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From 70544.1227@compuserve.com Wed Aug 10 04:11:48 1994
Date: 23 Jul 94 21:55:58 EDT
From: Reilly Jones <70544.1227@compuserve.com>
Reply to: extropians@extropy.org
To: Extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Resource List (Books II)

  These are the books (Part II) of historical interest.  In addition to
their cultural impact on history, they are part of the background and the
source of current philosophical concepts relating to "extropy." This is
strong educational material, knowing the past is key to avoiding mistakes
in the future. 

Historical Interest ---

* Boethius  "On the Consolation of Philosophy"  (522) - Saved the ideas of the
Extropic Age of Greece just before the Entropic Ages set in.
* Aquinas, Thomas  "Summa Theologiae"  (1273) - A major part of the moral
foundation of capitalism.
* Dante  "The Divine Comedy"  (1320) - An allegorical compendium of the medieval
moral and scientific world view in its subtlest form, simultaneously reaches out
to the past and the future.
* Pico della Mirandola  "900 Conclusions in Every Kind of Science"  (1486) - "We
have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so
that with freedom of choice and with honor, as though the maker and molder of
thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer."
* Montaigne, Michel de  "Essays"  (1580) - The source of much later thought on
human nature, particularly the Enlightenment figures.
* Donne, John  "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions"  (1624) - Emergent behavior
has been around a long time, "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it
tolls for thee."
* Bacon, Francis  "The New Atlantis"  (1627) - The future as wrought by the
scientific method.
* Hobbes, Thomas  "Leviathan"  (1651) - The "state of nature" argument for at
least a minimal state.
* Pascal, Blaise  "Pensees (Thoughts)"  (1660) - Great intellect, including
Pascal's wager.
* Rochefoucauld, Duc de la  "The Maxims"  (1660) - Gems, including "hypocrisy is
the homage that vice pays to virtue."
* Milton, John  "Paradise Lost"  (1667) - Sweeping in its understanding of the
behavior of humans and semi-divinities, "it is better to rule in hell than serve
in heaven."
* Locke, John  "Two Treatises of Government"  (1690) - Foundations of the modern
welfare state.
* Locke, John  "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"  (1690) - Philosophy of
science, ethics, knowledge and action.  Overestimate of the prevalence of
rationality led to trouble later.
* Shaftesbury, 3rd Earl of  "Inquiry concerning Virtue"  (1699) - Society is
natural and not the result of a social contract.
* Leibniz, Gottfried von  "Monadology"  (1714) - What is existence like from the
viewpoint of an atom or a quark?
* Swift, Jonathan  "Gulliver's Travels"  (1726) - The tyranny of uncultured
scientists.
* David Hume  "A Treatise of Human Nature"  (1740) - A masterpiece of
skepticism.
* Vico, Giambattista  "New Science"  (1744) - History is the expression of human
will and deeds and can therefore provide more certain knowledge about humanity
than the natural sciences can.  Human beings are historical entities and human
nature changes over time.
* Montesquieu, Baron de  "The Spirit of the Laws"  (1748) - Securing liberty and
justice, profoundly influenced America's founders.
* Burke, Edmund  "Reflections on the Revolution in France"  (1790) - Rarely has
thought and foresight ever been expressed more lucidly and truly.
* Smith, Adam  "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations"
(1776) - The invisible hand.
* Gibbon, Edward  "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"  (1776) - Not to be
missed, real history.
* Madison, James & Hamilton, Alexander & Jay, John  "The Federalist Papers"
(1788) - Notes on Constitution-making.
* Humboldt, Wilhelm von  "The Limits of State Action"  (1792) - Clear and direct
discussion of freedom and individual responsibility, argues against state
promotion of citizen welfare and state interference with private acts.
* Condorcet, Marquis de  "Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the
Human Mind"  (1795) - The almost single-handed invention of the idea of
progress.
* Lamarck, J.  "Zoological Philosophy"  (1809) - Who knows, maybe his ideas on
adaptationism will be resurrected.  They are still being argued in biology.
* Schelling, Friedrich von  "Of Human Freedom"  (1809) - Nature is a purposive
system in which the Absolute immediately objectifies itself in its infinite
creative activity.
* Clausewitz, Carl von  "On War"  (1833) - War is an extension of politics by
other means.
* Tocqueville, Alexis de  "Democracy in America"  (1835-1840) - Visionary
foresight of the promise and the failure of democracy.
* Feuerbach, Ludwig  "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future"  (1843) -
Freedom of action emphasized.  Pre-decadent German thought.
* Stirner, Max  "The Ego and His Own"  (1845) - The individual creates the
future, strong stuff, very, very extropic.  Highly recommended.  "You are then
not merely called to everything divine, entitled to everything human, but owner
of what is yours, i.e. of all that you possess the force to make your own."
* Kierkegaard, Soren  "Concluding Unscientific Postscript"  (1846) - Deep,
random thoughts about tragic events in life.  "In dread there is the egoistic
infinity of possibility, which does not tempt like a definite choice, but alarms
and fascinates with its sweet anxiety."
* Whitman, Walt  "Leaves of Grass"  (1855) - American natural philosophy.
* Spencer, Herbert  "Principles of Ethics"  (1855?) - Social Darwinism before
Darwin, "survival of the fittest" first articulated.
* Darwin, Charles  "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or
the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life"  (1859) - The
classic statement for dumb chance.
* Mill, John Stuart  "On Liberty"  (1859) - Still influential to latter-day
liberals, the logic is wacky.
* Arnold, Matthew  "Culture and Anarchy"  (1869) - Penetrating insight into the
sorrow over losing the high points of past culture for the low points of the
future schlock.
* Spencer, Herbert  "Principles of Sociology"  (1876) - Extropic view of social
jockeying.
* Dostoyevsky, Fyodor  "The Brothers Karamozov"  (1880) - Unsurpassed in the
sweep of understanding of the high and the low of human motivation.
* Nietzsche, Friedrich  "Thus Spake Zarathustra"  (1885) - "He who with eagle's
talons graspeth the abyss: he hath courage."
* Nietzsche, Friedrich  "On the Genealogy of Morals"  (1887) - Bashes Christian
dogma and Buddhist nihilism.  We are suffering the slave-morality's yelps for
"reparations" still.
* Nietzsche, Friedrich  "Beyond Good and Evil"  (1886) - A revaluing of all
values.  A moralizing piece bashing other people's moralizing.
* James, William  "The Principles of Psychology"  (1890) - The mind begins to
unlock it's secrets finally.
* Bradley, F.H.  "Appearance and Reality"  (1893) - Undivided universe.  "For
judgment is the differentiation of a complex whole, and hence always is analysis
and synthesis in one."
* Mosca, Gaetano  "The Ruling Class"  (1896) - How elites gain and hold power.
* Driesch, Hans  "The History and Theory of Vitalism"  (1905) - Aristotle's
original "entelechy" applied to the spontaneous order found in biological
systems.  Another forerunner of "extropy."  Replace vitalism with spontaneous
order.
* Weber, Max  "Spirit of Capitalism"  (1905) - Seminal importance, bureaucrats
revealed for the dead weight they are.
* Michels, Roberto  "Political Parties"  (1911) - He asserted that 'who says
organization, says oligarchy'.  Parties become the instruments of their leaders
who eventually become a self-interested and self-satisfied oligarchy.
* Russell, Bertrand  "Our Knowledge of the External World"  (1914) - Importance
of multiple perspectives to push back epistemological boundaries.  Forerunner of
Feynman's "sum-of-the-histories" ideas in QM.
* Frazer, Sir James  "The Golden Bough"  (1915 3rd. ed.) - Memetic history.
* Pareto, Vilfredo  "Mind and Society"  (1916) - Rational elites and irrational
mass action.
* Wittgenstein, Ludwig  "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"  (1921) - "Whereof one
cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."  If only more people would follow
this advice, (sigh).
* Spengler, Oswald  "The Decline of the West"  (1922) - How low do we go?
* Santayana, George  "Skepticism and Animal Faith"  (1923) - Animal faith is the
processes of the "remembered present" that allows us to ignore the abstract
epistemological boundaries in day-to-day life.
* Yeats, William Butler  "A Vision"  (1925)  (1937 rev. ed.) - "A civilization
is a struggle to keep self-control.  The loss of control over thought comes
towards the end; first a sinking in upon the moral being, then the last
surrender, the irrational cry, revelation."
* Adler, Alfred  "Understanding Human Nature"  (1927) - Individual psychology,
inferiority complex.
* Ortega y Gasset, Jose  "The Revolt of the Masses"  (1929) - Saw it all coming.
The state is the greatest danger, the noble vs. the common.
* Proust, Marcel  "Remembrance of Things Past"  (1931) - The scope of work going
into this novel is unprecedented.
* Huxley, Aldous  "Brave New World"  (1932) - Wondrous people.
* Jaspers, Karl  "Philosophy"  (1932) - Epistemological boundaries.
* Mead, G.H.  "Mind, Self and Society"  (1932) - A person achieves
self-consciousness by becoming aware of his or her social identity, this cannot
happen without society.
* Tolman, Edward  "Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men"  (1932) - There is
nothing more important than what utility points towards.
* Whitehead, Alfred North  "Adventures of Ideas"  (1933) - Memetic tour de
force, a champion of progress.
* Toynbee, Arnold  "Study of History"  (1934-1961) - The creative minority leads
history, as long as it doesn't go utopian.
* Durkheim, Emile  "The Evolution of Educational Thought"  (1938) - Sociological
foundations of education.
* Durant, Will  "The Life of Greece"  (1939) - Non-revisionist history of the
Extropic Age.
* Koestler, Arthur  "Darkness at Noon"  (1940) - Brilliant exposure of the dark
side of totalitarianism.
* Santayana, George  "The Realms of Being"  (1940) - Those who forget the
failures of history are doomed to repeat them.
* Ortega y Gasset, Jose  "Toward a Philosophy of History"  (1941) - Elites must
lead civilization or barbarism steps in (like it has now).
* Morgenstern, Oskar & von Neumann, John  "Theory of Games and Economic
Behavior"  (1944) - Father of game theory.
* Orwell, George  "Animal Farm"  (1945) - Some of us are more equal than others.
* Popper, Karl  "The Open Society and Its Enemies"  (1945) - From Julian Simon
article in Extropy #11
* Wright, Sewell  "Tempo and Mode in Evolution: A critical review"  (1945)
Ecology 26:415-419  Early articulation of controversial theories on the pace of
natural selection.  Father of fitness landscapes.
* Bergson, Henri  "The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics"  (1946) -
Substitute spontaneous order for any hint of vitalism, a strong statement of the
creativity inherent in holistic thought.
* Morgenthau, Hans  "Politics Among Nations"  (1948) (1973 rev. ed.) - Man is a
political animal, national politics determine the future.
* Orwell, George  "1984"  (1949) - Big Brother has a Clipper chip.
* Ryle, Gilbert  "The Concept of Mind"  (1949) - Mapping concept space in the
brain.  Precursor to Edelman's "maps of maps" in the neurological structure of
the brain.
* Trilling, Lionel  "The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society
(1950) - Accurate prediction about debased entropic death-worship of today.
* Kirk, Russell  "The Conservative Mind"  (1953) - Not current conservatism,
more classic conservatism.  Conserving the elements in society that provide for
stability amid change.
* Quine, W.V.  "From a Logical Point of View"  (1953) - Conceptual coherency
theory.
* Wittgenstein, Ludwig  "Philosophical Investigations"  (1953) - Deepest of the
deep thoughts from a deep thinker.
* Hook, Sidney  "The Hero in History: A Study in Limitations and Possibility"
(1955) - A look at heros before the death-worshippers killed off the whole
concept of hero.
* Mises, Ludwig von  "The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality"  (1956) - From Julian
Simon article in Extropy #11.
* Rand, Ayn  "Atlas Shrugged"  (1957) - "Stop supporting your own destroyers.
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it."
* Ortega y Gasset, Jose  "Man and Crisis"  (1958) - The Barbarians of
specialization.  Scientists can't make cultured decisions because they aren't
cultured.
* Quine, W.V.  "Word and Object"  (1960) - Coherency epistemology, a master of
logic.
* Rand, Ayn  "For the New Intellectual"  (1961) - "The intellectual is the eyes,
ears and voice of a free society: it is his job to observe the events of the
world, to evaluate their meaning and to inform the men in all the other fields."
* Rogers, Carl  "On Becoming a Person"  (1961) - How to act grown up.
* Smelser, N.J.  "Theory of Collective Behavior"  (1962) - Emphasizes the
importance of generalized beliefs and values in directing social movements in
periods of rapid social change.
* Koestler, Arthur  "The Act of Creation"  (1964) - Fuzzy around the edges, but
still a powerful articulation of creativity.
* McLuhan, Marshall  "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man"  (1964) - "The
Medium Is The Message."
* Trilling, Lionel  "Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning"  (1965)
- Clarity and lucidity from a very cultured person.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reilly Jones               |        Philosophy of Technology:
70544.1227@compuserve.com  |  The rational, moral and political relations
                           |  between 'How we create' and 'Why we create'