启蒙之所 智识之源：一位剑桥教授看剑桥

by Alan Macfarlane, 艾伦·麦克法兰, 管可秾 (Translator)

本书写在剑桥大学八百周年校庆之际，是一部情感丰富、信息量惊人的剑桥论述。

对于剑桥大学的历史、文化、习惯、政治、理念、教学、学院制等方方面面，本书提供了生动细致的介绍和鞭辟入里的分析，并试图解答一系列问题：剑桥大学何以成为全世界获诺贝尔奖最多（87次）的大学？它怎样哺育出无数改变了人类世界的思想泰斗和科学巨匠，如牛顿、霍金、达尔文、马尔萨斯、凯恩斯、图灵？所谓“牛桥”（剑桥和牛津）体系，与其他西方式现代大学有什么不同？已牛桥为代表的学院制是怎么回事？牛桥的精英教育有什么利弊？等等。

作者长期执教于剑桥大学，迄今已在剑桥大学工作和生活四十周年，堪称牛桥体系的绝妙观察家和论说家。任何对这两所孪生大学感兴趣的读者，都会开卷有益。

280 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2009

About the author

Alan Macfarlane was born in Shillong, India, in 1941 and educated at the Dragon School, Sedbergh School, Oxford and London Universities. He is the author of over twenty books, including The Origins of English Individualism (1978) and Letters to Lily: On How the World Works (2005). He has worked in England, Nepal, Japan and China as both an historian and anthropologist. He was elected to the British Academy in 1986 and is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.

Reviews

[Henne · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a book about Alan Macfarlane I would say this does the job pretty well. But for a book about Cambridge in a general sense I found it to be lacking so much. I'm glad that this was written but I would rather there was a bit more competition out there with this book (in the somewhat niche genre that is Oxbridge memoir). It's not that this book is particularly bad, as it's actually quite well written for the most part, but it's hard to recommend to others because of its rather limited perspective. It's a difficult topic to write about and I don't know of many others like this book that succeed, so you should bear that in mind. Indeed one of the most frequent citations is to a book called "Camford Observed" by Rose and Ziman, which is obscure enough that it doesn't even exist on Goodreads let alone have any reviews.

[Meenakshi Chawla]

An easily readable book that appears to flow from the ancient beginnings of the world-class university to modern times when it has grown into an awe-inspring institution.

The author, a world-famous anthropologist, writes with a simplicity that can only be born of a deep understanding of his subject and a love for life itself.

I enjoyed this book immensely.