Continued from previous issue.

Part III and conclusion

I am involved in this controversy -- as associate editor of the first edition of the Great Books of the Western World, published in 1952, and as editor in chief of the second, much expanded edition, published in 1990.

The second edition differed from the first in many respects: new translations, a revised "Syntopicon", and six volumes of twentieth-century authors that did not appear in the first edition, as well as fifteen authors added in the period from Homer to Freud. As in the case of the first edition, so in the case of the second, our Editorial Board and the large group of advisers whom we consulted did not agree unanimously about the authors to be included; but in both cases there was ninety percent agreement. That, in my judgment, is all one can expect in a matter of this kind.

I would like to call attention to two things about the second edition. In writing an introductory essay, which appeared in a volume that accompanied the set, entitled "The Great Conversation", I anticipated the controversy that the second edition of the Great Books of the Western World would arouse. This did not arise before. In the 1940s, when we were engaged in producing the first edition, "Euro-centric" was not current as a disapprobative term. There was no hue and cry about the absence of female authors; nor had blacks cried out for representation in the canon. In those earlier decades of this century, students and teachers in our colleges and educators in general were not concerned with multiculturalism in our educational offerings.

The second edition contains female authors, some in the nineteenth and some in the twentieth century, but no black authors; and it is still exclusively Western (i.e., European or American authors) with none from the four or five cultural traditions of the Far East.

The controversy over the desirability of multiculturalism having arisen in the late 1980s, I took account of it in my introductory essay, pointing out carefully the criteria in terms of which the authors were selected for inclusion, explaining the difference between the five hundred or so great works included in the set and the thousands of good books listed in the Recommended Readings at the end of each of the 102 chapters in "The Syntopicon". These lists included many female and many black authors, but none still from the Far East.

These exclusions were not, and are not, invidious. The difference between great and good books is one of kind, not of degree. Good books are not almost great or less than great books. Great books are relevant to human problems in every century, not just germane to current 20th century problems. A great book requires to be read over and over, and has many meanings; a good book needs to have no more than one meaning, and it need not be read more than once.

I also explained but did not apologize for the so-called Eurocentrism of the Great Books of the Western World by pointing out why no authors or works from the four or five distinct cultural traditions in the Far East were included or should be included. The Western authors are engaged in a great conversation across the centuries about great ideas and issues. In the multicultural traditions of the Far East, there are, perhaps, as many as four or five great conversations about different sets of ideas, but the authors and books in these different cultural traditions do not combine these ideas in one Far Eastern tradition, nor do they participate in the great conversation that has occurred over the last twenty-five centuries in the West. There are undoubtedly great, as distinguished from good, books in all of these Far Eastern traditions.

I did not anticipate that those who responded to the publication of the second edition by challenging its Eurocentrism or complaining about the fact that its authors were still for the most part dead white males, with few females and no blacks, would do so entirely in terms of announcements in the press of the list of included authors, and without reading my introductory essay and without knowing that a large number of female and black authors were included in the 102 lists in "The Syntopicon" of good books cited as readings recommended in addition to the great books included in the set, along with many other books by white males, none of them regarded as great.

I should mention one other point that is highly germane to the controversy. Many of those who criticize the traditional canon of great books and call for its rejection incorrectly suppose that its defenders claim that it is a repository of transcultural truth and nothing else. That is not the case. The editors and advisory consultants of the Great Books of the Western World know that there is much more error or falsity in the intellectual and cultural tradition of the West than there is truth.

The relation of truth to error is a one-many relation; for every truth, there are many deviations from it that are false. What truth is to be found is, of course, transcultural. The multiple errors, some of them multicultural, that impinge on each truth are of great importance for the understanding of the truth. Without grappling with the errors, one's understanding of the truth that corrects them is shallow. It follows that if the truths to be found in the great books of the West are transcultural, so, too, must be the understanding of the errors, some of which will be discovered in the Far East.

I turn now from the controversy about the second edition of the Great Books of the Western World to the controversy that has very recently arisen concerning what books should be required reading in colleges that still have some interest in the general, as opposed to the specialized, education of their students. This controversy started at Stanford University in 1988 and has spread since then to other colleges across the country.

The public prints and the electronic media have given the controversy ample notice, and its pros and cons have been publicly debated. A desirable multiculturalism has been appealed to as the basis not only for including many recent books by female, black, and non-Western authors but also for eliminating from the required readings a large number of authors and books that have long been treasured as Western greats, especially authors and books in classical antiquity, in the Middle Ages, and in modern times up to the nineteenth century.

Unquestionably among the books that have been recommended for addition, some contain recently discovered or restated truths that correct errors to be found in books of earlier centuries. If so, who could reasonably object to such additions? No one. But the same cannot be said for the recommended deletions from the list of required readings-- Plato and Aristotle, for example, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Gibbon; Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy; Marcus Aurelius, Rabelais, Montaigne, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and John Stuart Mill. All of these dead white males made important contributions to the pursuit of truth, even if there was much error in their insights, their principles, or their conclusions. Why, then, should many of them, or any of them, be rejected, if their inclusion does not call for the rejection of twentieth century books written by female or black authors?

If general education is to include not just Western civilization, but the other great cultures of the world in the Far East, a question still remains. If Western civilization is included as one of many in the multicultural melange, why exclude Western authors and books long recognized as truly great for their contribution to the pursuit and understanding of truth?

It may be said, of course, that there is not enough time to include these older authors if twentieth-century authors and Far Eastern authors are also to be added to the required readings. It may be said that general education should be given up and no readings at all should be required for that purpose.

But it should not be said, as some of the proponents of multiculturalism seem to think, that truth is merely what some people assert. And that they would like to be the ones to assert what is true, or elect those who are to assert it. Or, if objective truth is held to exist somewhere, it is in natural science, but not in speculative philosophy, theology, or religion, and especially not in moral philosophy, which is concerned with questions of value--good and evil, right and wrong, what ought to be sought and done.

For such multiculturalists, these are all held to be matters of subjective personal predilection. They are not matters of public knowledge, not even knowledge with residual doubt, but only private or individual opinion, unsupported by the weight of evidence or reasons. What is or is not desirable is, therefore, entirely a matter of taste (about which there should be no disputing), not a matter of truth which can be disputed in terms of empirical evidence and reasons.

That being the case, we are left with a question that should be embarrassing to the multiculturalists, though they are not likely to feel its pinch. When they proclaim the desirability of the multicultural, they dispute about matters that should not be disputed. What, then, can possibly be their grounds of preference? Since in their terms it cannot appeal to any relevant body of truth, what they demand in the name of multiculturalism must arise from a wish for power or a belief that their self-esteem will be somehow served.

When dispute on a basis of empirical evidence or by appeal to rational grounds is ruled out, conflicting claims can only be resolved by power politics, either by force or by dominance of a majority. In either case, it comes down to "might makes right". That is exactly what is happening today in the efforts of the multiculturalists to change the curriculum in the public schools and in our colleges.

Multiculturalism is cultural pluralism. In the twentieth century, pluralism has become part of the democratic ideal, opposed to the monolithic totalitarianism that is now being challenged in Russia, and also to the equally monolithic rigidity of Islamic, Jewish, or Christian fundamentalism.

While democracy and socialism, and with them pluralism, are ideal in the social and economic dimensions of society, cultural pluralism is not wholly desirable in other dimensions of our life. What is desirable is a restricted cultural pluralism; that is, the promotion and preservation of pluralism in all matters of taste, but not in any matters that are concerned with objectively valid truth, either descriptive factual truth or prescriptive normative truth.

In this century, mathematics, the hard-core natural sciences, and their attendant technologies have become transcultural. What truth they have so far attained is at present acknowledged everywhere on earth. Whether or not, in the next century or in a more distant future, transcultural truth will be attained in philosophy, in the social sciences, in institutional history, and even in religion is an open question that should not be dogmatically answered by the present breed of multiculturalists whose unrestricted pluralism substitutes power or might for truth and right in the effort to control what should be taught or thought.

THE MIND OF A MATH GENIUS:
Rare Archimedes Manuscript Reappears
by Tammy Webber, The Associated Press

C H I C A G O, Nov. 5 -- Once thought to be lost forever, an ancient manuscript containing the works of one of the world's greatest mathematical geniuses has reappeared -- ravaged by years of neglect.

Scholars who want a glimpse inside the extraordinary mind of Archimedes first must remove centuries of grime, soot and mold covering the 1,000-year-old book, peer through a layer of other writings and piece together pages like a puzzle.

The manuscript, bought by a private collector at an auction last year after disappearing for almost a century, contains the only known original Greek copy of Archimedes' theory of flotation and his "Method of Mechanical Theorems," an explanation in words and diagrams of how he solved abstract problems.

It will be on display at the Field Museum until Jan. 3, then returned to the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore for restoration.

Made Key Discoveries

Archimedes, born in Sicily in 287 B.C., is credited with discovering the principle of water displacement while sitting in his bath. He also invented the pulley and a planetarium that demonstrated the movement of the stars.

The text pulls together both sides of Archimedes' persona -- the abstract mathematical thinker and a "character forever inventing mechanical devices," said William Noel, curator at the Walters Art Gallery.

That the manuscript, called the Archimedes Palimpsest -- palimpsest is Greek for "scraped again" -- survives at all is almost miraculous, Noel said.

The original manuscript is thought to have been created in the 10th century when a scribe copied scrolls written by Archimedes 1,000 years earlier onto sheets of paper made from goatskin.

Sideways and Faint

About 200 years later, the writing was erased by scraping the skin, and the leaves were cut in half and reused in a smaller book of Christian prayers. The new words were written sideways across the original text, which still shows up faintly.

The poor condition of the book was surprising, Noel said. "It's really dreadful," he said. "You can get medieval manuscripts in fragments, but for one that's still bound, it's the worst I've ever seen."

The manuscript survived a fire, which parched the edges, but mold -- which most likely appeared this century -- has caused the most damage, he said. "It is made of animal skin, so not much can destroy it, but mold can," he said.

Vanished in 90 Years

In fact, bits of writing that were present in 1907 -- when a scholar discovered Archimedes' writing underneath and used a magnifying glass to transcribe what he could see -- are not there now, Noel said.

Restoration is expected to take four or five years. After the pages are carefully removed and cleaned, scholars will examine and study the work -- putting the text together like a puzzle because the pages were not reused in the original order after the Archimedes manuscript was scraped and cut.

Digital scanners and ultraviolet light will allow scholars to read the original text and diagrams. Archimedes' contributions have been compared with those of Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. And the possibility of finding new theorems in the manuscript, though remote, is intriguing, said Field Museum librarian Benjamin Williams. "That would be quite significant in the mathematical world," he said. "It is an unknown, and that's what's so thrilling about this."

Well-Traveled Pages

The book has traveled far in its long history. In the Middle Ages, it was kept in a monastery in Palestine; in the 19th century, it was moved to a library in Jerusalem and later transferred to a monastery in Constantinople, now Istanbul. It disappeared around 1922-24 and somehow was acquired by a French family.

After it was sold at auction for $2 million, Noel wrote the book dealer who represented the owner, who remains anonymous, offering to preserve and study the text.

The most extraordinary thing about it is Archimedes' explanations of his own thought processes, Noel said.

"What this does is broaden the base of our understanding of the mainstream of Western mathematical historical tradition," Noel said. "We can understand the tradition of thought."

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Max,

Many Center members are also frequent book buyers. It may interest them to learn that the Center recently affiliated with barnesandnoble.com, the on-line Barnes and Noble bookseller. Center members can purchase books by Mortimer J. Adler and others through the links to barnesandnoble.com found in the Center's web site, www.TheGreatIdeas.org. A part of the purchase price of items purchased through links in the Center's site will be contributed by B&N to the Center.

I would be happy to hear from any members who use the links for purchases or who have any questions or suggestions.

Terrence Berres
Center's Webmeister [Max's term]
Franklin, Wisconsin
berrestr@execpc.com

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