[mcraenich]

I've been studying history privately for about 8 years now, and 'Maps of Time' by David Christian has fundamentally changed the way I look at the progression of mankind. Essentially, he's described from the highest possible level how modernity has come to be. There is too much detail in the book to go into depth, but it's a fascinating, and more than worthwhile read for the knowledge-seeker.

Another I'd add is 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins. I have a Bachelor degree in science and never thought I'd be able to add to my understanding of evolution, but this book accomplished it. Almost everything I've studied can be broken into two periods - that I studied before reading the Selfish Gene, and what I studied after.

Lastly, I'd add Hume's 'Treatise on Human Nature', specifically his theory of substances. The basic idea was that as you learn more information about a substance, how you define that substance changes. First you see an orange ball, and you think it's just an orange colored ball. Later someone tells you it's a fruit, and your understanding of it changes.

How this is relevant is that I realized this can be applied to the world at large. Our understanding of any given phenomena is intrinsically linked to what we know about it. So there is no such thing as 'enlightenment' 'self-awareness' etc, there is only ever increasing awareness as we move through life, and we can also make a point to be intentional about increasing our own awareness.

[kulahan]

>Our understanding of any given phenomena is intrinsically linked to what we know about it

Duh? I don't understand what alternative could possibly exist. Do some people somewhere think that the less they know about something, the more they understand it, or that the very first look you take at anything in the world is all you'll ever need to know about it?

[mcraenich]

For me I think it was more about making the process of learning explicit, and the corollary that there is no such thing as 'complete knowledge'.

Where I think for a lot of people they learn about a thing, or a group of things, until they come to accept something as absolutely and definitely true - "what I know IS reality". Then the learning process just kind of stops there because they think they know, when really they just know slightly more.

I see it all the time, people with the illusion of knowledge when there is a ton more to the story.