Past to Present Ideas That Changed Our World

by Hirschberg, Stuart; Hirschberg, Terry

• ISBN13: 9780130979483
• ISBN10: 0130979481
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-08-05
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

Comprehensive and accessible,Past to Presentencapsulates for readers essential readings from the fields of humanities, social science, and science in a single bookputting a "human face" on the great ideas that have changed our world.The book is divided into seven thematic parts that trace the history of important ideas from their roots to their current incarnations. Each of the 73 readings includes discussions that focus on the history of the idea, the writer's rhetorical strategies, and the context in which the piece was written.For anyone who is interested in exploring the evolutions of the great ideas of our world.

Table of Contents

Rhetorical Contents	x
Preface	xiii
Introduction (Critical Reading, Using Rhetorical Patterns to Develop Ideas, Purposes for Writing, Solving a Problem, Arguing and Persuading)	1	(32)
The Individual Experience: Private Lives, Public Voices	33	(88)
A Princess Remembers	36	(13)
Gayatri Devi
from The Diary of Anne Frank	49	(14)
Anne Frank
I Have Nothing More to Say	63	(14)
Joan of Arc
Becoming a Man	77	(7)
Paul Monette
Letter to His Son	84	(7)
Lord Chesterfield
The Crystallization of Love	91	(9)
Stendhal
Letters to Fanny Brawne	100	(10)
John Keats
Reflections in Westminster Abbey	110	(4)
Joseph Addison
She Would Have Enjoyed It	114	(7)
George Bernard Shaw
The Collective Experience: The Human Condition	121	(88)
The Principle of Population	123	(6)
Thomas Robert Malthus
The Social Sense	129	(13)
Diane Ackerman
Rights of Man	142	(5)
Thomas Paine
To Make Them Stand in Fear	147	(5)
Kenneth M. Stampp
Learning to Read and Write	152	(6)
Frederick Douglass
Letter to My Nephew	158	(6)
James Baldwin
Decolonising the Mind	164	(9)
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Shooting an Elephant	173	(8)
George Orwell
The Turbid Ebb and Flow of Misery	181	(7)
Margaret Sanger
The Married Woman	188	(7)
Simone de Beanuvoir
The Wife Today	195	(14)
Marilyn Yalom
The Historical Dimension: The Importance of the Past	209	(102)
What Is History?	211	(13)
R. G. Collingwood
Concerning Egypt	224	(12)
Herodotus
Finding the Tomb	236	(8)
Howard Carter
Challenge and Response	244	(12)
Arnold J. Toynbee
The Social History of Satan	256	(12)
Elaine Pagels
On Heroes and Hero-Worship	268	(6)
Thomas Carlyle
Death of Abraham Lincoln	274	(9)
Walt Whitman
The Man from Hiroshima	283	(8)
Maurizio Chierici
Inaugural Address, 1961	291	(5)
John F. Kennedy
Steerage	296	(7)
Oscar Handlin
Reflections on Exile	303	(8)
Edward Said
The Natural World: Instinct and Survival	311	(104)
The Homing Salmon	313	(7)
Arthur D. Hasler
James A. Larsen
from The Origin of Species	320	(11)
Charles Darwin
The Dove and the Wolf	331	(12)
Konrad Lorenz
The Praying Mantis	343	(12)
Jean Henri Fabre
The Lowest Animal	355	(7)
Mark Twain
Slaughter of the Innocent	362	(14)
Hans Ruesch
Identical Twins Reared Apart	376	(9)
Constance Holden
Genome	385	(14)
Matt Ridley
A Clone Is Born	399	(16)
Gina Kolata
The Physical Universe: Knowledge of Animate and Inanimate Worlds	415	(96)
The Flood	417	(6)
Sir Leonard Woolley
The Prize	423	(7)
Dava Sobel
The Attack	430	(12)
Nathaniel Philbrick
How to Kill an Ocean	442	(10)
Thor Heyerdahl
Rare Earth	452	(9)
Peter D. Ward
Donald Broiwnlee
The Two Infinites	461	(6)
Blaise Pascal
The Continuous Creation of the Universe	467	(8)
Fred Hoyle
Harnessing Light	475	(7)
Charles H. Townes
The Revolution Begins	482	(6)
Christopher Evans
Information	488	(12)
Neil Postman
The Road Ahead	500	(11)
Bill Gates
The Mind and the Spirit: Understanding the Unknown	511	(106)
The Indefinability of Good	514	(6)
G. E. Moore
The Allegory of the Cave	520	(6)
Plato
Typical Dreams	526	(15)
Sigmund Freud
The Bodily Memory	541	(6)
Marcel Proust
Readings from the Scriptures in Hinduism: Rig-Veda, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita	547	(11)
Three Tests from The Torah: Genesis, Burning Bush, and the Ten Commandments	558	(7)
The Koran	565	(7)
The Prophet Muhammad
Parables in The New Testament	572	(8)
St. Matthew
The Enlightenment of the Buddha: Buddhacarita	580	(7)
The Buddha
Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen	587	(12)
Alan Watts
The Myth of Immortality	599	(10)
Clarence Darrow
Existentialism	609	(8)
Jean-Paul Sartre
The Arts of Civilization: The Human Element	617	(106)
Poetics	619	(11)
Aristotle
The Life of Leonardo da Vinci	630	(10)
Giorgio Vasari
The Genius of Michelangelo: An Interview with Henry Moore	640	(6)
David Sylvester
The Stones of St. Mark's	646	(10)
John Ruskin
The Taj Mahal	656	(12)
P.D. Ouspensky
Something About English	668	(12)
Paul Roberts
Letters to Louise Colete	680	(8)
Gustav Flaubert
Why We Live in the Musical Past	688	(9)
Edward Rothstein
The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram	697	(11)
Sergei Eisenstein
Pavlova	708	(4)
Agnes De Mille
Ways of Seeing	712	(11)
John Berger
APPENDIX Writing About Great ideas	723	(22)
Typical Entries in MLA Style	740	(2)
A Sample Comparative Essay	742	(3)
Credits	745	(3)
Index of Authors and Titles	748

Excerpts

Past to Present: Ideas That Changed Our Worldis intended for freshman composition, advanced and honors composition, history of ideas courses, and for courses that emphasize writing across the disciplines.This book provides insight into the sources of the ideas that have shaped entire fields of study within the college curriculum, using the words of either those pioneers who have had great influence in these fields or those scholars who investigate the evolution of these important ideas.The text is divided into seven thematic chapters, each tracing the history of important ideas that have, in many cases, defined the way we think about basic aspects of nature, culture, and the world. In the 74 selections included in this text, we can follow the evolution of important concepts from their origins through their articulation by the most creative artists and thinkers of every era, from the past to the present. The selections are arranged to illustrate the past-to-the-present adaption and/or reaction to important ideas that have shaped modern culture.The readings are drawn equally from the humanities, social and political sciences, and the natural and physical sciences, and are designed to widen the students' field of vision to include the major ideas and "idea makers" who have shaped the disciplines that comprise the college curriculum. This text broadens the students' perspectives to include disciplines outside their majors and personal interests.The wide range of rhetorical patterns used by these writers offers an unparalleled opportunity to study the techniques and strategies used by great writers in presenting the ideas that have shaped our world. We give extensive consideration to these rhetorical techniques, especially argumentation, and provide guidance in critical reading and in writing analytical essays. CHAPTER DESCRIPTIONSThe readings inPast to Present: Ideas That Changed Our Worldare organized to highlight connections between past ideas and present applications and to move outward from the personal to the public, from the individual to the universal, and from the microcosm of the self to the macrocosm of the universe. To make these great ideas relevant for modern generations of readers we emphasize the issues of culture, race, social class, and technology. The seven chapters move from the individual experience (featuring letters, diaries, and essays by important figures) and the collective experience (that shapes entire societies) to consider the historical dimension and the natural and physical worlds. We cover profound reflections on the mind and the spirit and can appreciate the way the arts of civilization (art, music, drama, literature, architecture, cinema, dance, and language) have enhanced human existence.Chapter 1, "The Individual Experience: Private Lives, Public Voices," introduces a range of autobiographical writing by personalities whose experiences have touched the lives of many peoples and whose works have had a profound impact in diverse cultures across the centuries.Chapter 2, "The Collective Experience: The Human Condition," introduces authors who confront fundamental problems that have challenged the human species--overpopulation and the availability of food, the conflict between political equity and racism, the damaging effects of colonialism, and power inequities between men and women throughout history.Chapter 3, "The Historical Dimension: The Importance of the Past," attests to the value of studying how the present has been shaped by events of the past, including an examination of why some civilizations flourish while others fail, whether history makes men or men make history, the causes and effects of war in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the immigrant experience.Chapter 4, "The Natural World: Instinct and Survival," looks at the impact of Darwin's theories and investigates migration and agg