Read: May 29, 2024 – June 8, 2024
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
How to Read a Book provided insights on how to learn argue that are applicable in a surprisingly greater scope than I expected. Not just how to learn and read a book – but the author provided tools applicable to many facets of life
Unfortunately, they did this with an apparent goal of belaboring every single point. They certainly did not pass up the chance to use 50 words when only 5 would suffice (Adler and Van Doren clearly never read On Writing Well, since it was published more than 30 years after How to Read a Book). Despite the feeling of crossing the Sahara without a water bottle at times, the Oasis was regularly found and the journey was made worth it.
Who should read it: It’s a good read for someone who is embarking on a journey of self-education. The method they present is useful and relevant.
Main Points
The Activity and Art of Reading
- Reading is an activity – therefore the better the reader the better one exerts energy towards reading.
- Reading a book is having a conversation with the author. Similar to a real conversation – you should ensure that you understand what is being said.
- Reading difficult things is like lifting weights at the gym – it makes you stronger.
- Facts lead to information (being informed), while insight leads to understanding (being enlightened). Look for the author’s insight when reading a book!
The stages and steps to analytical reading
- Rules for finding out what a book is about.
- Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.
- Knowing what kind of book you are reading allows you to know what tools you will need to understand it.
- State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.
- The dust jacket summary of the book will give you a good idea of what questions you should expect to ask, and have answered, in the book.
- Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole.
- Reading the table of contents is like reading a map before you go on a journey.
- Define the problem or problems the author has tried to solve.
- This is what the book is about – and is what you should hope to get out of the book.
- Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.
- Rules for interpreting a book’s contents
5. Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words.
– You must understand the vocabulary being used – otherwise you will never understand the book.
6. Grasp the author’s leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences.
– The author will likely state his biggest theory in a sentence, take note of that.
7. Know the author’s arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences.
– Take note of the authors main arguments, and come back to that.
8. Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and of the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve.
– Understand the difference between whether or not you understand the argument, or if the author simply didn’t make the argument. - Rules for criticizing a book as a communication of knowledge.
9. Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book. (Do not say you agree, disagree, or suspend judgement, until you can say “I understand.”)
– Don’t enter an argument from ignorance.
10. Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously.
– There’s no sense in arguing if you know neither side will change their mind.
11. Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for critical judgement you make.
– No argument should be made without facts.
Highlights
Book: How to Read a Book
#knowledge #understanding We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding. p4
Book: How to Read a Book
#knowledge #enlightenment To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth. p11
Book: How to Read a Book
#teaching #self-help A doctor may do many things for his patient, but in the final analysis it is the patient himself who must get well-grow in health. The farmer does many things for his plants or animals, but in the final analysis it is they that must grow in size and excellence. Similarly, although the teacher may help his student in many ways, it is the student himself who must do the learning. p12
Book: How to Read a Book
#communication If you do not understand the words used in the definition, you obviously cannot understand the meaning of the word that names the thing defined. p107
Book: How to Read a Book
#curiosity #wisdom #learning “Perhaps you are beginning to see how essential a part of reading is to be perplexed and know it. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as nature. If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.” p121
Book: How to Read a Book
#communication #understanding You know his words, not his mind. He was trying to communicate knowledge, and all you received was words. p124
Book: How to Read a Book
#understanding If the book is the sort that conveys knowledge, the authors aim was to instruct. He has tried to teach. He has tried to convince or persuade his reader about something. His effort is crowned with success only if the reader finally says, “I am taught. You have convinced me that such and such is true, or persuaded me that it is possible.” p137
Book: How to Read a Book
#criticism Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever. p138
Book: How to Read a Book
#understanding You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, “I understand”, before you can say any one of the following things: “I agree,” or “I disagree,” or “I suspend judgment.” p141
Book: How to Read a Book
#hope #argument One is hopeless about the fruitfulness of discussion if he does not recognize that all rational men can agree. p146
Book: How to Read a Book
#conflict #disagreement #communication These two facts, that people do disagree and can agree, arise from the complexity of human nature. Men are rational animals. Their rationality is the source of their power to agree. Their animality, and the imperfections of their reason that it entails, is the cause of most of the disagreements that occur. Men are creatures of passion and prejudice. The language they must use to communicate is an imperfect medium, clouded by emotion and colored by interest, as well as inadequately transparent for thought. Yet to the extent that men are rational, these obstacles to their understanding can be overcome. The sort of disagreement that is only apparent, the sort that results from misunderstanding, is certainly curable. p146
Book: How to Read a Book
#argument #communication #sway Hence the person who, at any stage of a conversation, should at least hope to reach agreement in the end. He should be as much prepared to have his own mind changed as seek to change the mind of another. p147
Book: How to Read a Book
#conversation #communication Conversation is hardly better than a ping-pong game of opposed opinions, a game in which no one keeps score, no one wins, and everyone is satisfied because he does not lose – that is, he ends up holding the same opinions he started with. p147
Book: How to Read a Book
#argument #disagreement We are saying, in short, that disagreements are arguable matters. And argument is empty unless it is undertaken on the supposition that there is attainable an understanding that, when attained by reason in the light of all the relevant evidence, resolves the original issues. p147
Book: How to Read a Book
#argument #disagreement If you have not been able to read a book sympathetically, your disagreement with it is probably more contentious than civil. p153
Book: How to Read a Book
#truth #accuracy #fakenews Yet, strangely enough, in recent years, for the first time in Western history, there is a dwindling concern with this criterion of excellence. Books win the plaudits of the critics and gain widespread popular attention almost to the extent that they flout the truth – the more outrageously they do so, the better. Many readers, and most particularly those who review current publications, employ other standards for judging, and praising or condemning, the books they read – their novelty, their sensationalism, their seductiveness, their force, and even their power to bemuse or befuddle the mind, but not their truth, their clarity, or their power to enlighten. p163