Keeping Pace With The Information Age
Way back in the 70s, the American scholar Daniel Bell had predicted the onset of a post-industrial society where knowledge would reign sup-reme. And the dominance of a country would emanate from the dominance over knowledge, and not by nuclear weapons. The phenomenal rise of the likes of Bill Gates and fierce competition among countries over intellectual property rights corroborate Bells prediction.
But perhaps, Bell failed to anticipate that both knowledge and the process of learning would undergo a sea change in the bargain. Internet and education through television would become popular and quick learning would be valued over the long and arduous process of learning in the Guru-Shishya tradition.
Keeping this in mind, publishers too are coming out with books which instantly catch the readers attention. Biographical Dictionary and the Dictionary of Scientists are truly in consonance with the changing times. For a generation which is gradually forgetting the significance of the great French Revolution and the heroes involved in that event which signified liberty, equality and fraternity, here are two books which give a birds eye view of the personalities which shaped world history.
If you want to know about Herodotus, that so-called father of history, you need not go to a library to browse through fat books. Or if you want to catch a glimpse of the Egyptian princess, Cleopatra, who so dexterously used her charm to bewitch the most powerfuls of her time. All of them are mentioned here, albeit in brief.
The first book portrays more than 14,000 personalities, living and dead. All the entries have been derived from the Cambridge Bio- graphical Enc- yclopedia. There are entries are from all walks of life -- from Greta Garbo to Paul Gascoigne, from Winston Churchill to Mahatma Gandhi and from Plato to Confucius name any personality and you will find it here. However, the book has a bias against the Orient, as Edward Said of the Orientalism fame would have us believe.
Some of the great from the East are missing. Two of the many notable omissions that stand out include Mahavir, that wandering fakir and Kalhan, one the greatest Indian historians of yesteryears of the Rajtarangini fame. While such great men from the East do not find a place in the book, the likes of Madonna and Marilyn Monroe are very much there.
The book stands out in one more respect. It places facts as they are without eulogising any of the personalities. Read these entries. Mahatma Gandhi: Indian nationalist leader...In 1914 he returned to India where he became leader of the Indian National Congress, advocating a policy of non-violent non-co-operation to achieve independence. George Washington: Commander of American forces and first president of the USA...He inflicted notable defeats on the enemy at Trenton and Princeton and then suffered defeats at Brandywine and Germantown.
The second book is useful in more than one respect. It not only takes us through the memory lane to various scientists but also gives us a brief outline of their discoveries and inventions. In between, the book also gives a brief history of some of the main branches of natural sciences like astronomy, nuclear physics etc. Besides, the book also gives information about some of the vexatious issues like AIDS, the quest of human origins etc.
The live sketch of one of the greatest scientists of all time, Sir Isaac Newton, makes very interesting reading. A product of Trinity College, Newton had to temporarily leave college because of the spectre of plague in 1665, for his isolated home at Woolsthorpe.
Who would have imagined that he would do wonders within the space of a couple of years in isolation.
Newton wrote in his notebooks: In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the method for approximating series and the rule for reducing any power of a binomial to such a series (binomial theorem)... The same year in November I found the method of differential calculus, and in the next year in January had the theory of colours and in May following the method of integral calculus, and in the same year I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the moon...and compared the force requisite to keep the moon in her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth.
All this in the two years of 1665 and 1666, for in those years I was in the prime of my age for invention, and minded Mathematics and Philosophy more than at any time since.
Biographical Dictionary;
Dictionary of Scientists
Cambridge Univ Press
Price not stated/ Pages 495 & 387, respectively