The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (1902).
Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?
51–60 of 247 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?
#52Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?
#53Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu. Short, concise and applicable to modern world.
Not an essay per se or book though.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?
#54Maxwell's book on electromagnetism, it shows his hindsight perspective on interpreting the phenomena. One can look at the papers and works he wrote that led up to it, but they are full of detours and unbalanced attention with small dead ends. When he writes his book he tries to convince the audience of his time in one comprehensive work.
What I love especially, is that he is very careful and systematic about his conclusions, splitting up in cases, instead of simply producing the solution and then proving it is a valid solution.
For example he does not assume that every point in space has a single value for total potential. First he describes how it is at least theoretically conceivable to follow a path and observe the total potential to vary continuously, and arrive back at the point of departure but end up with a different value of the total potential. He is effectively describing the possibility of wormholes (which didn't bear the name "wormhole" yet back then), or "charge without charge" (think Wheeler). But after this part of the book he assumes that the total potential is singlevalued (not because he proved so, but because describing physics in spaces with complicated topologies is far from straightforward, even today).
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?
#55Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu. Short, concise and applicable to modern world. Not an essay per se or book though.
Agreed...
..also "Zen Flash, Zen Bones" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Flesh,_Zen_Bones
http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/cgi-bin/koan-index.pl https://terebess.hu/zen/101ZenStones.pdf
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?
#56Since many other people have mentioned ancient essays I like, I'll go for something more "modern". Some of Bertrand Russell's earlier works are well worth a read even though they're obviously dated. * The Problems of Philosophy (1912) gives a short introduction to philosophy that he at the time considered "positive and constructive". https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5827/5827-h/5827-h.htm * Mysticism and Logic and Oth…
Something that’s always fascinated me - Bertrand Russell’s life covered many years and massive change, making for a good biography. His grandfather met Napoleon when in exile and I believe recounted this experience to a young Bertrand Russell (I can’t find a source for this currently). Bertrand Russell also watched the moon landing on TV. These events seem so far apart but are separated by just 2 (long) lifetimes.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?
#57Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Essays by Michel de Montaigne Self Reliance by Emerson Theory of Moral Sentiment by Adam Smith A Treatise of Human Nature by Hume And the memoir of my vote for the most interesting man who ever lived, Humphry Davy's Consolations in Travel
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Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?
#58Moral Letters (Seneca)
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?
#59Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu. Short, concise and applicable to modern world. Not an essay per se or book though.
Witter Bynner’s translation is my favorite. My grandpa gave me a copy when I was starting high school and I read it probably 5 or 6 times a year since then.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?
#60Return to Tipasa - Albert Camus