Word: syntopicon
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Significantly, the book is not the work of a professional economist, but springs from the collaboration of a lawyer and a philosopher. Four years ago Philosopher Mortimer (The Syntopicon) Adler decided that the 400 Great Books were about to have company. That was when a 600-page manuscript on the theory of capitalism thudded onto his desk at his Institute for Philosophical Research in San Francisco. The author: a hornrimmed, bow-tied corporation lawyer named Louis O. Kelso. Except for Kelso's wife, Adler was the first person to see the book; U.S. readers will see it shortly under...
...Adler sees it, the Summa Dialectica must go beyond his Syntopicon of the 102 Great Ideas (TIME, March 17). The Syntopicon merely laid the. groundwork by furnishing a key to the great books of the past. The Dialectica must attempt to treat the great issues (God, Man, Nature, History, Knowledge, Being, etc.) in relation to the present. Each topic may take many years. But eventually, Adler hopes, a great conversation will have begun. It will be a conversation that may never have an end, but if all goes according to plan, men will finally learn at least what the talk...
...Touch of Megalomania? With the Syntopicon out of the way, Adler might have relaxed, but, as his wife puts it, "he has a clock built inside him." He never stops ticking. His restless eyes have an intensely pained look, particularly when he has to sit still and listen to someone else talk. In appearance, friends have compared him to a better-fed Savonarola. He likes Brooks Brothers suits, good leather, fast cars, fine food (the waitresses at his favorite restaurants are under strict instruction not to tempt him with rolls and desserts), but whatever he enjoys, he usually enjoys...
Adler is already off on his next great project, which, if he succeeds, will make the Syntopicon look like an exam pony. Adler wants to summarize all the knowledge of the Western world in one vast work, comparable to Aquinas' 13th century Summa or Diderot's 18th century Encyclopaedia. His aim: to help end the Babel of Western civilization, in which specialists in various fields not only disagree but cannot even argue with each other in the same language. He does not want to reach conclusions, but simply clear the decks for "some future philosophic genius" by summing...
Interruptions, Please. The ideas behind these words, argues Adler, represent the most important questions that Western man has been asking since his civilization began. That civilization "is like a long continuing conversation in which Plato is talking to Copernicus and Copernicus is talking to Kant." With the Syntopicon (and Chicago's set of the Great Books), a reader will be able to put the conversation together, can interrupt it at any point, and follow any theme through as many centuries as he cares...