A History of Knowledge

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A History of Knowledge (1991) is a non-fiction book written by Charles Van Doren. In it, Van Doren attempts to lay out a brief and overly traditional account of the history of human thought, condensing over 5000 years of philosophy, learning, and belief systems into just 400 pages. For a sense of the tone, the first section is entitled "The Wisdom of the Ancients" and begins, "By the time written history began, some fifty centuries ago, mankind had learned much more than our primitive ancestors knew."

This tome is perhaps best seen as an effort by a longtime editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica to briefly sketch the key historical trends and breakthroughs connecting the globalizing human landscape and worldview of the twentieth century all the way back to the scattered roots of human civilization in the ancient empires in India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Greece, and Rome.

The book's last chapter focuses on the potential developments of the twenty-first century. It also contains biographies of many notable historical figures.