How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

by Mortimer J. Adler

  A Note on Popular Science

  In a sense, there is little more to say about reading scientific popularizations. By definition, these are works—either books or articles—written for a wide audience, not just for specialists. Thus, if you have managed to read some of the classics of the scientific tradition, you should not have much trouble with them. This is because, although they are about science, they generally skirt or avoid the two main problems that confront the reader of an original contribution in science. First, they contain relatively few descriptions of experiments (instead, they merely report the results of experiments). Second, they contain relatively little mathematics (unless they are popular books about mathematics itself).

  Popular scientific articles are usually easier to read than popular scientific books, although not always. Sometimes such articles are very good—for example, articles found in Scientific American, a monthly magazine, or Science, a somewhat more technical weekly publication. Of course, these publications, no matter how good they are or how carefully and responsibly edited, pose the problem that was discussed at the end of the last chapter. In reading them, we are at the mercy of reporters who filter the information for us. If they are good reporters, we are fortunate. If they are not, we have almost no recourse.

  Scientific popularizations are never easy reading in the sense that a story is or seems to be. Even a three-page article on DNA containing no reports of experiments and no diagrams or mathematical formulas demands considerable effort on the p. 268 part of the reader. You cannot read it for understanding without keeping your mind awake. Thus, the requirement that you read actively is more important here than almost anywhere else. Identify the subject matter. Discover the relation between the whole and its parts. Come to terms and plot the propositions and arguments. Work at achieving understanding before you begin to criticize or to assess significance. These rules, by now, are all familiar. But they apply here with particular force.

  Short articles are usually primarily informational, and as such they require less active thinking on your part. You must make an effort to understand, to follow the account provided by the author, but you often do not have to go beyond that. In the case of such excellent popular books as Whitehead’s Introduction to Mathematics, Lincoln Barnett’s The Universe and Dr. Einstein, and Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle, something more is required. This is particularly true of a book like Commoner’s, on a subject—the environmental crisis—of special interest and importance to all of us today. The writing is compact and requires constant attention. But the book as a whole has implications that the careful reader will not miss. Although it is not a practical work, in the sense described above in Chapter 13, its theoretical conclusions have important consequences. The mere mention of the book’s subject matter—the environmental crisis—suggests this. The environment in question is our own; if it is undergoing a crisis of some sort, then it inevitably follows, even if the author had not said so—though in fact he has—that we are also involved in the crisis. The thing to do in a crisis is (usually) to act in a certain way, or to stop acting in a certain way. Thus Commoner’s book, though essentially theoretical, has a significance that goes beyond the theoretical and into the realm of the practical.

  This is not to suggest that Commoner’s work is important and the books by Whitehead and Barnett unimportant. When The Universe and Dr. Einstein was written, as a theoretical account (written for a popular audience) of the history of researches into the atom, people were widely aware of the p. 269 perils inherent in atomic physics, as represented mainly but not exclusively by the recently discovered atomic bomb. Thus that theoretical book also had practical consequences. But even if people are today not so worried about the imminence of an atomic or nuclear war, there is still what may be called a practical necessity to read this theoretical book, or one like it. The reason is that atomic and nuclear physics is one of the great achievements of our age. It promises great things for man, at the same time that it poses great perils. An informed and concerned reader should know everything he can about the subject.

  A slightly different urgency is exerted by Whitehead’s Introduction to Mathematics. Mathematics is one of the major modern mysteries. Perhaps it is the leading one, occupying a place in our society similar to the religious mysteries of another age. If we want to know something about what our age is all about, we should have some understanding of what mathematics is, and of how the mathematician operates and thinks. Whitehead’s book, although it does not go very deeply into the more abstruse branches of the subject, is remarkably eloquent about the principles of mathematical reasoning. If it does nothing else, it shows the attentive reader that the mathematician is an ordinary man, not a magician. And that discovery, too, is important for any reader who desires to expand his horizons beyond the immediate here and now of thought and experience.

  Chapter 18 – How To Read Philosophy

  p. 270 Children ask magnificent questions. “Why are people?” “What makes the cat tick?” “What’s the world’s first name?” “Did God have a reason for creating the earth?” Out of the mouths of babes comes, if not wisdom, at least the search for it. Philosophy, according to Aristotle, begins in wonder. It certainly begins in childhood, even if for most of us it stops there, too.

  The child is a natural questioner. It is not the number of questions he asks but their character that distinguishes him from the adult. Adults do not lose the curiosity that seems to be a native human trait, but their curiosity deteriorates in quality. They want to know whether something is so, not why. But children’s questions are not limited to the sort that can be answered by an encyclopedia.

  What happens between the nursery and college to turn the flow of questions off, or, rather, to turn it into the duller channels of adult curiosity about matters of fact? A mind not agitated by good questions cannot appreciate the significance of even the best answers. It is easy enough to learn the answers. But to develop actively inquisitive minds, alive with real questions, profound questions—that is another story.

  Why should we have to try to develop such minds, when children are born with them? Somewhere along the line, adults must fail somehow to sustain the infant’s curiosity at its original p. 271 depth. School itself, perhaps, dulls the mind—by the dead weight of rote learning, much of which may be necessary. The failure is probably even more the parents’ fault. We so often tell a child there is no answer, even when one is available, or demand that he ask no more questions. We thinly conceal our irritation when baffled by the apparently unanswerable query. All this discourages the child. He may get the impression that it is impolite to be too inquisitive. Human inquisitiveness is never killed; but it is soon debased to the sort of questions asked by most college students, who, like the adults they are soon to become, ask only for information.

  We have no solution for this problem; we are certainly not so brash as to think we can tell you how to answer the profound and wondrous questions that children put. But we do want you to recognize that one of the most remarkable things about the great philosophical books is that they ask the same sort of profound questions that children ask. The ability to retain the child’s view of the world, with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare—and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking.

  We are not required to think as children in order to understand existence. Children certainly do not, and cannot, understand it—if, indeed, anyone can. But we must be able to see as children see, to wonder as they wonder, to ask as they ask. The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions—simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions—and maturely wise in our replies.

  The Questions Philosophers Ask

  What are these “childishly simpl
e” questions that philosophers ask? When we write them down, they do not seem p. 272 simple, because to answer them is so difficult. Nevertheless, they are initially simple in the sense of being basic or fundamental.

  Take the following questions about being or existence, for example: What is the difference between existing and not existing? What is common to all the things that do exist, and what are the properties of everything that does exist? Are there different ways in which things can exist—different modes of being or existence? Do some things exist only in the mind or for the mind, whereas others exist outside the mind, and whether or not they are known to us, or even knowable by us? Does everything that exists exist physically, or are there some things that exist apart from material embodiment? Do all things change, or is there anything that is immutable? Does anything exist necessarily, or must we say that everything that does exist might not have existed? Is the realm of possible existence larger than the realm of what actually does exist?

  These are typically the kind of questions that a philosopher asks when he is concerned to explore the nature of being itself and the realms of being. As questions, they are not difficult to state or understand, but they are enormously difficult to answer—so difficult, in fact, that there are philosophers, especially in recent times, who have held that they cannot be answered in any satisfactory manner.

  Another set of philosophical questions concerns change or becoming rather than being. Of the things in our experience to which we would unhesitatingly attribute existence, we would also say that all of them are subject to change. They come into being and pass away; while in being, most of them move from one place to another; and many of them change in quantity or in quality: they become larger or smaller, heavier or lighter; or, like the ripening apple and the aging beefsteak, they change in color.

  What is involved in any change? In every process of change, is there something that endures unchanged as well as some respect or aspect of that enduring thing which undergoes p. 273 change? When you learn something that you did not know before, you have certainly changed with respect to the knowledge you have acquired, but you are also the same individual that you were before; if that were not the case, you could not be said to have changed through learning. Is this true of all change? For example, is it true of such remarkable changes as birth and death—of coming to be and passing away—or only of less fundamental changes, such as local motion, growth, or alteration in quality? How many different kinds of change are there? Do the same fundamental elements or conditions enter into all processes of change, and are the same causes operative in all? What do we mean by a cause of change? Are there different types of causes responsible for change? Are the causes of change—of becoming—the same as the causes of being, or existence?

  Such questions are asked by the philosopher who turns his attention from being to becoming and also tries to relate becoming to being. Once again, they are not difficult questions to state or understand, though they are extremely difficult to answer clearly and well. In any case, you can see how they begin with a childishly simple attitude toward the world and our experience of it.

  Unfortunately, we do not have space to go into the whole range of questions more deeply. We can only list some other questions that philosophers ask and try to answer. There are questions not only about being and becoming, but also about necessity and contingency; about the material and the immaterial; about the physical and the non-physical; about freedom and indeterminacy; about the powers of the human mind; about the nature and extent of human knowledge; about the freedom of the will.

  All these questions are speculative or theoretical in the sense of those terms that we have employed in distinguishing between the theoretical and practical realms. But philosophy, as you know, is not restricted to theoretical questions only.

  Take good and evil, for instance. Children are much conp. 274cerned with the difference between good and bad; their behinds are likely to suffer if they make mistakes about it. But we do not stop wondering about the difference when we grow up. Is there a universally valid distinction between good and evil? Are there certain things that are always good, others that are always bad, whatever the circumstances? Or was Hamlet right when, echoing Montaigne, he said: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

  Good and evil, of course, are not the same as right and wrong; the two pairs of terms seem to refer to different classes of things. In particular, even if we feel that whatever is right is good, we probably do not feel that whatever is wrong is evil. But how do we make this distinction precise?

  “Good” is an important philosophical word, but it is an important word in our everyday vocabulary, too. Trying to say what it means is a heady exercise; it will involve you very deeply in philosophy before you know it. There are many things that are good, or, as we would prefer to say, there are many goods. Is it possible to order the goods? Are some more important than others? Do some depend on others? Are there circumstances in which goods conflict, so that you have to choose one good at the expense of forgoing another?

  Again, we do not have space to go more extensively into these questions. We can only list some other questions in the practical realm. There are questions not only about good and evil, right and wrong, and the order of goods, but also about duties and obligations; about virtues and vices; about happiness, life’s purpose or goal; about justice and rights in the sphere of human relations and social interaction; about the state and its relation to the individual; about the good society, the just polity, and the just economy; about war and peace.

  The two groups of questions that we have discussed determine or identify two main divisions of philosophy. The questions in the first group, the questions about being and becoming, have to do with what is or happens in the world. Such p. 275 questions belong to the division of philosophy that is called theoretical or speculative. The questions in the second group, the questions concerning good and evil, or right and wrong, have to do with what ought to be done or sought, and they belong to the division of philosophy that is sometimes called practical, and is more accurately called normative. Books that tell you how to make something, such as a cookbook, or how to do something, such as a driver’s manual, need not try to argue that you ought to become a good cook, or learn to drive a car well; they can assume that you want to make or do something and merely tell you how to succeed in your efforts. In contrast, books of normative philosophy concern themselves primarily with the goals all men ought to seek—goals such as leading a good life or instituting a good society—and, unlike cookbooks and driving manuals, they go no further than prescribing in the most universal terms the means that ought to be employed in order to achieve these goals.

  The questions that philosophers ask also serve to distinguish subordinate branches of the two main divisions of philosophy. A work of speculative or theoretical philosophy is metaphysical if it is mainly concerned with questions about being or existence. It is a work in the philosophy of nature if it is concerned with becoming—with the nature and kinds of changes, their conditions and causes. If its primary concern is with knowledge—with questions about what is involved in our knowing anything, with the causes, extent, and limits of human knowledge, and with its certainties and uncertainties—then it is a work in epistemology, which is just another name for theory of knowledge. Turning from theoretical to normative philosophy, the main distinction is between questions about the good life and what is right or wrong in the conduct of the individual, all of which fall within the sphere of ethics, and questions about the good society and the conduct of the individual in relation to the community—the sphere of politics or political philosophy.

  Modern Philosophy and the Great Tradition

  p. 276 For the sake of brevity in what follows, let us call questions about what is and happens in the world, or about what men ought to do or seek, “first-order questions.” We should recognize, then, that there are also “second-order questions” that can be asked: questions ab
out our first-order knowledge, questions about the content of our thinking when we try to answer first-order questions, questions about the ways in which we express such thoughts in language.

  This distinction between first-order and second-order questions is useful, because it helps to explain what has happened to philosophy in recent years. The majority of professional philosophers at the present day no longer believe that first-order questions can be answered by philosophers. Most professional philosophers today devote their attention exclusively to second-order questions, very often to questions having to do with the language in which thought is expressed.

  That is all to the good, for it is never harmful to be critical. The trouble is the wholesale giving up of first-order philosophical questions, which are the ones that are most likely to interest lay readers. In fact, philosophy today, like contemporary science or mathematics, is no longer being written for lay readers. Second-order questions are, almost by definition, ones of narrow appeal; and professional philosophers, like scientists, are not interested in the views of anyone but other experts.

  This makes modern philosophy very hard to read for non-philosophers—as difficult, indeed, as science for non-scientists. We cannot in this book give you any advice about how to read modern philosophy as long as it is concerned exclusively with second-order questions. However, there are philosophical books that you can read, and that we believe you should read. These books ask the kinds of questions that we have called first-order ones. It is not accidental that they were also written primarily for a lay audience rather than exclusively for other philosophers.

  p. 277 Up to about 1930, or perhaps even a little later, philosophical books were written for the general reader. Philosophers hoped to be read by their peers, but they also wanted to be read by ordinary, intelligent men and women. Since the questions that they asked and tried to answer were of concern to everyone, they thought that everyone should know what they thought.