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C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books

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

#91

Post by stan_rogers »

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?

It really doesn't have anything to do with old books as such. It's more about reading the actual thing rather than later commentaries and summaries on the thing, if you want to know what the thing said. In the case of, say, CS, it would mean reading On Computable Numbers, With An Application To The Entscheidungsproblem rather than someone else's book/article about what Turing said in his seminal paper.

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

#92

Post by Maultasche »

A few years ago, my dad gave me my grandfather's history textbook from when he was in high school in the 1930s in California. That was an interesting read.

In addition to it having a slight racist bent when discussing non-European civilizations, it contained facts that are now considered to be nonsense. The further in the past it went, the more it contradicted what are now considered to be well-known facts about the past.

It really demonstrated the many decades of changes in attitudes toward non-European people and all the incredible things that have been discovered since then through archeology, carbon-dating, and genetics.

I thought it worth reading to give me an insight on how people thought back then and their view of the world.

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

#93

Post by cousin_it »

camelNotation wrote: post #14
mathattack wrote: post #2

I believe that Tolkien is one of the folks he read Old Books with.

They were part of the literature discussion group The Inklings, which met mostly on Tuesdays at The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. Tolkien is the one that convinced Lewis to leave atheism behind and become a Christian. Tolkien's poem "Mythopoeia" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoeia_(poem) - was instrumental in that process. It's worthwhile to read it, but as a warning, it was written from one (highly educated)…

Thank you for that link. What an amazing poem!

> All wishes are not idle

That line alone could tip me over to Christianity. I'll have to think more about this.

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

#94

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ColanR wrote: post #38
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.

COBOL is still used, too. I'm not sure what inference one should draw from that, though...

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

#95

Post by jolmg »

anongraddebt wrote: post #83
jolmg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many (probably most) books today suck too. Not to say there aren't a lot of modern, quality books out there, but I think there's a boundless amount of new, bad books.

I discussed this problem with a professor-friend (philosophy of science) of mine. He made two solid points: (1) The pressure and rapidity of publishing - for many authors - means less time spent on individual projects. (2) Your expectations as a reader partially determine your judgement as to how much value a book has. As your expectations increase...

> (2) Your expectations as a reader partially determine your judgement as to how much value a book has. As your expectations increase...

I understand this to mean that my ever-improving taste might make it seem like, as time goes by, a greater and greater proportion of books seem to be of low quality. However, it works the other way around, too: As people through new generations become ever more easily satisfied with mediocre writing, the need to produce high-quality works decreases. At least, this is what I think is happening with TV.

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

#96

Post by photojosh »

photojosh wrote: post #84
sdegutis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same way, every Catholic around me reads "Catholic" books written in the past 20 years that are 90% watered down and 10% quotes from older books. So imagine my surprise when I found all those old books they were quoting were easily available on archive.org and easily installable on my phone (the PDF copies only) and in easy to understand English translations, despite being written 200, 500, 1000, 1700 years ag…

I'm not Catholic, but my most revelatory reading this year has been Rene Girard's (a Catholic philosopher/theologian) 20-40 year old books. I guarantee they're not flowery pamphlets, they're mind-blowing.

And serendipitously enough, an article on him made HN today!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18585177

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

#97

Post by davebryand »

sudosteph wrote: post #86
davebryand wrote: post #10

This was life-changing for me. I wanted to learn about spirituality through a different lens than the Catholic upbringing that constrained my mind and the rampant "spirituality is synonymous with Christianity" that I find in the U.S. I went out and read a handful of ancient religious texts from all of the world. This led me to see that throughout the course of human history, tribes from all over the world have espous…

That's very cool. I'm just now attempting to study religion from a historical standpoint myself, and have been finding myself drawn to older sources as well. Though I must ask, can you explain what you mean by "non-duality"? Is duality something you experienced from the Catholic perspective? I ask because I actually find myself very drawn to some ancient texts from Gnostic perspectives (Book of Thomas, some Mandean t…

Duality, for me, in the Catholic sense meant that there is "God" and then there is little old me. Non-duality is the realization that is available to all humans that we are not actually separate from the Tao, God, the Universe, or whatever label you care to place on the invisible power that governs the realm that we inhabit. You are an interconnected piece of life that through consciousness can impact future frames of life that are generated by the infinite universal computer that plays the movie in our mind. (Yes, you can come to have direct experience and knowledge that this power exists but it is a super-rational process that most of our left-brained peers, in our masculine, logic dominated society dismiss out of hand. This realization has been called Enlightenment, Awakening, Waking Up, etc)

Back to duality. We must remember that light and darkness are not opposites, they are the ends of a spectrum measuring the same thing: amount of light. Our western mindset has these placed as opposites, but they are not, they are the same thing. This is the principle of polarity in Hermeticism. The main insight is that these things are not different, they are the same thing in varying degrees (number of photons, in this case). Here is a decent overview (Look for Principle of Polarity, although the #1 point that the universe is a giant mind is the most important to me) https://medium.com/the-mission/the-hermetic-revival-7-ancien...

I'd highly recommend reading The Hermetica. It's not exactly an ancient source text, but it attempts to distill the wisdom of the body of knowledge called Hermeticism.

Your research is going to take you into works described as "occult". This bothered me at first, but then I realized it was my Catholic brainwashing about how occult is somehow related to satan or something. Occult simply means "hidden". These occult teachings, which every spiritual tradition possesses, are the pearls that were not to be cast before swine. This knowledge was typically reserved for initiates into a particular tradition. Basically, this means you had to be really committed and show your worth before you were taught this stuff. This is what many of the historical secret societies were protecting and teaching. This is what you learn when you reach the highest degrees of Freemasonry. Thankfully, the internet is blowing the lid off of this occulted information and people are waking up to the nature of reality at a great rate!

You are on a nondual Christian track reading the Gospel of Thomas. This Quora post sums it up nicely: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-teachings-of-nondual-Gnos...

Here are some ideas of what life looks like post realization of your nondual nature. #6 describes it well: https://www.consciouslifestylemag.com/spiritual-awakening-si...

Best to you on your Path!

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

#98

Post by elihu »

In the realm of Christian theology (and perhaps other areas too), I think there's a related pitfall which is to assume that by reading the Bible exclusively, you can understand what the writers meant when they wrote it without confusing the issues with all the various modern debates about interpretation.

The problem with that is that many passages could have several interpretations, and by default the average Bible reader will tend interpret things the same way his/her parents or pastors or friend or favorite musician or the writers of The Simpsons interpreted them.

By trying to avoid modern bias, one ends up with whatever assumptions are so ingrained in popular culture that one wouldn't even think to question them.

One use of reading modern books (and not-so-modern books) about the Bible is that it's a way of being exposed to those other alternatives, so a Bible reader can make a conscious decision about what they think some passage means, rather than reading something between the lines that might or might not be there and not being aware that they're doing it.

I think CS Lewis's recommendation to alternate between new and old books is a good one.

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

#99

Post by surreptitious00 »

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.

I recently read, The Swerve about On the Nature of Things by Lucretius. It was very well written has made reading On the Nature of things that much more enjoyable. Getting that context and backstory was -ironically- a godsend. While I agree with his point about coming into conversation late and missing some of the meaning, with some books you just have to accept that that ship has sailed and look for the help of somebody who studied the work. To me this is why historical writers are so important, we put a lot of trust in them.

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

#100

Post by lscotte »

jolmg wrote: post #52
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.

Many (probably most) books today suck too. Not to say there aren't a lot of modern, quality books out there, but I think there's a boundless amount of new, bad books.

And unlike those old publications, there are digital copies now so they won't die the death they deserve. I say it with sarcism, but there's some amount of seriousness in there...
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