A Syntopicon: An Index to The Great Ideas
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A Syntopicon: An Index to The Great Ideas (1952) is a two-volume index by Mortimer Adler. This index was published as volumes 2 and 3 of Great Books of the Western World. Volume 1 was an introduction by Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago. The Syntopicon was positioned as the 100 great ideas of the western canon, and was sold into American homes largely by experienced salesmen for the Encyclopædia Britannica. Adler and a project team selected the ideas in the decades preceding, and settled on 102 of them.
Contents |
[edit] Angel to Love
- Syntopicon I: – Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom and Convention, Definition, Democracy, Desire, Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, Form, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea, Immortality, Induction, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Logic, and Love
[edit] Man to World
- The Great Ideas. A SYNTOPICON II. Man to World: Chapters 51-102, pages 1-1140. Appendix I: Bibliography of Additional Readings. Appendix II: The Principles and Methods of Syntopical Construction. Inventory of Terms.
- Syntopicon II: – Man, Mathematics, Matter, Mechanics, Medicine, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, Oligarchy, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry, Principle, Progress, Prophecy, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Quantity, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, State, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny, Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, and World
[edit] Equality
In a succeeding book, Adler expressed his regret that the civil rights concept of Equality had not been selected. He attempted to rectify the omission with Six Great Ideas: Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Liberty-Equality-Justice (1981).
[edit] See also
Adler attempted another index, in one volume, the Propaedia for the fifteenth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. A traditional two-volume alphabetical index has since been produced for the more recent versions of the fifteenth edition, in addition to Propaedia.
