I am starting my learning journey and I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of things to learn. What advice would you give to a complete beginner about choosing what to learn and staying consistent?
I am starting my learning journey and I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of things to learn. What advice would you give to a complete beginner about choosing what to learn and staying consistent?
Despite the lack of details, A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell is a great start for any intellectual journey. It brought me to the most fascinating places.
What’s at the start of any intellectual journey, no matter the destination? Learning how to think. Right?
Fun story.
My first day in my first class in an undergraduate Chem Eng course. Professor was 70+ years old, craggy face and his voice sounded like he had been smoking a pack a day for decades.
First day of class. Room of ~15 students. He walks in, introduces himself and says,
“In this class I’m going to teach you how to think. Until you understand the world enough to predict it precisely with science and mathematics, you do not know how to think”
It’s not though. it’s a terrible book. His takes are incredibly biased and inaccurate, especially in light of modern scholarship.
Is it better than nothing? Yeah, but don’t take anything he says seriously, he basically gives shitty crib notes and mocks every philosopher because he’s so high on his own supply. And his whole intellectual project, historically, is a bit of a joke and got destroyed by Wittgenstein, which he admitted later in life. Then he turned against Wittgenstein when he started exploring natural language philosophy.
The book prompted me to read what I found interesting during the read. I never went back and compare my thought to his, might be fun to do!