I think the phrase "Old Books" here is a bit dated, ironically. A phrase that would be more immediately understood to us might be "original sources."
C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
101–110 of 179 posts
Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
#102Don't know why anyone pays any attention to C.S. Lewis. The books he's most famous for, (e.g. "Mere Christianity") are laughably bad.
I'm fairly sure the books he's most famous for are fantasies that have something to do with a lion.
Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
#103Time 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.
> I opened a few of them and found out why. They sucked. It could be worse - they could be fascinating, but entirely irrelevant to the modern world view. My dad had a cache of books from a friend of his - that was collected from the pre-independence era for India from 1920s to 1945. The world in those books were strange - the era looks like nothing like the world from my text books. The "Great war" had just passed ("…
What's wrong with the books being about a vanished place? Most classic literature falls into exactly that category - think about Tom Sawyer, or The Great Gatsby. People don't get rid of them.
Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't speak for the specific book you're talking about, but there are definitely a lot to say about relativity that has been discovered since the time of Eisenstein.
While it is true that more has been discovered about relativity since Einstein's time, that doesn't mean there isn't value in reading Einstein. When you approach an idea which is new to you, it's good to read something written for newcomers. When Einstein wrote, everyone was a newcomer. As such, his work is remarkably approachable considering how difficult the subject is. While now I tend to think about special relat…
As a counterpoint, I thought (and still think to this day) that the trains and clock stuff is hard to follow, but I understood it easily as soon as I saw it in terms of coordinates.
Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
#105Don't know why anyone pays any attention to C.S. Lewis. The books he's most famous for, (e.g. "Mere Christianity") are laughably bad.
What's so bad about Mere Christianity? It ranks among my top 5.
Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
#106If 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.
Fortran and Lisp are the oldest still in use.
Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
#107I've managed to find on netflix some TV shows I fondly remembered from the 1970s.
They stunk. All of them.
TV shows have gotten a lot better. I think it's because the production of them has soared, and the competition is fierce.
Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
#108I've managed to find on netflix some TV shows I fondly remembered from the 1970s. They stunk. All of them. TV shows have gotten a lot better. I think it's because the production of them has soared, and the competition is fierce.
I would expect a TV show from the 70s to work as well now as a current show would back then.
Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
#109Time 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.
Yes, Lindy the expert:
https://medium.com/incerto/an-expert-called-lindy-fdb30f146e...
Re: C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books
#110Don't know why anyone pays any attention to C.S. Lewis. The books he's most famous for, (e.g. "Mere Christianity") are laughably bad.
What's so bad about Mere Christianity? It ranks among my top 5.
It's completely idiotic. Lord, Liar, or Lunatic? Um, lunatic, obviously. He dismisses atheism with a single sentence, and exhibits an astonishing level of ignorance. If you read it as a Christian, you might not notice the idiocy, but if you aren't a Christian, it's really really bad, so many assumptions, so many times something is glossed over as if "obviously so", when it's so not. Fucking terrible, and obviously so. So overrated. If it's in your top 5, then... wow. That's not good. I mean, it's not quite as bad as the likes of "The Case For Christ" by Lee Strobel, but that's not saying much at all.