Watson Peter. Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

Harper Perennial, 2006. — 822 p.— ISBN 9780060935641, 0060935642.Peter Watson's hugely ambitious and stimulating history of ideas from deep antiquity to the present day—from the invention of writing, mathematics, science, and philosophy to the rise of such concepts as the law, sacrifice, democracy, and the soul—offers an illuminated path to a greater understanding of our world and ourselves.Author's Note.
Introduction: The Most Important Ideas in History Some Candidates.
Prologue: The Discovery of Time.
Lucy To Gilgamesh: The Evolution of Imagination.
Ideas Before Language.
The Emergence of Language and the Conquest of Cold.
The Birth of the Gods, the Evolution of House and Home.
Cities of Wisdom.
Isaiah to Zhu XI: The Romance of the Soul.
Sacrifice, Soul, Saviour: «the Spiritual Breakthrough».
The Origins of Science, Philosophy and the Humanities.
The Ideas of Israel, the Idea of Jesus.
Alexandria, Occident and Orient in the Year 0.
Law, Latin, Literacy and the Liberal Arts.
Pagans and Christians, Mediterranean and Germanic Traditions.
The Near-Death of the Book, the Birth of Christian Art.
Falsafah and al-Jabr in Baghdad and Toledo.
Hindu Numerals, Sanskrit, Vedanta.
China’s Scholar-Elite, Lixue and the Culture of the Brush.
The Great Hinge of History: European Acceleration.
The Idea of Europe.
Aquinas to Jefferson: The Attack on Authority, the Idea of the Secular and the Birth of Modern Individualism.
«Half-way Between God and Man»: the Techniques of Papal Thought-Control.
The Spread of Learning and the Rise of Accuracy.
The Arrival of the Secular: Capitalism, Humanism, Individualism.
The Explosion of Imagination.
The Mental Horizon of Christopher Columbus.
The «Indian» Mind: Ideas in the New World.
History Heads North: the Intellectual Impact of Protestantism.
The Genius of the Experiment.
Liberty, Property and Community: Origins of Conservatism and Liberalism.
The «Atheist Scare» and the Advent of Doubt.
From Soul to Mind: the Search for the Laws of Human Nature.
The Idea of the Factory and Its Consequences.
The Invention of America.
Vico to Freud: Parallel Truths: The Modern Incoherence.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Oriental Renaissance.
The Great Reversal of Values – Romanticism.
The Rise of History, Pre-history and Deep Time.
New Ideas About Human Order: the Origins of Social Science and Statistics.
The Uses and Abuses of Nationalism and Imperialism.
The American Mind and the Modern University.
Enemies of the Cross and the Qur'an – the End of the Soul.
Modernism and the Discovery of the Unconscious.
The Electron, the Elements and the Elusive Self.
Notes and References.
Index of Names and Places.
Index of Ideas.
About the Author.
Also by Peter Watson.