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Originally posted by zeddissad
Originally posted by audas
Trollop.
This is like saying Picasso is not possible without Cezzane or Georges Braque or for that matter Diego Velázquez.....profoundly influenced, one leading to another, almost plagiarized - but one without the other - is utter rubbish and flies in the face of the actual philosophy your are espousing. Fatalism and destiny - Voltaire should have put you in Candide !!
Saul - Voltaires Bastards !
Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent / Hegemony.
Why Rich countries are Rich and Poor Countries are Poor
The Gulag Archipelago
The Mismeasure of Man
Darwin - On the Origin of Species
Foucault - All of them
Hobbes - Leviathan
Thomas Paine - The Rights of Man
Voltaire - Candide
Dawkins - God is not Great / The greatest Show on Earth.
......Will have to come back to this...
I'm sorry if I disturbed you by my cumbersome English. Philosophical cannon is not God for me and I enjoy every well pronounced work. Especially Foucault and Chomsky are my favorite authors. Still role of tradition is undeniable for me.
OP question was, what you think is most influential work. The "influence" part need time ... that is why I did not account 20. century (21.) authors - they need time to evaluate.
Once again sorry if I upset you - we have probably more common together then we realize know. BTW last two month I have appetite to read Candide again - I should visit my parents library soon.
Thomas Kuhn performed a signal service for historiography of science by studying how new ideas and new ways of thinking displace the old. He invented the term 'paradigm shift' to describe what happens when 'normal science' runs into 'anomalies' and enters a 'crisis', which in turn leads to a 'scientific revolution'. Nobody had heard of such things before, so Kuhn had a scoop. He sketched some historical examples in iconoclastic style; the result is this short book, first published forty years ago and still wowing Cultural Studies students today.
Before Kuhn, we were taught in school that scientific progress was linear, that it was an unending progression of refinements and developments, with one "truth" leading to the next "truth." Kuhn's insights including pointing out that such a linear progression was mostly a lie. His thesis was that the major developments in science were mostly revolutionary. That some "truths" turned out to be false. Astronomy was revolutionized by Galielo and Copernicus, and man was divested from the center of the universe. Physics was revolutionized by Newton. Biology and Darwin. It didn't hurt that plate tectonics came along shortly after Kuhn published, and Kuhn looked like his model was predictive, too.
My favorite aspect of this book is how Kuhn describes people's blind resistance to new ideas and technology, even if it is something that will ultimately benefit mankind. In a moment of dark truth, Kuhn states that in many cases it is not a matter of convincing those who already established, but rather convincing the next generation and simply waiting for the current one to die off. It's both a guide to understanding how to really effect change in a world of stubborn thought, as well as a detailed history of innovations and the process required to make them mainstream. In its scathing criticism of the scientific establishment, it unveils how much further we could be if we did in fact adopt a linear structure for improving technology.
Originally posted by pteridine
reply to post by davidgrouchy
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by I. Newton
Originally posted by adifferentbreed
I'd have to go with The Old Man And The Sea.....It's an awesome work, and still should be required reading in my opinion. Poppa really got it right with that one.
Originally posted by pteridine
reply to post by davidgrouchy
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by I. Newton
Originally posted by fanthorpe
Well the KJV Bible was written in the last 400 years as well as plenty of other versions of where each different splinter group have basically changed the story to suit their own agenda.
reply to post by Xcalibur254
Principles of Psychology by William James. One is the greatest piece of literature ever.