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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 09/20/2008 : 06:22:40
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Interesting read, this. Books are one of our greatest resources, but many times in history books have been written which are misleading or untrue. In some cases this has lead to widescale death and destruction and evil governmental regimes.
This is a list of ten of the worst books of this type - books that have done more harm than good. The common thread in all of these books is deception - invariably not intentional, but the consequences are the same regardless.
I have intentionally left off some of the more obvious choices - as they will almost certainly come up in the comments. This list is in no particular order.
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As noted, a couple of the most obvious, indeed blatent, have been omitted. I don't know if they came up in comments, as I didn't read them -- there's almost 900 of 'em so they must be mentioned in there somewhere. Our friend, Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box recieves mention.
[Moved to the Book Review folder - Dave W.]
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 09/20/2008 : 08:52:39 [Permalink]
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I don't agree that all the books on the list deserve to be included as "screwed up the world" top ten or even on the list. Mead made serious mistakes for example, and other anthropologists were fairly quick to point them out. Mead may have been wrong about many things, but how is this bad? | “The use of cross-cultural comparison to highlight issues within Western society was highly influential, and contributed greatly to the heightened awareness of Anthropology and Ethnographic study in the USA.” |
If I wanted to go after Margaret Mead for the poor quality of her methods and her subsequent conclusions, I sure wouldn't use the above as evidence for that.
And then there is Spock. Yes, he was mistaken about the best sleeping position for babies. But most of the attacks against him were/are political in nature. It still rankles some, especially conservative religious types, that he would "spare the rod" in favor of a more rational approach to discipline. I would still recommend his book, several revisions later, as a fine owners manual for bringing up children. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 09/20/2008 : 09:41:10 [Permalink]
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| I would have included Dianetics (both books) on my list. Religious books like the Bible were left off the list because they are such obvious choices that they need not be mentioned. But the Dianetic books were written before there was a Church of Scientology and spawned what has turned out to be the largest modern cult in existence today. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 09/20/2008 : 11:43:34 [Permalink]
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I also wonder if there isn't a better or more influential anti-evolution book that should be on the list, instead of Darwin's Black Box.
Behe's book came out in 1996. But perhaps Johnson's Darwin on Trial, which came out in 1991, had a greater impact? |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 09/20/2008 : 13:19:07 [Permalink]
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Why not the one that started it all in the '70s? Wasn't it Morris' A scientific case for the flood or something like that?
Also, I liked "The Prince". It should be off the list purely for that reason. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 09/20/2008 : 14:10:51 [Permalink]
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Actually, none of these books screwed up the world. Some (most, all?) merely helped inspire people who would have screwed it up anyway. Or their part of it, at least. I wonder what Bush reads, if anything.
With that in mind, I'd like to see anything by Henry Morris or Phillip Johnson on the list.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 09/21/2008 : 13:32:40 [Permalink]
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Interesting; but mostly I'd take exception with the presence of 'The communist manifesto' and 'The prince' in the list.
The communist manifesto was not bad. It basically talk about how to organize a political communist party. Nothing to do with the actual leading of the state after communism take over.
It has little to do with Lenin and Stalin.
If anything, 'The capital' would be more relevant, but even then, the soviet leaders really only try to apply it for a few years, soon, the Russian civil war intensified and reforms were mostly halted. And never actually started.
Communist was more about propaganda and putting some Marxist varnish on a classical dictatorship than apply than anything else/
As for 'The prince', it is a pretty honest and cold analysis. The idea behind it is too give advice to a leader so that he could become strong and successful; after all, nobody else was playing by the rules. Machiavelli was feeling that a strong leader was necessary to unify Italy and put a stop to the perpetual state of civil war that had been going on there for centuries.
Also, 'Democracy and Education' is not too bad. I mean, I remember back in my grand-father's time, education was about being able to recite the list of the state along with their capital city.
Its useless trivia, in my opinion. I'd rather encourage people to develop learning and critical thinking skills.
Sure, facts are important because they are the building blocks you manipulate to build your thinking, but rather than accumulate facts, at some point it is more important to learn how to use them... |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Ten Books That Screwed Up the World, a list.
