Ideas That Shaped Mankind: A Concise History of Human Thought

by Felipe Fernandez Armesto

Since before the dawn of human civilization, the ability to reason, to conceptualize the world and to theorize about the forces that shape it, has defined mankind's existence. From agriculture and art to religion and science, from cannibalism to chaos theory, big ideas have always been powerful agents of change, capable of drastically altering the trajectory of history. In this compelling series of lectures, renowned Oxford University historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto leads an extraordinary expedition of the mind, exploring key moments in the march of ideas from prehistory to today and offering unique insights into where we came from how we got to where we are today.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Sociology, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Cultural

88 pages, Audio CD

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tried this years ago in print and despite Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature being one of my favourite history books, I couldn't get through it. I've just listened to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's lectures closely based on this book, and once I got past his even-more-Stephen-Fry-than-Stephen-Fry voice and awful delivery, it was interesting.

But I do take issue with some points that he really hadn't checked as he views everything from the point of view of a Christian who thinks the Upanishads are key texts and dismisses everything that emerged from the New World or Africa with scarcely a word.

So review to come.

3.5 stars. -0.5 stars because his voice grated beyond anything you can imagine. Don't listen. You don't need to.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this lecture series, despite the professor's voice which unfortunately might be described as "upper class British twit". His inflection ranges from whisperingly quiet and quick to blasts of volume after he takes a breath, making the lectures a bit hard to listen to. However, the intellectual content was outstanding, starting from how archeological evidence from pre-history can be used to infer the flourishing of new ideas - such as reverence for elders, cannibalism, and supernatural explanations (and why such explanations, rather than being stupid and backwards, are really quite sophisticated), moving through the development of religions, including the reason behind the clever addition of Satan to the pantheon in early Jewish stories, and through the failure of the enlightenment, Henry James' pragmatism, Bentham and Mills' utilitarianism, and ultimately the rise of conservatism/fundamentalism in the late 20th century. Of special interest is the history of biblical literalism, which turns out to be a relatively recent invention out of the halls of academia.

The professor is clearly a lively thinker and he lives up to the breadth of the course title. He quickly touches on an incredible range of types of thoughts and ideas, highlighting some ways of thinking that are so ingrained in us as to be nearly invisible from the inside.

[Reg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoy the way he structured his lectures and how he followed ideas from their origin. I learned a lot and although listening to him on audiotape is rather ridiculous you'll get used to him. The coursebook provided with the modern scholar series are well written but, they are soo poorly designed i've given the task to myself to help these people out. Because great words should only be accompanied by great images and should be set on a page to better show their power.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely thought-provoking. Ties together advances in politics, science, anthropology, and medicine to show how ideas led to massive changes.

[Cav · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was terrible...

Ideas That Shaped Mankind: A Concise History of Human Thought is my third from the Modern Scholar series, after: Cold War: On the Brink of Apocalypse, and Liberty and Its Price: Understanding the French Revolution.

Course presenter Felipe Fernández-Armesto is a professor of global environmental history and professorial fellow in history and geography at Queen Mary, University of London, and a member of the Faculty of Modern History at Oxford University.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto:


The first thing that struck me about this presentation was the extremely striking and downright jarring nature of Fernández-Armesto's delivery. He has an incredibly thick British accent, and speaks in a pronounced emotive and overly erratic manner. I found this really distracting, and hard to follow at times. It eventually became incredibly grating and managed to thoroughly irritate the shit out of me for the duration of the series.

Unfortunately, this series didn't resonate well with me right from the start. Fernández-Armesto's lecture style is very off-the-cuff. He delivers the contents of this presentation in a somewhat rambling, fragmented manner that also thoroughly grated on my nerves.
The content of this course was also very dry; there is a lot of philosophizing and impromptu musings here by Fernández-Armesto.
This never got better, either, as the lectures proceeded...

Here is the scope of the presentation, for anyone interested:

Lecture 1 The Idea of Ideas.....................................................................6
Lecture 2 The Mind of the Hunter .........................................................11
Lecture 3 Of Ice and Mud ......................................................................16
Lecture 4 From Settlement to Civilization ..............................................20
Lecture 5 Thus Spake Zarathustra ........................................................25
Lecture 6 The Age of Sages: Politics and Knowledge...........................29
Lecture 7 The Age of Sages: Religion ...................................................36
Lecture 8 Ideas About Religion..............................................................41
Lecture 9 The Renaissance and the
Scientific Revolution...............................................................47
Lecture 10 The Enlightenment.................................................................53
Lecture 11 The Nineteenth Century.........................................................59
Lecture 12 A Century of Horrors..............................................................64
Lecture 13 The Restoration of Chaos......................................................69
Lecture 14 The Age of Uncertainty ..........................................................74


*******************

To summarize; I found the delivery and presentation of this course to be extremely poorly done. I'm not sure how anyone could make it through Professor Fernández-Armesto's absolutely grating delivery of this material without wanting to pull their hair out...
If it were longer, I probably would have turned it off.
The material presented here is often rambling and is almost completely incoherent at times.
I would definitely not recommend this one.
1 star.

[Nouru-éddine · Rating 3 out of 5]

رحلة أفكار في جلسة واحدة!

تمنيت لو امتد الكتاب لأكثر من هذه الصفحات القليلة، وأخذتُ على الكتاب في بعض المواضع الإطناب والعبارات الزائدة التي لا داع لها، لكن هذه عادة الكتب التلخيصية أن تكون بها بعض الجمل المحشوة لتجعل الكتاب شائقًا للقراء في عالم السرعة الحديث. أمكنني تلخيص الأفكار الأساسية في تاريخ البشرية باختصار مخل في النقاط التالية:
١- الأرواحية الكون له روح؛ ٢- الطوطمية أسلاف حيوانات للبشر؛ ٣- الكاريزما في القيادة؛ ٤- الله المتحكم في الكون؛ ٥- السحر وممارساته على الكون؛ ٦- الوراثة للقيادة؛ ٧- تقديم الأضاحي لاسترضاء الطبيعة؛ ٨- التدجين للنبات والحيوان؛ ٩- الزراعة؛ ١٠- تنظيم العمل الروتيني في المجتمعات الزراعية؛ ١١- الاستقرار وبناء المدن؛ ١٢- الزنا نتيجة انشغال الزوجات بروتين رعاية الأطفال؛ ١٣- السياسة مثل الدين وظهور فكرة الملك الإله الوسيط بين العالم الدنيوي والإلهي؛ ١٤- تأسيس إمبراطورية عالمية على يد صرغون الآكادي؛ ١٥- القانون المدون على يد ليبيت عشتار؛ ١٦- الكتابة والتدوين؛ ١٧- الفيدات؛ ١٨- زرادشت ومفهوم التوفيق بين الخير والشر؛ ١٩- مهافيرا وبوذا والتقشف؛ ٢٠- لاوتسو؛ ٢١- الفكر اليهودي؛ ٢٢- التفاؤل السياسي والتشاؤم السياسي حول طبيعة الإنسان؛ ٢٣- الكونفوشيوسية؛ ٢٤- فيثاغورس وسحر الأرقام؛ ٢٥- المنطق الأرسطي؛ ٢٦- الطاوية مبدأ التمازج مع الطبيعة؛ ٢٧- الوحدانية والخالق؛ ٢٨- الإله المحب للبشر؛ ٢٩- الإنسان سيد الكائنات؛ ٣٠- محاولات التوفيق بين الإيمان والعقل؛ ٣١- العرفان والتصوف؛ ٣٢- عصر الابتكارات العلمية بالقرنين ١٦ و١٧ في الصين؛ ٣٣- الثورة العلمية وعصر النهضة بالقرنين ١٨ و١٩؛ ٣٤- إنشاء الإنسيكلوبيديا على يد ديدرو؛ ٣٥- فلاسفة التنوير؛ ٣٦- الابتكارات العلمية؛ ٣٧- الرومانسية؛ ٣٨- المثالية الفلسفية؛ ٣٩- القومية؛ ٤٠- الاشتراكية الماركسية؛ ٤١- النفعية؛ ٤٢- الثورة الصناعية؛ ٤٣- قوة الإرادة وصناعة النخب النيتشوية؛ ٤٤- الداروينية والدراوينية الاجتماعية العنصرية على يد هربرت سبنسر؛ ٤٥- علماء ما قبل الحرب العالمية الأولى: هنري بوانكاريه، آينشتاين، برغسون، وليم جيمس، دي سوسور، فرويد، فرانس بواس؛ ٤٦- علماء ما بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية: نيلز بور، كورت غودل، توماس كون، لودفيغ فيتغنشتاين؛ ٤٧- الأناركية ونظرية الفوضى؛ ٤٨- الوجودية والعدمية على يد هايدجر ثم جان بول سارتر؛ ٤٩- السياسة المحافظة؛ ٥٠- الأصولية الدينية والإحياء الديني. ٥١- التعددية هي الشيء الوحيد الذي نتشارك فيه جميعًا.
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::اقتباس أعجبني::

"التاريخ يحدث أولاً في العقل. قدرة الإنسان على توليد الأفكار وتخيل العالم على نحو مختلف لما هو عليه هي صفتنا الأهم كنوع ... يمتلك البشر قدرة أكبر على إعادة تخيل العالم، أو تخيل العالم بشكل مختلف عن الطريقة التي كنا نتخيله بها وعندما نتخيل العالم بشكل مختلف ننتج أفكارًا تمتلك القدرة على تغيير الأشياء؛ فالأفكار هي الدافع إلى التغيير الاجتماعي."

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[Cat Noe · Rating 2 out of 5]

So much fun to listen to, right up until he hits about 1800... at which point the biased, selective, and opinion based nature becomes impossible to ignore.
If you throw out the last two discs, it's worth a listen.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

How change starts in mind, when mind fertile for said exp, most productive era for ideas 1000BC, pontificates, history over physics as intellectual, history as interpreted, confused on faith and reason with poor sources, speculation abounds. Socialism is more like a religion. Darwin stating minorities as sub-species and interest in eugenics, wonder why people still worship, mexico rev of early 20th C stripped religious of priviledges vs liberty, love uncertainty-closest to truth.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of the few among the portable professor series that I really did NOT like. It just wasn't particularly interesting to me.

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't handle it although I've enjoyed most lectures in this series. Could have been Armesto's voice that bugged the crap out of me.

[Terry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only got to lecture two before I couldn't take anymore. Sorry, but the "idea" of cannibalism isn't what I was looking for.

[Bernard · Rating 3 out of 5]

very good

[Joshout · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not help being irritated by the high brow English tongue.

[Melinda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldnt get through this - not because of the topic, but the mans voice. It was beyond irritating and totally distracting...

[Alin Persia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 4.5 star lecture I would say. Very well structured and easy to follow.