Brandon’s Reviews > A Guidebook to Learning: For a Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom > Status Update

The Syntopicon is the great concordance of ideas in the Great Books. In the middle of this treatise, Adler is defining his actions. In addition to this book, essays preceed each of the 102 terms that organize the topics of the Syntopicon, which are further divided into subtopics.

At the present moment, Adler breaks down the different modes of knowing. Knowing how to integrate knowledge sits at the pinnacle.

Adler continues, as stated, to show the results of the attempts through the ages to organize knowledge. For the layman, it is quite tedious. He does show, however, the movement toward the acknowledgement of the secular rather than the divine in knowledge.

I stopped with the Propaedia and its "outline of knowledge" because what follows is the definition of the Syntopicon.

Things are progressing as fast as enlightenment is touching everyone. At first, the gods and the 'mysterious' ruled, allowing the science that did not threaten them.

In the Middle Ages, science gained its own foothold, as long as it did not conflict with the prevailing theological flavor.

In the seventeenth century, science had enough autonomy to categorize the world. Neither was it heretical for doing so.

What Mortimer Adler sees as the current organization of knowledge is described. He is rather clear, and rather correct, to my way of thinking. Knowing the culmination of Adler's work in the Great Books of the Western World and its Syntopicon, I can not help but see this work as an apology for it. He will go further and show the basis of his logic through the ages. This book should be seen as a preface instead.