart learning.

There is a long list of church clerics who were literally “founding fathers” of scientific disciplines ranging from genetics and atomic theory to geology and seismology. None of these is even hinted at in The Discovers (although Boorstin finds room, oddly, for such “discoveries” as Keynesian economic theory). Most fundamentally, Boorstin never seems to recognize the peculiarity of his position — that Western culture, so thoroughly and inextricably linked to a benighted Christian church, could produce the wide array of discoverers documented in his text.

Summary: An Old Fashioned Idea..
Rating: 4

Admittedly, while I’m jumping into the fold a tad late, I think my review might benefit some who haven’t yet read this glorious compendium of information. Yes, like one reviewer says, it is an encyclopedic collection of essential and non-essential information — and at times a verbose one — about life, history, culture and civilization. But in this wired age of getting information on the fly — off a talking head on a wide screen, squinting at a one-inch-square cellphone web page, or listening to a scratchy bluetooth connection — it is refreshing to learn of vast ideas and minutia and everything in between by turning 600 pages of a heavy book.

Summary: A bold project, dragged down by showiness
Rating: 3

I must join the minority report. I’ve owned this book for years, find it a remarkable accomplishment full of fascinating facts and biographies… but halfway through trying to finish Book III, Section 3, Part 5.1.B for the 32nd time, I’m throwing in the towel. There’s something about Boorstin’s writing style that puts me to sleep, and I think it’s what an earlier reviewer noted — a certain smugness, a certain showiness that needlessly complicates the story he’s trying to tell.

Certainly, there’s a bit of audacity and vainglorious ambition to anyone who would attempt what Boorstin does here, and I don’t begrudge him that ambition. He’s clearly an incredibly brilliant man.

But, jeez, does he have to make sure you know it.

I just can’t shake the sense that the author is more interested in showing off just how much he’s read and retained, the brilliant scope of his knowledge, than in making that knowledge accessible to the reader. For example, as noted by others, Boorstin will use an obscure term for dozens of pages before he finally gets around to defining it. While possibly not intended, the effect on this reader is of being intellectually bullied. One is pummeled by so many names, terms and Latin phrases, that the reader must just swallow Boorstin’s interpretations, because clearly the man knows more than any of us mere mortals could ever aspire towards.

So much fascinating history is here, but I have to find a source that doesn’t cause my eyes to glaze over as The Discovers does.

Summary: Great Book with many answers to life itself.
Rating: 5

Title says it all.
This is a super book for anyone having questions in life.
Super bathroom reader, and you don’t have to read cover to cover to get anything out of it.

Even though I’m not a big history buff, I find the book facinating…
Bought a copy for my father and brother so that we have a common subject while chatting on phone… he he he

Summary: A history of knowledge and understading
Rating: 5

Like most readers, I thoroughly enjoyed Boorstin’s “The Discoverers” – all 684 pages. At the same time, I’ll admit to understanding somewhat, and having been amused by, the one negative review below. Without diminishing the book in any way, it’s a bit of a cross between a history book and an encyclopedia. It is a history of human knowledge. As such, a wide range of critical areas of human endeavor and inquiry are treated in detail – clocks and calendars, cartography and discovery, astronomy, medicine, human physiology, mathematics, scientific method, the study of plants, animals and evolution, language and communication, and the study of history itself. In tracing human understanding of these and other subjects, Boorstin introduces the reader to critical times, places, circumstances and personalities. Thus, while focusing on specific topics that are very interesting in and of themselves, the book also provides the reader with a deeper, richer and more colorful understanding of world history generally. I liked the book so much, in fact, I bought another copy to give away.

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