by Peter Watson
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PRAISE FOR
THE MODERN MIND
“A remarkable narrative history of all the significant intellectual advances that made the century so glorious, so tragic, so revolutionary, so exciting…. So lucid and engaging that even the most complex and arcane thoughts and subjects are inviting.”
—Indianapolis Times
“Teeming with stories and ideas, alive with excitement of the time. He summarizes accurately, elegantly, and enthusiastically the lives and thoughts of hundreds of impactful thinkers in almost every discipline. He makes archaeology, history, and economics as scintillating as poetry, music, and astral theory. His inexhaustible interest is infectious. His all-devouring appetite stimulates the reader’s hunger for more material…. The result is breathtakingly entertaining, endlessly instructive, irresistibly enjoyable.”
—Felipe Fernandez-Armstrong, Sunday Times
“It is lively, opinionated, and written with verve. Watson takes the reader on a narrative tour of the intellectual, scientific, and artistic landmarks—some familiar, some unfamiliar—of the last century. Whether read consecutively, dipped into on occasion, or used as a reference work, The Modern Mind is impressive in both its range and ambition.”
—Bruce Mazlish, professor of history, MIT
“Chronicles this contentious century with a panoramic overview of the history of ideas in the twentieth century. Watson provides an evenhanded account of the development of ideas in disciplines ranging from philosophy and religion to the social sciences, economics, art, literature, history, science, and film.”
—Christian Science Monitor
“Watson has achieved the near-impossible: a concise reference that is also intellectually compelling—and a fascinating read.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“While this work is reminiscent of Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, Watson’s scope goes far beyond politics and history. This book will be read and consulted for many years.”
—Library Journal
COPYRIGHT
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers.
THE MODERN MIND. Copyright © 2001 by Peter Watson.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2010 ISBN 9780062039125
FIRST PERENNIAL EDITION published 2002.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Watson, Peter.
The modern mind: an intellectual history of the twentieth century /
Peter Watson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-06-019413-8
1. Civilisation, Modern—20th century. 2. Intellectual life—History—20th century. 3. Philosophy, modern—20th century. I. Title.
CB427.W33 2001
909.82—dc20 00-063166
ISBN 0-06-008438-3 (pbk.)
02 03 04 05 06 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
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* The 3:1 ratio may be explained in graphic form as follows:
where Y is the dominant form of the gene, and y is the recessive.
* This is also the basis of the television tube. The positive plate, the anode, was reconfigured with a glass cylinder attached, after which it was found that a beam of cathode rays passed through the vacuum towards the anode made the glass fluoresce.
* Strauss was not the only twentieth-century composer to pull back from the leading edge of the avant-garde: Stravinsky, Hindemith and Shostakovich all rejected certain stylistic innovations of their early careers. But Strauss was the first.19
* The elevator also played its part. This was first used commercially in 1889 in the Demarest Building in New York, fitted by Otis Brothers & Co., using the principle of a drum driven by an electric motor through a ‘worm gear reduction.’ The earliest elevators were limited to a height of about 150 feet, ten storeys or so, because more rope could not be wound upon the drum.
* Passed into law over the president’s veto in 1917.
* In some geology departments in modern universities, the twenty-sixth of October is still celebrated - ironically - as the earth’s birthday.
* In some geology departments in modern universities, the twenty-sixth of October is still celebrated - ironically - as the earth’s birthday.
* The hostilities also hastened man’s understanding of flight, and introduced the tank. But the principles of the former were already understood, and the latter, though undeniably important, had little impact outside military affairs.
* In fact, Ulysses is more deeply mythical than many readers realise, various parts being based on different areas of the body (the kidneys, the flesh); this was spelled out in James Joyce’s Ulysses, published in collaboration with Stuart Gilbert in 1930. It is not necessary to know this for a rich and rewarding experience in reading the book.36
* The history of Harlem was not fully recovered until the 1980s, by such scholars as David Levering Lewis and George Hutchinson. My account is based chiefly on their work.
* Until the Berlin Olympics, the events were mainly about individual prowess. However, journalists covering the games devised their own points system so that the relative performances of the different countries could be compared. This had never happened before, but became the basis for the system now in place at all Olympic Games. Under the system, Germany won most points in 1936, then came the United States, then Italy. The Japanese beat the British.
* Names included Leonard Bernstein, Lee J. Cobb, Aaron Copland, José Ferrer, Lillian Hellman, Langston Hughes, Burl Ives, Gypsy Rose Lee, Arthur Miller, Zero Mostel, Dorothy Parker, Artie Shaw, Irwin Shaw, William L. Shirer, Sam Wanamaker, and Orson Welles.
* This, it will be observed, has been an important distinction between philosophers throughout the century: those who start from an ideal original position, and those who accept the world as it is.
* The economist Robert Solow made essentially the same observation in his work on growth theory.
* Joy was stabbed to death in 1980 by an assistant who claimed he hadn’t been paid. George was shot in an ambush by Somali poacher/farmers in 1989.
* Sanger won a second Nobel prize for this discovery, which meant that he joined a select band of individuals, double Nobel winners, which includes Marie Curie, John Bardeen and Linus Pa
uling.
* Barthes’s views contain at least one contradiction. If an author’s intentions mean little, how can Barthes’s own views mean anything?
* This terminology recalls exactly the title of Colin Maclnnes’s 1958 novel, Mr Love and Justice.
* The Committee on Social Thought was ‘a herd of independent minds,’ in Harold Rosenberg’s phrase, a group of socially concerned intellectuals centred on Chicago University and which included among many others Rosenberg himself, Saul Bellow, and Edward Shils.
* String theorists, incidentally, were one of the groups who established early on their own Internet archives, through which physics papers are immediately made available worldwide.