Published by Yale.
This attracted my attention with its design. I am a great believer in not allowing the cover to dictate whether I should read a book or not, but that’s not to say I don’t appreciate a good, well designed book and find it an introduction to something I might otherwise not read. Each chapter heading has a linocut/engraving – with their own charm (credited to Jeffrey Thompson). Cream relatively good quality paper, well laid out and clearly printed. I haven’t read any other book about philosophy at all – so it was the production of this, that tempted me into its covers.
I suppose, if anything I’m agnostic. I can’t say I am religious – at least not organised. There may well be an entity responsible for things. In my view, if there is, they certainly have some questions to answer.
Even before starting this book I had begun to wonder if ‘God’, whoever you might think they may be – is actually a small schoolboy type entity. He has been set a project to design and build a world, with interrelated systems, each reliant on another. On the whole he / she (I’m pretty sure in this scenario he is a school boy, I have no idea why)…has done his home work well. Is quietly proud of his world. It has a weather and geology system that works, the land shifts and moves as required, things are well balanced, the cycles of life are moving well, and with a plethora of interesting creatures, each reliant on the other – as his project requirements demanded. He is, however, just a small god-school-boy and he hasn’t learnt when to stop and adds, just a final addition. A so called intelligent life form that has begun to destroy the careful balance; mankind.
He has as is the way of things, tried to sort the problem out. Various religious ideas have developed – some of which instigated by him, but things are definitely going awry. So much so our initially excited god-schoolboy has begun to panic and in frustration has opened his wardrobe to throw the world into the back of it, beneath his school uniform lying on the floor, covered in dust, shoved there when his mother demanded he tidied up. He has slammed the door…and has left it to fester while he tries to ignore the problem…
So, when I started this – I had begun to ask those big questions, but without really realising what I was doing, beginning to take an interest in philosophy.
Each chapter of this book is dedicated to one or more philosophers/thinkers. The chapters are organised by the date of each, starting with Socrates and Plato…to Peter Gadfly. I know of some of them – others, I am ashamed to admit I had never heard of. That’s what books do for you. They educate. Particularly if well written, as this is. It is a superb introduction to Philosophy and the characters that ‘populate’ that rather wide subject.
He famously asked God to make him stop having sexual desires, ‘but not yet’, because he was enjoying worldly pleasures too much….
This is a brilliant, thought provoking book – which just gives a taste of the myriad of ideas that Philosophy encompasses. It is at the moment residing in my bed, along with an adult crime novel, a piece of 9 – 12 fiction, and another novel for YA readers.
It is part of the Yale ‘Little History Books‘ – and has now provoked my interest in other titles from it – there’s one about Archaeology, another about Language and I might (though this is would be extraordinary), be tempted by the Little History of Finance. I never was much for numbers…
This has made me laugh and think – brilliant.
The Contents is comprehensive: Introduction / Evolution and Classification / Size, Shape, Colour and Markings / Enemies and Defence / Food and Feeding / Reproduction and Development / Chameleons and Humans / Chameleon Genera / Index / Credits & Further Information.
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