Collingwood's Idea of History & Speculum Mentis

[Alana]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

A real book is best but if you are using Kindle, you can put your finger on the word in question and a definition will pop up. I used that quite often while reading Collingwood. One thing I also experienced was that there were times when I definitely understood the train of thought being pursued and I was able to read remarkably fast. It seemed as though the quick pace allowed me to concentrate attention very well and get through that part of the material quickly. Other parts I had to slow down and sometimes re-read several times.

I add my voice to those finding reading in Kindle a bit easier. I was a bit against kindle in general and rarely use it (I do love real books), but having read IOH in a real book and now reading SM in Kindle, I think I might start doing it more often. The Dictionary gives me translations of unknown words (even latin ones sometimes!), I can highlight and write notes, and I can have it in the lowest light with my blue blockers on, so as to not disrupt my sleep later on. And actually, after exercising my brain so much after reading these books, sleep comes very easy.

For me reading Collingwood, I kept track of certain ideas even if they weren't entirely clear to me, by jotting in my notebook with page number. I kept reading in hopes that things would clarify and, usually, they did. But I would have to go back to the original idea and re-read it and think, "oh, so THAT is what he was getting at!" Because, very often, he will be presenting an idea not because he is promoting it, but because he is laying it out completely only to rip it to shreds. Initially, that was confusing to me.

It really is a tough read despite his clear writing!!! But that's what we want, I think, something that really exercises the brain hard!!!

Both his books definitely do that!

About presenting ideas and then taking them apart, especially in IOH, I found it very interesting too, once I realized what he was doing. It seemed to me that he was attempting to meet his readers where they are in their beliefs/ideologies and then take them by the hand to walk them through the positives and the negatives, showing them how to think in effect. And not just about their own beliefs, but in the end, about any subject.

Also, his way of presenting how a real historian goes about figuring out the truth of past events, the investigation, the guestions he asks, the way he interrogates his sources/authorities, how he uses his disciplined imagination to see a bigger part of the picture, and so on, reminds me very much of the work SOTT editors do in regards to events as they happen nowadays. They connect the dots of present events, by following a similar way of thinking/investigating. And the work they produce and present to us helps us all see in a more objective way the reality of the world, but also helps us re-evaluate our undesrtanding of historical events too. So in a way, investigation of history past helps us understand better current history, but also the investigation of current events adds to our understanding of past events. Or so I understand so far.

 

[mkrnhr]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

For me reading Collingwood, I kept track of certain ideas even if they weren't entirely clear to me, by jotting in my notebook with page number. I kept reading in hopes that things would clarify and, usually, they did. But I would have to go back to the original idea and re-read it and think, "oh, so THAT is what he was getting at!" Because, very often, he will be presenting an idea not because he is promoting it, but because he is laying it out completely only to rip it to shreds. Initially, that was confusing to me.

It really is a tough read despite his clear writing!!! But that's what we want, I think, something that really exercises the brain hard!!!

Both his books definitely do that!

About presenting ideas and then taking them apart, especially in IOH, I found it very interesting too, once I realized what he was doing. It seemed to me that he was attempting to meet his readers where they are in their beliefs/ideologies and then take them by the hand to walk them through the positives and the negatives, showing them how to think in effect. And not just about their own beliefs, but in the end, about any subject.

This is one of the strong aspects of his book. It's not just about beliefs and ideologies, but about how to think. Collingwood would present you with an idea, maybe a primitive or silly one and then give you (through demonstration) a better idea. You go "ahh that makes sense", and then he goes "not so fast, this is not good either, and this is why". And little by little, you see that thinking philosophically as he puts it, or with a hammer, is not trivial and that in order to think about thought, one has also to learn how to think, and that's IMHO where the rewiring of the brain occurs.

 

[Goemon_]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

I have finnish the introduction and Part I of IoH.

Unfortunatly there are several blank pages on the edition I have : pages 5,8,9,12,13,16,17,20,21,24,25,28,29,32,33,36 are all blank pages !

This is the "OXFORD PAPERBACKS 27" edition: http://www.priceminister.com/offer/buy/2045883495/the-idea-of-history-oxford-paperbacks.html

Strange.

 

[Laura]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

I have finnish the introduction and Part I of IoH.

Unfortunatly there are several blank pages on the edition I have : pages 5,8,9,12,13,16,17,20,21,24,25,28,29,32,33,36 are all blank pages !

This is the "OXFORD PAPERBACKS 27" edition: http://www.priceminister.com/offer/buy/2045883495/the-idea-of-history-oxford-paperbacks.html

Strange.

You should complain to them.

 

[zak]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

For me reading Collingwood, I kept track of certain ideas even if they weren't entirely clear to me, by jotting in my notebook with page number. I kept reading in hopes that things would clarify and, usually, they did. But I would have to go back to the original idea and re-read it and think, "oh, so THAT is what he was getting at!" Because, very often, he will be presenting an idea not because he is promoting it, but because he is laying it out completely only to rip it to shreds. Initially, that was confusing to me.

It really is a tough read despite his clear writing!!! But that's what we want, I think, something that really exercises the brain hard!!!

1mn 27 in this idea.

https://youtu.be/Z7gpk4Zxh8U

 

[monotonic]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

What's interesting is that if you compare his description of ideas to how you normally think, you can roughly determine the period of your thought. I think I'm a 13th century guy!

 

[Laura]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

What's interesting is that if you compare his description of ideas to how you normally think, you can roughly determine the period of your thought. I think I'm a 13th century guy!

Or you can figure out your mental/emotional age by how you think.

 

[Phill4]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

When I started reading, I didn't quiet get where he was getting at, after a while I thought that it was best to take a small break and explain to myself what history first is in my own terms.

Once doing that I started laying his explanations over mine and compare.

What I noticed, eventhough I haven't spent enough time doing this, is that there were errors in my deffinition and therefore perception and reflect on where some of the points Collingwood was making about historians applies to the deffinition . It was interesting to see where the errors appear.

It regards history as dynamic and fluid, and historical thought evolves and see what is able to perceive, what is interesting is that there seem to be this bubble perception that things take place only in relation to man, or their society or their kind or philisophy or a number of other core mentalities etc.

Another thing I noticed is how certain expressions and words, due to the etimology carry ideas from different philosophies he is describing: one I recall is the idea of a utopic future, which I could remember myself having years ago before I came in contact with the material here. But this is something I vaguely understand and can't quiet formulate yet. Continue reading....

 

[genero81]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

What's interesting is that if you compare his description of ideas to how you normally think, you can roughly determine the period of your thought. I think I'm a 13th century guy!

Or you can figure out your mental/emotional age by how you think.

He covers that idea in Speculum Mentis. That was very interesting! Made a lot of sense. Roughly outlined the various stages I went through.

 

[herondancer]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

For me reading Collingwood, I kept track of certain ideas even if they weren't entirely clear to me, by jotting in my notebook with page number. I kept reading in hopes that things would clarify and, usually, they did. But I would have to go back to the original idea and re-read it and think, "oh, so THAT is what he was getting at!" Because, very often, he will be presenting an idea not because he is promoting it, but because he is laying it out completely only to rip it to shreds. Initially, that was confusing to me.

It really is a tough read despite his clear writing!!! But that's what we want, I think, something that really exercises the brain hard!!!

Really confusing. I took a while to catch on to his method. He'd be saying all kinds of positive things about a particular philosopher or movement, and I'm nodding (it all made so much sense) and then bang, 'this is why he/it is wrong'. The fourth time it happened, i actually said, "Will you stop doing that!" out loud!

I'm almost done with SM which is really fun, but was for sure on the lookout for the same thing. It's a great way to make a point though.

 

[Kay Kim]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

I didn’t comprehend fully but I finished ‘Idea of History’ book on November 3rd.
And thinking about some of interesting information, then I come up some idea to improve my mental activity by using “historical thinking”.

But I didn’t want to go over my whole life by wasting energy, so each night I just go over my whole day started from in the morning got up from bed to sleep time.

First day, it wasn’t easy as I thought, but as day go by it seems my remembering improves and some times I felt like I am there and more realistic, anyway it takes just few minutes.
After that I always do “Prayer of the Soul” meditation to relax and comfort, but I believe more importantly, the deep breathing helps oxygenate body to activate DNA.

The more historical knowledge we have, the more we can learn from any given piece of evidence; if we had none, we could learn nothing.
Evidence is evidence only when someone contemplates it historically.

And this we do by using the president as evidence for its own past. Every present has a past of its own, and any imaginative reconstruction of the past aims at reconstructing the past of this present, the present in which the act of imagination is going on, as here and now perceived.
...
But an act of thought is not a mere sensation or feeling. It is knowledge, and knowledge is something more than immediate consciousness.
...
Thought itself is not involved in the flow of immediate consciousness; in some sense it stands outside that flow....for thought is not mere immediate experience but always reflection or self-knowledge, the knowledge of oneself as living in these activities.

It may be well to enlarge on this point. An act of thought is certainly a part of the thinker’s experience. It occurs at a certain time, and in a certain context of other acts of thought, emotions sensations, and so forth. Its presence in this context I call its immediacy; for-although thought is not mere immediacy it is not devoid of immediacy.

The peculiarity of thought is that, in addition to occurring here and now in this context, it can sustain itself through a change of context and revive in a different one. This power to sustain and revive itself is what makes an act of thought more than a mere ‘event’ or ‘situation’...

The peculiarity of thought, then, is that it is not mere consciousness but self-consciousness.
The self, as merely conscious, is a flow of consciousness, a serious of immediate sensations and feelings; but as merely conscious it is not aware of itself as such a flow; it is ignorant of its own continuity through the succession of experience. The activity of becoming aware of this continuity is what is called thinking.

One thing which it may do is to become more clearly aware of the precise nature of the continuity: instead of only conceiving ‘myself’ as having previously had some experiences, indeterminate in their nature, considering what in particular these experiences were: remembering them and comparing them with the immediate present.

Another is to analyze the present experience itself, to distinguish in it the act of feeling from what is felt, and to conceive what is felt as something whose reality(like the reality of myself as the feeler) is not exhausted by its immediate presence to my feeling.

Working along these two lines, thought becomes memory, the thought of my own flow of experiences, and perception, the thought of what I experience as something real.

A third way in which it develops is by recognizing myself as not only sentient being but as a thinking being. In remembering and perceiving, I am already doing more than enjoying a flow of immediate experience; I am also thinking; but I am not(simply in remembering or perceiving as such) aware of myself as thinking. I am only aware of myself as feeling.
This awareness is already self-consciousness or thought, but it is an imperfect self-consciousness, because in possessing it I am performing a certain kind of mental activity, namely thinking, of which I am not conscious.

Hence the thinking which we do in memory or perception as such may be called unconscious thinking, not because we can do it without being conscious,....

for in order to do it we must be not only conscious but self-conscious......
To be conscious that I am thinking is to think in a new way, which may be called reflecting.

Historical thinking is always reflection; for reflection is thinking about the act of thinking and we have seen that all historical thinking is of that kind.

But what kind of thinking can be its object?

 

[lilies]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

I generally read with a notebook handy and when a phrase or an idea comes up that is really interesting for any reason, I jot it down and the page number where it is found. If there are words I don't understand, I write them down and look them up and write the definition. Also, if what I am reading causes me to make a comparison or reminds me of something else, I write that down too. I use the same notebook for several books and when I start a new book, I put the title, author, publisher at the top of the page so I don't have to repeat that with every subsequent note. I also jot notes in the margins of the book itself (if it is my book).

Ditto here, having a thickening absolutely necessary notebook for the hard to internalize, heavily expert concepts Collingwood takes for granted, for they are evidently mere basics in his profession.

Recently I had a hard time grokking Innate Ideas, WTH he wanted to say with that in relation to another couple of terms and latin/greek sayings and famous medieval written works I had to read into, to get a whiff, what soup the chief monk at a pre-medieval monastery or past century UK officials were stirring. Then other such hard to grok concepts followed since.
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/e/an-essay-concerning-human-understanding/summary-and-analysis/book-i-innate-ideas

The best about Collingwood is, I think, his work is not only an excellent Brain Weight Lifting exercise, but addictive as hell too!

 

[Balance]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

I'm sorry if I'm interrupting the thread and please, if moderators think that this question should be asked somewhere else, please transfer it wherever you think it's appropriate.

Does anyone here, who's from Ex-Yu states, knows where I can buy these recommended books(or at least some of them) translated on Serbian/Croatian?
I found only the Idea of History on recent book fair month ago and bought it. But I couldn't find SM and especially Rain(because it's somehow new -published few years ago...right?)

I will have to thank member istina for giving me the link where I can buy translated version of Political Ponerology.
If anyone of you knows if these recommended books (except IoH) are translated and where to buy them I would really appreciate it.

(I can read it on English also, but these are really complicated subjects which I prefer reading on native language, if there is a translation...if not...that's how it is - Amazon here I am ;D)

 

[biala84]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology


You should try to work with diccionary if u have a english version of a book. I start to read a book in english which i also don't have much practice, because i was lazy :D and now i have to pay the price :P once i start read a idea of history i' m doing very slow, but i prefer to catch the sense then go faster and maybe after few days i get practice and is gonna be fine, if u don't find the version in your language try to give one step forward and fight to know some things better. I don't understand all the sense, but when i'm traducing the words then i have to write it and i have to back to sentence what was the meaning while i forget what i was thinking, in the beginning i was almost crying that nothing coming to my head, but then after a while is coming a light and all the puzzles coming into one :)

 

[Corvus]

Re: Collingwood's Idea of History, Speculum Mentis & Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

Yas,
When it comes to human nature and his view that it is changing I would disagree, human nature is not changing, human perceptions, desires, thinking and technological knowledge is progressing, but alas only in certain spheres and in limited amount. Human nature was and is still entropic and the rules are more or less the same as prior to 1000 years ago, just there are gloves today.

Humans see world differently today but are acting and reacting same, only change that is worthy is inner change, change of being, and while there is change on individual level that is not possible to many it is far away from any general change to be called change in human nature(that is human polarity), but it depends how you define change, for some it seems changing some minor things is a great progress. If there was a significant change we would be not living in the same world we are living today.
Any change done was by individuals, and mostly it was subverted and applied because it had some use for control. If not those general masses with their psycho leaders would still be in a stone age.

It is written for those who have more basic knowledge in mainstream history and philosophy so that is why it is more difficult to read, but also everybody can make it difficult read by making you think what he thought by his words.

And when he mentions Kant and says he is a bit extreme with his pessimism and if that if it was so black human life would have long dissapeared and that there were many that found life not tolerable but enjoyable he is missing a point totaly, similar when mentioning stoicism.