Chapter 24. Wanted: A Philosophy of the Unexpected
- New concept of knowledge
- new meaning to the idea of liberation
- knowledge might be different from what man had learned previously
- European culture depended traditionally upon the monumental accomplishments of the few
- American culture depended on the new and accumulating ways of man
- life proved uncongenial to any special class of knowers
- people were more interested in the elaboration of experience than in the elaboration of truth
- society was freed from the notion that every institution needed a foundation of systematic thought
- the best living did not have to be supported by the most sophisticated thinking
- A person's mind was sound not when it possessed the most refined tools for dissecting and ordering all knowledge, but when it was most sensitive to the unpredictable aspects of the environment.
- It was more important for a person's mind to be open and unencumbered rather than elegantly furnished.
Chapter 25: The Appeal to the Self-Evident
- An expression of the currents of American thinking by John Adams
- distrust of ruthless demands on genius
- preference for slower, more sober advances of the public mind
- Liberation in America
- opportunity to bring philosophy into the skeptical and earthy arena of daily life
- not the opportunity to combat ancient and erroneous philosophical systems with modern ones
- Jefferson's argument for freedom of speech, press, and religion arose form a desire to allow each mind its free and direct response to its unique experience rather than by a desire that every mind be enlightened by modern philosophers.
- Basic American questions were being settled in the arenas of experience rather than of controversy or learning
- progress seemed to be confirmed by daily experience
- progress became naturally identified with growth and expansion
- Mercantilism
- an example of American facts destroying European theories
- assumption that wealth of world was a pie and that a bigger slice for one country meant smaller ones for the rest
- Ben Franklin and others prepared America for its rapid 18th century expansion in a way of naivete, in a readiness to have proven themselves in experience.
- from the beginning, Americans formed a habit of accepting only those ideas which already seemed to have proven themselves in experience
- things as they were used as a measure of how things ought to be
Chapter 26. Knowledge Comes Naturally
- America was one of the last places where European settlers arrived before explorers, geographers, and naturalists
- Synonymy of physical and intellectual expansion
- automatic expansion of knowledge through enlarging and populating the country
- Lewis and Clark's expedition (ultimate example of new American identity)
- Continent was a great reservoir of the unknown until the late 19th century
- early scientific works written by Europeans
- American too busy exploring the land to write elaborate books
- interest directed to uses of land rather than a schematic description of it
- European scholars entered their various prejudices and fancies resulting in less than accurate findings
- Heart of continent led to frequent absurd conjectures
- Knowledge came in small, miscellaneous parcels
- English gardeners and naturalists made Americans aware of the wealth around them
Chapter 27. The Natural-History Emphasis
- New facts and experiences
- gained by effort, talent, and courage in England
- forced themselves on even the most indifferent or insensitive in America
- Natural history
- the recording of experiences and scenes of everyday life
- most distinctively American contribution to knowledge
- differences between natural history and physical sciences point out the dichotomy between New World and Old World concepts of knowledge
- notebook of miscellaneous items vs. an organized theory
- popular vocabulary vs. abstruse language
- Few American contributions made in physical sciences
- Knowledge of the New World gathered there was inevitably ill-assorted
- Flood of impressions pouring out of America to the stay-at-home English was main stream of knowledge from New World
- America reshaping the very concept of knowledge
- writers of works of natural history described objects within scope of common man
- required no theoretical training
- did not depend on abstruse definitions or on a structure of philosophy or argument
- no single or necessary order of material
- any alert American might add to natural history by noticing a plant, etc.
- few could understand the theories of a physical scientist the likes of Newton
- New types of knowledge
- not a unified, aristocratic knowledge
- no system of philosophy leading to a monopoly of knowledge
- factual and miscellaneous American knowledge required no preliminary training
- began with first novelty that came to attention -- no need for explicit premises or precise definitions
- became self-made since one could start anyplace
- ideal knowledge for a mobile society
- path that did not necessarily run through the academy, monastery, or university
- path that opened to everywhere and to every man
Related posts:
The Americans: The Colonial Experience by Daniel Boorstin, Book 1. The Vision and the Reality Part 1. A City Upon a Hill: The Puritans of Massachusetts. (12/8/2014)
The Americans: The Colonial Experience. Part 2. The Inward Plantation: The Quakers of Pennsylvania. (12/10/2014)
The Americans: The Colonial Experience. Part 3. Victims of Philanthropy: The Settlers of Georgia. (12/13/2014)
The Americans; The Colonial Experience, Part 4. Transplanters: The Virginians. (12/14/2014)
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