Wednesday 6th February 2010
This is a topical note, and the composition of such a document is a very risky undertaking
for someone as absent minded and easily distracted as I. I therefore
start with a date. This note describes the state of my reading on the date shown immediately beneath the heading and records books I've read this year.
So far I haven't finished any book this year, though the number I'm in the process of reading is unusually high.
The first two volumes listed here have been on my list for so long that I beging to doubt whether I shall ever finish them, but I haven't quite given up. I may resort to skimming.
This was written for use in Open University courses and was published in 1970, so it is by no means up to date. Its attractions were being cheap in a second hand book shop, and appearing to be written in tolerably lucid prose. I shall treat it as part of my study of the history of ideas, though I expect it will turn out to have some bearing on contemporary thought.
is a companion book to the same writer's Introducing Sociology. It contains a collection of short readings from writers of interest to sociologists. Several of the readings come from books I've already read, so I may already know slightly more Sciology than I had realised.
I'm finding this material, and what follows applies to both books, heavy going. So far the material has consisted of the introducing of terminology and of abstract discussions of the methods of enquiry. I suspect that many sociologists have been anxious to represent themselves as scientists and, knowing little of theoretical science, have thought its most important feature to have been its extensive vocabulary of technical terms. They have accordingly made up a set of technical terms of their own. I look forward to discovering what they used those terms to say.
George Herbert Read, discussing 'The Self' appeared to belive that our individuality is not intrinsic to us, but is created by society. He provided no argument for that conclusion, neither logical anaysis, not any collection of relevant observations, but simply made oracular pronouncements.
Peter L Berger and Thomas Luckmann, writing about 'The Social Construction of Reality'thought they could disregard abstract theories on the ground that most people to do not discuss such theories. They overlooked the fact that people who do not debate theories, often stil take some theory or other for granted.
is an account of the period from the 1930's to the 1980's from the point of view of Annan and those who were roughly his contemporaries.
Annan was personally acquainted with many of the leading figures of those times and his narrative is enlivened by much intriguing reminiscence. I was particularly fascinated by his account of the activities of Dr. Leavis in the English faculty at Cambriddge. Although he does not mention it in the book, I happen to know that Annan was himself for a while member of the faculty board for English. His own subject was politics not English, but it was the custom for faculty boards to contain one or two people from outside the discipline in querstion to act as what it is customary to call 'honest brokers' (I must check the origin of that phrase). I knew Annan played that part for English, because the other honest broker was Jonathan Bennett, a philosopher who was my supervisor.I already knew that Leavs held there were only five English novelists worth reading - Jane Austin, George Eliot, Henry James, Conrad and D. H. Lawrence, a number later increased to six by the addition of Dickens. Annan thought the omission of any more recent novelist might be a consequence of Leavis never having read any of their work. I had not realised how irresponsibly he behaved to his colleagues, setting examination questions based on passages he himself had previously subjected to a detailed examination in work with his own students.
is a later edition of a text book which I often saw fellow undergraduates carry about with them in my Cambridge days.
I never used it, preferring articles in the philsophical journals and books addressing particular philosophical questions. Now that my essay on Philosopphy is largely complete, I've decided to read someone else's survey of the subject to see what I may have missed out
Richard Blake is the pen name of Sean Gabb, of the Libertarian Alliance. The book is successor to his Conspiracies of Rome, orginally pubished by himself with the far more intriguing title The Column of Phocas. The self published edition came to the attention of Hodder and Stoughton who offered to adopt Sean as one of their authors. I gather at least one more book in the series is expected to apear later this year.