Reasons to read the original works of great thinkers | Hacker News Reader

Reasons to read the original works of great thinkers

goodoptics.wordpress.com

24 pointsubac10 comments

There was, and still is, one reason that I had discovered by chance and by observation, that enables me to read original, classical works.

That is- "dilution by lesser minds."

Once in 10th grade, I read up a poem on my curriculum in advance before the teacher taught it. I explained it to myself, it made sense and I found it interesting.

Then the teacher explained it, and ai realized that, the teacher doesn't really get the poem. He cannot fully grasp all dimensions of it. And he explained it in a much lesser way.

(I have had much better teachers who taught me how to understand poetry in the first place.)

That day was just the beginning.

From then on, I always read the originals- it translates to reading the claasical works by Plato, Ariatotle, reading old poetry, and reading religious scriptures, and reading the original scientific papers rather than the coverage by popular media.

Lesser men dilute things. All things.

They cannot fully grasp the entirety of a work, and explain only the part and up to the extent that they understood.

This limitation also applies to me, but I get much more out than other people can.

This is very limiting for me, and leaves me to desire much more.

I learn so much better- both qualitatively and quantitively when I read original sources rather than rely on other people's explanation, or the common understanding available.

Yes, I am upping it to say that entire societies have gotten many things wrong when it comes to understanding and "getting" stuff created by great people.

(There are people who actually gets stuff, but many keep it to themselves and don't correct others.)

Sounds like it comes from a place with unhealthy amount of hubris? May be that is true, but what I say is extremely true.

For me, I question the infallibility of original authors. It’s certainly a testament to greatness that their works have survived criticism for a long time, but a lot of the value of their work came from the incremental work done by those who came after. Who is to say that people who came after were not greater than the originals? Derivative work can be better than the originals.

Take Freud or Rousseau for instance. They certainly were pioneers but a lot of their works were superseded and refined. Reading them in the originals helps establish the baselines but those baselines were not infallible. Western civilization is based on disputation and questioning the canon.

This makes sense.

Derivative works, and works done on great people by other great people is always interesting and have a lot to offer.

Infallibility of classic authors is something that you can be aware of to a greater degree only if you read the originals.

This is especially true if you are considering the works of people from a culture where people are persona-worshippers, and don't find any fault in famous people that are long dead.

tl;dr- reading original works also enables you to see the flaw in others' work, thinking processes, drawing conclusions among others.

A friend of mine -- a literature major -- in college asked me why we Engineers didn't want to "acknowledge the origins" of the work we studied. He said that he thought he would much rather read the original works of Newton or Leibniz to understand calculus as opposed to the "dry" textbook I was reading.

I think the issue is that the original work is not the clearest explanation. You have to invent new vocabulary for the context, new notation and explain it at the same time. The textbook is a much more efficient delivery mechanism for understanding and it is honed over time.

The original texts are often inscrutable, and they have a different rhythm to them. It reminds me of watching the great movies. Occasionally there will be one that has not aged -- like the Godfather. More often, I can't believe people enjoyed this (examples withheld).

100%.

The context has changed, we live in a different world and have different expectations. If you've spent years studying philosophy you'll understand Kierkegaard, if you've listened to music from the 50s you'll understand why the Beatles were so revolutionary, if you watched sitcoms from the 80s you'll understand why Seinfeld was so off the wall.

We as a culture have absorbed these great works into our expectations. Most people couldn't explain existentialism, pop song structure, or postmodern humor but they understand it now at some gut level.

We’ve also absorbed the Protestant Reformation, the Counterreformation, the Thirty Years War, and the English Civil War into the background of our culture: see the implicit suspicion of the Pope and global organizations in any right wing YouTube video. One can be completely ignorant of the world historical events of early modern Europe and still have absorbed their cultural impact. But that doesn’t make you any less ignorant of the sequence of historical events, new ideas, and great works that form the rational account of why our present culture and experience is the way it is. Sure, one can be ignorant and still function in human life, being carried along by the undercurrents of the time and culture in which accident assigned your life span. The question is why a thinking person would consider it acceptable to leave it at that.

> read the original works of Newton or Leibniz

Thete is also the little problem that the actual original works of these two are in Latin.

The title of this thread "Reasons to read the original works of great thinkers" does not match the article title. I thought it was going to be about study such as done at St. Johns College, where students read the original source "Great Books" rather than modern textbooks.[0] But that does not appear to be the actual subject of the article.

[0]https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate

According to the Maa.org, when Niels H. Abel was asked how he gained his expertise, he replied, “By studying the masters and not their pupils.”

I would say that, especially in cases where the “masters” lived long ago, pedagogy and terminology have often evolved quite a bit and it might not be such a great idea to start with the original sources. Feynman had something to say about that, IIRC.

Also, ego aside, it might be easier to understand a presentation from a sympathetic pedagogist closer to your level. Some original thinkers are quite formidable.

I agree that reading the works of great thinkers of the past can be valuable. But I am annoyed when people [1] suggest that I start my exploration of a field by first reading those greats. This most often happens in philosophy, but in others as well.

Neither of the listed reasons in OP, nor any other reason I have ever heard, convinces me that the best way to start learning about Marxism is to read Marx. Yet, this has been suggested to me several times.

[1] which apparently does not include OP based on this article

Reply on news.ycombinator.com