/lit/ - Literature

>>7198657
Wow, I had no idea that he was such a bigot. Is there even one POC author? No women, I notice

>The Art of War
>The Western World

If you want to believe the world is knowable then why not read Plato or Descartes? Also Wittgenstein isn't there because Tyson knows science is just a languav game lol

>Person with a PhD doesn't know anything outside of his field woah :O
If you knew shit about physics you'd criticize him for not publishing anything and not this trivial bullshit

>>7198657
Sounds like a fucking Marxist tbh

>The art of war
>to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art

>>7198711
He should have just made the list a bunch of physics books tbh

>read Shakespeare's oeuvre
>(to understand that even the least educated among us can do great things)

>read Moby-Dick
>(to understand that you shouldn't hold grudges)

>>7198731
what's this fuckin meme that Shakespeare was uneducated
he went to grammar school where he studied latin and greek among other things, he wasn't only some fucking glove making retard with a quill

>>7198673
bible was written by woymn, per Bloom.

>>7198738
Only one small part of it, but the best part

>>7198657
Only on 4chan will you find someone getting this butthurt over someone recommending a bunch of pretty good books.

With the exception of Harris I think they're all pretty solid. They aren't great fiction but they're otherwise good.

>>7198736

Melville was barely educated though

>>7198753
Which part?

>>7198722
Because le educated man knows human life is precious and war is useless :^)

>>7198736
yeah but you went to grammar school and you're still a dunce

>>7198770
The Yahwist source

neil degrasse tyson is a fag

>>7198773
But I still don't get how he got to that conclusion. Isn't the book about how war will always be inevitable and to follow a set of rules so a leader can efficiently conduct war to minimize all losses?

>>7198722
but is true it can be done.

>>7198820
>But I still don't get how he got to that conclusion
that's not how narratives work

>>7198657
Its almost as bad as the anti intellectual post "its all[1] about; how--'you'[2] feel[3];" modernists


[1]The entirety of the 100% unknowable universe
[2] There is no such thing as a "you" hence why it is positioned between quotation marks; to express the irony of the meme of "me"-"me"
[3] The only true thing; how you feel--is all that matter :^)

>>7198793
yahweh is literally autism

>>7198811
fag

>>7198657
>that pure, unrefined ideology

My got

>>7198657
>When you look at the opinions of other pseudo-intellectuals such as Meme-Master Dawkins, Sam "Science can determine morality" Harris and John "The Catcher In The Rye is a work of sexism" Green, can there be any doubt left that pop-sci is a cancer on the intellectual community?

>world-renowned scientist and Oxford professor = "pseudo-intellectual"
>shitposting board on porn cartoon site = "intellectual community"

what a strange world /lit/ is

>>7198832
exactly. tyson is just a complete homo.

>>7198861
>World Renown president, leader of an Oligarchy (but recipient of a Nobel Peace prize!) = One of the most peaceful men on earth

>Leader of Temple-tending monks isolated from society in mountains (never received a peace prize!) = peace-hating tyrant

What a stupid world we live in, where people make arguments like these.

>>7198829
Yes it is almost as bad as some nonsense you just made up and blamed on some bogeyman you call modernists.

>>7198885
like you, fag.

>>7198657
Jesus.

How is the art of war about "making the killing of other humans a artform"?

It is entirely about planning and executing a plan involving the management of many, many people, and how to do it efficiently in a competitive environment. Its often just as applicable to marketing programs or corporate strategy than warfare. And how the fuck is it part of the western cannon?

Also, why the fuck does he call Smith's capitalism as "an economy of greed"? One of Smith's main fucking points is that greed CORRUPTS the market system, and that the market system is inherently non-greedly, as it is simply a way of assigning prices/value. To Smith, it is greed of the business men that causes disruptions to the market system because in their greed the business men try to subvert the market mechanism though outside influences like trusts, price gouaging, price fixing, government intervention, etc.

And the obligatory: "Its easier to learn to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself". I think its entirely lost on Black Science Man that his entire career is telling people what to think and believe by using his "authoritative" status as a "scientist" to sell it on a group of people that have not (and will not) pick up a science journal in their lives.

>>7198759
The statement at the end makes his entire list invalid. The Art of War did not drive the Western World in any way, that's just ridiculous, as is his commentary of the work. Recommending Paine, of all 18th century thinkers, is questionable at best; Paine was notorious for being a contradicting fool and his arguments are just a base application of Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu's thoughts. The only argument you could make for Paine making such a list is the importance of US History, but Common Sense or the Constitution would make much more sense for "glean[ing] profound insight into most of what has driven the western world". Likewise, most of his list reads like a High-school introduction to Enlightenment rather than western world. How NDT believes we can understand the Western History and thought without Marx, Psycho-analytics, Locke, Aquinas or even Aristole is astonishing.

This dude is wacky.

>>7199225
>how to do it efficiently in a competitive environment.
>>>/biz/

>>7198759

Sam Harris is great.

>mfw

>>7199294
Things like this make me wish I had a throwaway Twitter of Facebook. I could easily get hundreds of outraged replies with that image.

>>7199308

>>7198793
>J is the work of one person

Bloom should stay out of Biblical criticism tbh

>>7199339
Glad there is another Sam Harris fan in here.

What the fuck does John Green have to do with science?

the list isnt that bad although his formatting and explanations are pants on head

>>7199400
>unironically a Sam Harris fan

>>7199269
I agree with everything you say essentially, but I think that that's his intention.

Getting insight into what has driven the world is different than specifically choosing THE MOST influential books on history.

For instance, I doubt he means to say the art of war influenced the west, what he MEANS is that reading it may help you understand wars that share universal themes.(IDK if this thought would be accurate though)

>>7198711
>not publishing anything
fucking this

HOW CAN ANYONE CALL THIS MAN A SCIENTIST?

>>7199425
>unironically a greentexter on a hentai board

I don't think the only thing inherently wrong with Sagan, and thereby Tyson's, attempt to widen the appeal of science and explain its concepts in terms that a layman can more easily understand is that it encourages that same layman to stop there.

>"Oh, well I watch Star Talk every week so I'm pretty much obsessed with science."

It also, among these layman, fosters a weird, almost religious worship of "Science" (capital S) as a sort of vague concept synonymous with omniscience and infallibility, when in reality science relies on its fallibility and acknowledgement of what is not known to progress.

>>7199433
>I don't think
Oops
>I think

>>7199339

That's paraphrasing and it is true.

>>7199431
>Harris fag uses shitty unfunny memes instead of actual argument.

Not surprised.

>>7198657
Can we make this thread into our own intro to western canon suggestions?

>Iliad/odyssey
>Ulysses
>madame Bovary
>Orlando furioso
>paradise lost / bible
>t.s Elliot / wasteland
>Shakespeare

all I got off the top of my head, I wouldn't know political or philo stuff besides

>leviathan
>the republic
>fanon
>Foucault
>Locke.
>the prince.

>>7199339
The funny thing about this quote is that his idea of:
>"If I could wave a magic wand to get rid of rape or religion, I would choose religion without hesitation every time"
probably counts as kill worthy.

>>7199460
>wanting sam harris to go without

>>7199456

u were still rekt tho.

>>7199460

rape is not as widespread and religion. can't u into basic reason?

>>7199455
he is literally "I can't into Hume or is-ought" the "philosopher"

>>7199481

lol 4chan anon is smarter than am harris I bet you love hedges.

>>7199718
not that guy but your response to a legitimate piece of criticism is "lol you're posting on 4chan"?

>>7199433

The funny thing about it is that actual scientists have to learn critical thinking, or at least they try to teach us it, and so few people apply it in anything beyond the reading and study of academic journals.

I learned more about critical thinking from history and literature than I ever did in Science, and I learned to apply it outside of the lab too.

>>7199339
isn't that quote a dangerous belief in of itself

>>7198736
>>7198731
the meme is that Shakespeare was some guy from Stratford and not Francis Bacon

>>7198674
how didn't I (or anyone else here...) catch that?

>>7198731
>>read Moby-Dick
>>(to understand that you shouldn't hold grudges)
I thought the main lesson was not to bite off more than you can chew, or that hate can keep a man alive and vital past when he should be dead, or that a leader has responsibilities to more than himself, or any number of things all of which I would put above "don't hold grudges."

>>7199433
or you end up like bazinga xd

>>7198765
Yes he was, a whale boat was his Harvard and his Yale.

>>7199824
Yes

itt: edgy hipsters
none of what he said is wrong, the art of war revolutionized tactics in such a way you could call the level it work in as art.

>>7199988
>revolutionized tactics
I'm sorry, is that what we're calling "recorded the methods of successful leaders" now?

>>7200006
many, if not all theses have used conclusions and works of previous authors in their fields to author theirs, works like these do not exist in a vacuum, no. this thread is basically a bunch of circlejerkers patting each other on the back on how smart they are compared to an award winning astrophysicist, lol.

>>7200022
I do agree with the main point that an astrophysicist doesn't really have any more authority than the common man concerning influential literature.

>>7198657

>The wealth of nations
>1000 pages about pinmaking

>>7199225
#rekt

>>7200022
may I direct you to this post >>7198901

I feel like this guy just read the fucking titles of the books and maybe a goodreads synopsis and wrote his descriptions

>to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art

WHAT?

But Sam Harris was literally never wrong

>>7198832

You worship Autism?

It kind of shows.

>>7198657
>That Bible explanation
>followed by a bunch of authority figures crammed into a reading list, with hasty conclusions drawn from it
>promising ''profound insight''
>NOT A SINGLE GREEK
>That Sun Tsu description
Thanks, Neil! Now that you've told me all the conclusions to major historical works already, I know how to think for myself!

>>7198759
>recommending a bunch of pretty good books

For all the wrong reasons and the reasons that he does give are horribly warped and filtered through his naive and biased ignorance.

He talks about 'free thought' and yet it seems the only reasons you should read those books are precisely for the reasons he gives and any other conclusion is erroneous and a defect in 'your' interpretation (not his).

>>7200976
>

>>7198657
Christ, what a prole.

>>7198657
>Sun Tsu
>development of the western world

>>7199908
because it's not a catch, he says that those are the books that have driven western history not books from the western world.

>>7200976(you)

>>7199269
True, Paine was the 'scholar popular with the masses' of his time.

>>7198657
I agree that this is a shitty list, but to defend the man a bit; I guess somebody just asked him to name some inspirational books, it's not that he is making his own canon our something like that haha

>>7198657
wow../lit/ is festering

le shame

>>7201250
Not sure if cleverly disguised shitpost, or reddit

>>7198826

Yeah but that's not really what the book is about.

>>7202118
Isn't it about winning in the most effective manner such that you don't even have to fight? I don't see how that's elevating killing to an art, and it makes me think Neel Degrass Tyson hasn't actually read it.

That's not a bad list, except Gulliver's Travels. Although, he seems like the kind of person who'd have a Socratic hatred of art, and Gulliver's Travels would no doubt be the only literary work someone with such rigid opinions of reason could enjoy. The worst part of this list is his quips about each work, which read more like a STEM-manlet's simplistic view of the world.

Also, I tire of seeing "Read the Bible!" although this is a particularly poor reason why. One should constantly read the Bible, or a religious text, in pieces. It doesn't read like a novel. The majority of the Bible is also best understood in a religious service, especially one with tradition, even if you don't buy into that particular religion. I went to a Jewish synagogue and had one of the most enlightening experiences with the OT despite being Catholic.

>>7202172
Gonna add that it's a shitty list if you want profound insight into the western world from 10 novels, but you should read/ should have read these. Minus Gulliver's Travels. It is like Aldous Huxley's Island, aka very retarded

>>7202126
>The Bible is about being told what to believe
ya think?

>>7199225
That point about being told what to think burned my ass too. Underrated post. I am now going to assimilate your points into my head to use in future arguments.

>>7199964

>>7199824
>It's justifiable to have the power to judge what ideas are dangerous to one's interests and to punish adherents by death
No, not at all. Definitely not the central force behind basically all political oppression throughout history.