I have dipped in and out of this book, not a thorough reading at all. Here for my own purposes, I will record only the list of people towards the back of the book who have in some way epitomised knwoledge and occasionally wisdom, who might be worth knowing more about some time. This is probably a great list of people to pick up a biography on and learn more:
Collections of knowledge
Alsted – german publication of 7 volumes in 1630
Diderot – 28 tomes
Brittanica 32 volumes
Wikipedia 100x Britannica
Tim Bernerd-Lee, inventor of the internet.
Lord Brougham – The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
Robert Philips – a publisher of many journals including “Enquire within upon Everything” that ran to 116 editions.
Great Polymaths through time.
Shen Gua – Chinese scholar from 11th century (b1031) Song dynasty – invention of compass, climate change, movable type printing, celestial bodies and astronomy, biology of locusts et al. cf book by Joseph Needham in 1954
Leonardo Da Vinci (cf Walter Isaacson)
Leibniz
Qeen Christina, the Minerva of Swedeb
Rene Descartes
Alexander von Humbolt (cf Andrea Wulf’s “the inention of nature”)
Voltaire
Montesquieu
Rosseau
Mary Somerville (oxfords Mary college)
Herschel
Ben Franklin (cf Walter Isaacson)
Thomas Jefferson
Albert Schweitzer – leper colony in Lambarene
James Murray – Oxford English Dictionary
Paul Otlet – Mundaneum
John Nash – priceton game theorist
James Beale, renamed Africanus Horton – a black African in the british army 1835 to 1883, doctor soldier, campaigner for pan African freedom, born in Sierra Leone, Ibo tribe, parents freed slaves, wrote mamy books including A Vindication of the African Race,geology, tropical medicine, precursor to African fredom and nationalism from colonialism
Edward Blyden, also of Ibo ancestry but in Danish West Indies 1832, went to Venezuala (Spanish, Greek and Latin) New York, and then Liberia (Arabic and 6 or so local languages and Creole, founder and editor of newspapers in nigeria, sierra leone and Liberia, ambassador to england
Srinivasa Ramanujan, indian mathamatician
Harinath De, Indian scholar, 34 langauges, second imperial librarian of india
Benjamin Jowett oxford master and vice chancellor ” what I don’t know just isn’t knowledge”, translated Plato, in love with Florence Nightingale but rebuffed. “never regret,never explain, never apologise” tutor to many
Bertrand Russel – mathematician and philosopher, anti nuclear activist
Richard Feyman – physicist
Alexander Polyhistor
Frank Ramsey – english philosopher, economist, mathematician, died at 26 but had already contributed so much (Ramsey theory of truth, Ramseys theory of preference, Ramsey numbers, Ramsey cardinals etc)
Nikola Tesla
Stephen Hawking
John Maynard Keynes
Leo Szilard – hungarian phsicist who conjectured the nuclesr chain reaction in 1933
Galileo
Newton
Milton
Einstein (cf Walter Isaacson)
Aristotle – b384bc, taught by Plato,who had been taught by Socrates. Virtuous living leads to Eudaimonia, happiness.
A wonderful quote in the book attributed to one Dr Agarwal, “This is a problem for you Western people. You all seem to think that happiness is something that derives from pleasure. You confuse the two. A life of pleasure is not truly a life of happiness. You win happiness not by drinking some fizzy drink, but by living a life of virtue, of achievement, by living life fully, properly and well. Read Aristotle. read the Nicomachean Ethics. Happiness is achieved when a virtuous person takes pleasure in doing the right thing, as a result of proper training of moral and intellectual character. Pleasure may come as a byproduct. But it is of secondary aspect, from a life lived according to reason and virtue.”
Plato’s definition of knowledge – justified true belief
Confucius – b551bc rules and ritual to unlock the virtuous nature enherent in man, respect for elders and parents, country amd law, showing love courtesy, justice, poetry music, ritual, follow the tao, the level road leads to wisdom and harmony
And dont forget or overlook the knowledge of elders in indigenous tribes
e.g. Mau Piailug – polynesian sailor
We have much to learn from them, it feels as though western knowledge is only slowly acknowledging the wisdom that lies here, perhaps more so with the advent of the enviroemtal movement of late.
Here's something that inspired me... 