Knowing What We Know, Simon Winchester
Knowing What We Know, Simon Winchester
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Knowing What We Know
The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic

Author: Simon Winchester

Narrator: Simon Winchester

Unabridged: 14 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 04/25/2023

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

“A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter . . . . Simon Winchester has firmly earned his place in history . . . as a promulgator of knowledge of every variety, perhaps the last of the famous explorers who crisscrossed the now-vanished British Empire and reported what they found to an astonished world.”  — New York TimesFrom the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is award winning writer Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds.With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things—no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization—are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness?Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored, and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography, and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion—from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google, and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundanaeum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgium.Studded with strange and fascinating details, Knowing What We Know is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom? Does Rene Descartes’s Cogito, ergo sum—“I think therefore I am,” the foundation for human knowledge widely accepted since the Enlightenment—still hold?And what will the world be like if no one in it is wise?Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

About Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Map That Changed the World, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, and Krakatoa, all of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Will on April 24, 2024

The arc of every human life is measured out by the ceaseless accumulation of knowledge. Requiring only awareness and yet always welcoming curiosity, the transmission of knowledge into the sentient mind is an uninterruptible process of ebbings and flowings. There are times—in infancy, or when at s......more

Goodreads review by Brendan on April 07, 2023

I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall when the wonderful Simon Winchester told his editor, "I think I'd like my next book to be on human knowledge. All of it." I assume a flurry of questions followed, mainly asking what would that book even look like. As expected, the book is named Knowing What We K......more

Goodreads review by Christian on May 07, 2023

I didn’t finish this one. Winchester is one of my favorite writers; nobody writes about the seemingly mundane in such a compelling manner. He continues to flex these muscles by tackling ever grander topics. In his early books, he focused on under-represented stories and drew larger themes from them.......more

Goodreads review by Nelson on October 10, 2023

The author tells us that with this book, he wanted to get to the essence of how we know what we know, and that he wanted to do this by looking at how knowledge is transmitted. I read halfway through and found nothing about the first or the second. Winchester wasn't the first to think of analyzing the......more

Goodreads review by Tracie on May 15, 2023

A history of how knowledge was spread is a large undertaking, but author Simon Winchester takes readers on an interesting journey through time. I thoroughly enjoyed the discussions beginning with the ancient past onward starting with the inventions of paper, the printing press, encyclopaedias, newsp......more