C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books • Hacker News Board

Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

#31

Post by enriquto » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

FiatLuxDave wrote: post #18

I rather enjoyed this essay, not because I am into theology, but because I also see the value of old books. I think that I am a bit of a heretic (if I can use that word in a theology thread) because I strongly believe that there is advantage to be gained by reading old books of... science! It is often presumed that because we learn new things as time goes on, and old theories are discarded as new information comes to…

Some old articles in physics are surprisingly concise. There is no point in reading a modern 300 page book on special relativity when you can just read "on the electrodynamics of moving bodies" which is 23 pages and self-contained.

Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

#32

Post by slededit » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #29

"The UNIX programming environment" by Kernighan and Pike will be cherished by computer scientists in 200 years, just like mathematicians today cherish Gauss' disquisitions on curves and surfaces. PHP, javascript, python will be long forgotten.

I'm more with Dave Cutler and think Unix's win was a sad historical accident. It worked great in a world with teletypes but is a horrible model for our world of multimedia.

Ioctls are a sad blemish on the face of computing and fork() while again beautiful in the simple world of single threaded programs forces far too many constraints on modern OS services. Modern OSs get around it by barely supporting it except for exec() calls immediately after.

Simply put... not everything is a byte.

Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

#33

Post by vidarh » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #5

brlewis wrote: post #3

If we were to apply this idea to computer science or software engineering, where would we draw the line between old and new books?

Technological books do not age as well, because technical knowledge is predominantly cumulative. It's for fields where thoughts are evergreen (basically, anything to do with being human, literature, poetry, philosophy, etc) where this advice matters. A good modern book on math, or chemistry, or compiler construction has more knowledge than any old one. A good modern poet is not better than Shakespeare or Homer (and i…

More is not always better, though. E.g a modern book on compere construction will certainly teach more advanced techniques than the Dragon book or Wirth's Compiler Construction books, but I've yet to see any recent book on compiler construction that I'd prefer for the basics.

I'd argue that exactly because so much of it is cumulative, a lot of old technology texts stand up just fine when describing things like algorithms or a sub-field up to a certain level. The original paper on quicksort for example is just fine as an introduction to quicksort.

The books and papers that date are the ones that seek to tell you the best way doing something broad. An old text on the best way to sort in general will be date where descriptions of specific algorithms haven't.

Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

#34

Post by Verdex_3 » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

inimino wrote: post #9

brlewis wrote: post #3

If we were to apply this idea to computer science or software engineering, where would we draw the line between old and new books?

There are no old books in computer science, because it is a new field, but already the effect that Lewis talks about can be seen... I think we know what the classics are. If someone's name is in all the textbooks, it's probably worth looking up their original works. Turing and Shannon come immediately to mind as people who are more often read about than read, despite being quite approachable.

Well, I don't know about that. For example, back when I was at university, my graphics professor mentioned that there were hundreds of algorithms for mapping a texture to a sphere going back hundreds of years because map makers had been coming up with them so that they could place maps on globes.

There are old books, but you have to be a bit more creative to find them.

Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

#35

Post by cicero » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #19

Time is a fantastic filter. When I was cleaning out my grandparents attic I found a few dozen old books from the 30s and 40s. Wanting to see if they had any value I searched Amazon Ebay and even Google. I could find no record of them having ever even existed. I opened a few of them and found out why. They sucked.

Time does filter out the bad books, and most books that are written fall into that category, but the books that endure the test of time are really good.

Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

#36

Post by chrissam » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #19

Time is a fantastic filter. When I was cleaning out my grandparents attic I found a few dozen old books from the 30s and 40s. Wanting to see if they had any value I searched Amazon Ebay and even Google. I could find no record of them having ever even existed. I opened a few of them and found out why. They sucked.

This is exactly how I look at it. To quote Orwell: "Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival".

Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

#37

Post by inimino » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

kd5bjo wrote: post #27

buckthundaz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a recommendation for best geometry textbook?

I suspect 'inimino is referring to Euclid's "Elements" http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21076/21076-h/21076-h.htm

Indeed.

Not only do you learn geometry, but you participate in the same understanding of geometry that all later mathematicians started from.

I've always encouraged reading Euclid, Newton, Einstein. In my humble opinion, mathematics is much easier to understand historically, as it developed, and the best historical perspective comes from primary sources.

I must acknowledge, however, that for whatever reason very few people share my perspective on this.

Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

#38

Post by ColanR » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #3

If we were to apply this idea to computer science or software engineering, where would we draw the line between old and new books?

I think we could apply the principle to programming languages - which old languages are still used? C comes to mind, as does Lisp.

Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

#39

Post by steve19 » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

perfect_wave wrote: post #25

jxcl wrote: post #4

I can entirely relate to what Lewis writes about reading Plato. I was interested in philosophy but found myself gravitating to reading and listening to podcasts about philosophy rather than reading it directly. Once I actually picked up a volume of Plato's works I was surprised how approachable it was to me, a complete layman of philosophy.

Got any recommendations for philosophy podcasts?

Not a podcast but the first thing audio book of story of philosophy by will durant is fantastic.

Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

#40

Post by skymuse » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

FiatLuxDave wrote: post #18

I rather enjoyed this essay, not because I am into theology, but because I also see the value of old books. I think that I am a bit of a heretic (if I can use that word in a theology thread) because I strongly believe that there is advantage to be gained by reading old books of... science! It is often presumed that because we learn new things as time goes on, and old theories are discarded as new information comes to…

Old mathematics books are also interesting. Really cool to see how notation has evolved over centuries of mathematical inquiry. Right now I'm reading "The World of Mathematics, Volume One" and it is quite a relaxing read when starting the day with a good coffee.