Research Catalog

Title

The modern mind : an intellectual history of the 20th century / Peter Watson.

Author

Watson, Peter, 1943-

Publication

New York : HarperCollins, ©2001.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 847 pages; 25 cm

Summary

The author of "War on the Mind" presents a major narrative history of the thoughts, ideas, individuals, scientific discoveries, literature, and art of the 20th century. This major narrative history of the people and ideas that shaped the modern world is a brilliantly reasoned examination of the thought and individuals that made twentieth-century culture. From Freud to Babbitt, from Relativity to Susan Sontag, from Proust to Henri Bergson to Saul Bellow, the books range is encyclopedic, covering the major writers, artists, scientists, and philosophers who produced the ideas by which we live. Beginning with four seminal ideas that were introduced in 1900 -- the unconscious, the gene, the quantum, and Picasso's first paintings in Paris-Peter Watson has produced a fluent and engaging narrative of the intellectual tradition of the past century. The book is divided into four parts -- Freud to Wittgenstein; Spengler to Animal Farm; Sartre to the Sea of Tranquility; the counterculture to Kosovo -- and there are forty-two chapters. Watson emphasizes that "the century may be understood as a period during which the scientific method colonized all modes of thought and changed the way thinking is done." He sees the first half of the century as a period of discovery and the last half as a period of analysis, synthesis, and understanding, and he explores the role of the United States in setting the century's agenda in many areas. Unlike more conventional histories, in which the focus is on political events and personalities, The Modern Mind is an illuminating blueprint of twentieth-century thought and culture and the men and women who created it.

Subjects

• Intellectual life
• 1900-1999
• History
• Philosophy, Modern > 20th century
• Intellectual life > History > 20th century
• Civilization, Modern > 20th century

Genre/Form

History

Note

• "First published in Great Britain 2000 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson"--T.p. verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [773]-827) and indexes.

Contents

Introduction: an evolution in the rules of thought. Freud to Wittgenstein: Sense of a beginning. Disturbing the peace ; Half-way house ; Darwin's heart of darkness ; Les Demoiselles de Modernisme ; Pragmatic mind of America ; Ladders of blood ;Volcano ; Counter-attack -- Spengler to animal farm: Civilizations and their discontents. Eclipse ; Acquisitive wasteland ; Babbitt's Middletown ; Heroes' twilight ; Evolution of evolution ; Golden Age of physics ; Civilizations and their discontents ; Inquisition ; Cold comfort ; Hitler's gift ; Colossus ; No way back ; Light in August -- Sartre to the sea of tranquility: New human condition and the great society. Paris in the year zero ; Daughters and lovers ; New human condition ; Cracks in the canon ; Fores of nature ; Mind minus metaphysics ; Manhattan transfer ; Equality, freedom, and justice in the great society ; La Longue Duree ; Heaven and earth -- Counter-culture to Kosovo: View from nowhere, the view from everywhere. New sensibility ; Genetic safari ; French collection ; Doing well, doing good ; Wages of repression ; Local knowledge ; The best idea, ever ; Empire writes back ; Culture wars ; Deep order -- Conclusion: Positive hour.

ISBN

• 0060194138
• 9780060194130
• 0060084383
• 9780060084387

LCCN

00063166

OCLC

• ocm44972235
• 44972235
• SCSB-9606456

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library