Available:*
Library | Material Type | Shelf Number | Child Count | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Central | Book | 190 GRE | 1 | Non-fiction Collection | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Great Thinkers of the Western World is a concise and authoritative guide to the principal theoretical ideas of the outstanding thinkers in Western history. From Parmenides to Albert Camus, theses men and women have profoundly influenced the development of Western civilization through their theories and revolutionary ideas and by providing intellectual, scientific or spiritual illumination.
Articles on 116 thinkers are arranged chronologically, making it essay for readers to follow and appreciate the development of ideas from the early Greeks through the first half of the twentieth century. Each article provides basic biographical information, a list of the thinker's major works, a summary of his or her principal ideas, an essay explaining the thinker's most significant theories and indicating his or her place in the history of thought and a brief bibliography of further readings.
An absorbing, accessible and highly informative introduction to the greatest minds of Western civilization, Great Thinkers of the Western World improves our understanding of Western thought and how it evolved.
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
This guide to 116 selected authors in the fields of the social and physical sciences, psychology, religion, and philosophy spans the ancient Greeks to the first half of the twentieth century. These people are well known, and most can be easily located in other sources. The guide is arranged chronologically by the birthdate of the writer. Each entry contains birth and death dates, a list of the author's major ideas, an essay of three to five pages, and a short annotated list of secondary sources. The format of Great Thinkers is identical to the earlier Masterpieces of World Philosophy [Ja 15 91]. There is substantial overlap between the two sources in the field of philosophy. Early and modern philosophers such as Plato, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Marcus Aurelius, Descartes, and Henri Bergson are duplicated in both volumes. Despite these duplications, Great Thinkers may prove a useful companion volume to Masterpieces because the former includes biographical sketches on harder-to-find physical scientists such as Gregor Johann Mendel, James Clerk Maxwell, Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, Max Planck, and Charles Sanders Pierce. A bibliography of works by the thinkers and an index of their names conclude the volume. Its readable essays that are accessible to the layperson make Great Thinkers of the Western World suitable for public and small college libraries that don't own the Magill sets like World Philosophy on which it is modeled. (Reviewed Dec. 15, 1992)
Choice Review
Intended to serve as a brief introduction to the major ideas of more than 100 "great thinkers" of Western civilization, this book includes philosophers, theologians, scientists, psychologists, and social theorists. Arrangement is chronological, beginning with the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides and concluding with the French existentialist, Albert Camus. For each thinker, the editor provides basic biographical information, a brief listing of "major ideas," a short four- to five-page discussion of these ideas, and a brief bibliography for further reading. Great Thinkers has all the predictable limitations of a book that attempts to compress the extremely complex arguments of a philosopher like Immanuel Kant or a social theorist like Karl Marx into several pages and summarize their major ideas in a few phrases; oversimplification or misrepresentation is likely. The value of this volume would be as a quick reference guide to the great thinkers and as an initial bibliographical source. Recommended only for general readers and lower division undergraduates. S. P. Foster; Central Michigan University