
C.S. Lewis on the Reading of Old Books - Tomte
https://reasonabletheology.org/cs-lewis-on-reading-old-books/
======
elihu
In the realm of Christian theology (and perhaps other areas too), I think
there's a related pitfall which is to assume that by reading the Bible
exclusively, you can understand what the writers meant when they wrote it
without confusing the issues with all the various modern debates about
interpretation.

The problem with that is that many passages could have several
interpretations, and by default the average Bible reader will tend interpret
things the same way his/her parents or pastors or friend or favorite musician
or the writers of The Simpsons interpreted them.

By trying to avoid modern bias, one ends up with whatever assumptions are so
ingrained in popular culture that one wouldn't even think to question them.

One use of reading modern books (and not-so-modern books) about the Bible is
that it's a way of being exposed to those other alternatives, so a Bible
reader can make a conscious decision about what they think some passage means,
rather than reading something between the lines that might or might not be
there and not being aware that they're doing it.

I think CS Lewis's recommendation to alternate between new and old books is a
good one.

~~~
sverige
My favorite Bible interpreters are all 19th century English, Scottish, and
Irish writers. They all knew Greek and Hebrew, and some of them studied the
ancient manuscripts themselves. Their writing is clear and cogent and their
interpretations are still very much relevant. Sadly, I've little use for most
contemporary writers on the same subjects. They just aren't up to the same
standard.

~~~
panarky
If God wants to communicate with humanity through the Bible, why make it so
difficult to understand the real message?

Instead of requiring years of study of ancient manuscripts in Hebrew and
Greek, why not just deliver the message in clear, modern, unambiguous language
that the reader understands?

~~~
veddox
The "real message" of the Bible is clear and plain to anyone who reads it (no
matter the language). The biggest arguments in Christianity are often on
issues that the biblical writers considered side topics, and thus only touched
briefly - such as the form of worship services.

~~~
0x445442
Agreed... Man's sinful nature, wages of sin is death, deity of Christ and
sacrificial atonement with man's sinful nature as root. It's the root premise
which I find to be the biggest stumbling block for most.

------
noonespecial
Time is a fantastic filter. When I was cleaning out my grandparents attic I
found a few dozen old books from the 30s and 40s. Wanting to see if they had
any value I searched Amazon Ebay and even Google.

I could find no record of them having ever even existed. I opened a few of
them and found out why. They sucked.

~~~
chrissam
This is exactly how I look at it. To quote Orwell: "Ultimately there is no
test of literary merit except survival".

~~~
jszymborski
There's a lot of survivor bias there, however.

A lot of works that were under-appreciated during their time had their
extemporaneous advocates and promoters that had their own motivations that
often had little to do with appreciation for the work.

If Kafka's editor had listened to Kafka and burned his works instead of making
sure they got on as many bookshelves as possible, or if Van Gogh didn't have
the close relationship he had with his art-dealer brother, we almost certainly
wouldn't remember their works today.

I don't doubt their are many unknown masters ahead of their time that will
forever remain in obscurity.

~~~
inimino
It would be survivorship bias if we assumed, based on the old books we have,
that all old books on average were better than modern books. I don't think
that's the argument being made here.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
Let's assume for a moment that all famous old books are good books. We might
then say that time is a great filter because all of the old books we know of
are good books.

However, it might be that time actually has a false negative rate of 99.9%.
Almost all of the great old books are filtered out by time. In that case, time
probably sucks as a filter. But then again, if your only goal is "read only
great books," time is still a useful filter even if it has a terrible false
negative rate, since it's irrelevant to you that there are lots of other books
being excluded, so long as you get a sufficient supply of good books.

------
FiatLuxDave
I rather enjoyed this essay, not because I am into theology, but because I
also see the value of old books. I think that I am a bit of a heretic (if I
can use that word in a theology thread) because I strongly believe that there
is advantage to be gained by reading old books of... science!

It is often presumed that because we learn new things as time goes on, and old
theories are discarded as new information comes to light, that there is not
much value in reading older science books. After all, isn't half of that stuff
wrong? But similar to how Jack says how one can learn about different flavors
of Christianity by stepping out of his own century, and thereby how much they
have in common, I feel that by reading the original works of Millikan, Carnot,
Gibbs, or Einstein, that you get a much better idea of the perspective that
developed the theories we see as so cut-and-dried today.

~~~
enriquto
Some old articles in physics are surprisingly concise. There is no point in
reading a modern 300 page book on special relativity when you can just read
"on the electrodynamics of moving bodies" which is 23 pages and self-
contained.

~~~
whatshisface
I can't speak for the specific book you're talking about, but there are
definitely a lot to say about relativity that has been discovered since the
time of Eisenstein.

~~~
FiatLuxDave
While it is true that more has been discovered about relativity since
Einstein's time, that doesn't mean there isn't value in reading Einstein. When
you approach an idea which is new to you, it's good to read something written
for newcomers. When Einstein wrote, _everyone_ was a newcomer. As such, his
work is remarkably approachable considering how difficult the subject is.

While now I tend to think about special relativity using Minkowski space
(which I find to be the easiest mental construct for me), my 12-year-old self
found all that stuff in Einstein's _Relativity_ about trains and clocks very
helpful in building intuition about relativity.

~~~
whatshisface
As a counterpoint, I thought (and still think to this day) that the trains and
clock stuff is hard to follow, but I understood it easily as soon as I saw it
in terms of coordinates.

------
jxcl
I can entirely relate to what Lewis writes about reading Plato. I was
interested in philosophy but found myself gravitating to reading and listening
to podcasts about philosophy rather than reading it directly.

Once I actually picked up a volume of Plato's works I was surprised how
approachable it was to me, a complete layman of philosophy.

~~~
perfect_wave
Got any recommendations for philosophy podcasts?

~~~
pmoriarty
_Partially Examined Life_

It's hosted by former philosophy students who cover many dozens of philosphers
relatively in depth. Their style is very approachable and conversational.
They're not stuffy or boring, and often they're pretty funny. I've listened to
a lot of philosophy podcasts and this is by far the best.

[https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/](https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/)

------
sudosteph
I wish US high schools could spend more time on primary sources like this. I
only bought myself a copy of "The Federalist Papers" (and another collections
with anti-federalist writings too) a few years ago, but I keep going back to
it to compare how issues they faced at the founding of our nation still can
relate to issues we're having today. Some of the issues they discuss are
comically not applicable today, but even reading those essays gives me insight
into how even very intelligent people can be utterly blind to the future.

It's amazing how much more I learned from those essays than from years of
formal classes on the topic of government though. Just getting the author's
perspective from them directly, and realizing that they absolutely were
thinking deeply about the impact, source, and validity of their arguments
brings me so much closer to understanding the way things were designed than
textbooks which reduce complex philosophical arguments down to their trivial
outcomes like "So-and-So opposed a centralized bank".

------
davebryand
This was life-changing for me. I wanted to learn about spirituality through a
different lens than the Catholic upbringing that constrained my mind and the
rampant "spirituality is synonymous with Christianity" that I find in the U.S.
I went out and read a handful of ancient religious texts from all of the
world. This led me to see that throughout the course of human history, tribes
from all over the world have espoused the same truths about the nature of
reality (non-duality). I don't believe I could have reached this knowledge by
reading derivative works alone.

~~~
sdegutis
In the same way, every Catholic around me reads "Catholic" books written in
the past 20 years that are 90% watered down and 10% quotes from older books.
So imagine my surprise when I found all those old books they were quoting were
easily available on archive.org and easily installable on my phone (the PDF
copies only) and in easy to understand English translations, despite being
written 200, 500, 1000, 1700 years ago. And compared to these older books,
even the 150 year old books, these 20 year old books are nothing more than
overpriced flowery pamphlets.

~~~
photojosh
I'm not Catholic, but my most revelatory reading this year has been Rene
Girard's (a Catholic philosopher/theologian) 20-40 year old books. I guarantee
they're not flowery pamphlets, they're mind-blowing.

~~~
photojosh
And serendipitously enough, an article on him made HN today!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18585177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18585177)

------
ellius
I really like his comment that "two minds are better than one not because
either is infallible, but because two minds are unlikely to go wrong in the
same way." This is sort of the same thing I like about pair programming,
except taken to the extreme of not just two different minds but minds from
entirely different times and cultures.

------
el_cid
Great article! CS Lewis always surprises me with his... "wise common sense".
I'm constantly let down my modern books, some of them highly acclaimed. But
the great filter explains it all perfectly. I'm going to take this into
consideration when selecting my books from now on.

------
laichzeit0
One of the most beautiful "old" books to read (especially if English is your
native tongue) is John Locke - Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It's a
beautiful piece of text, more so if you can get an old Oxford Claredon Press
edition edited by Peter Nidditch.

I've read that Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are also delightful to read in the
original. Schopenhauer's writing style is so good, even when translated to
English by Saunders.

------
mathattack
I believe that Tolkien is one of the folks he read Old Books with.

~~~
camelNotation
They were part of the literature discussion group The Inklings, which met
mostly on Tuesdays at The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford.

Tolkien is the one that convinced Lewis to leave atheism behind and become a
Christian. Tolkien's poem "Mythopoeia" \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoeia_(poem)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoeia_\(poem\))
\- was instrumental in that process.

It's worthwhile to read it, but as a warning, it was written from one (highly
educated) friend to another (highly educated friend), and it is not easy to
understand what Tolkien is trying to say about the nature of reality without
reading through it a few times:
[http://home.agh.edu.pl/~evermind/jrrtolkien/mythopoeia.htm](http://home.agh.edu.pl/~evermind/jrrtolkien/mythopoeia.htm)

~~~
cousin_it
Thank you for that link. What an amazing poem!

> _All wishes are not idle_

That line alone could tip me over to Christianity. I'll have to think more
about this.

~~~
yourik
I highly recommend delving more into both Tolkien and Lewis, if you haven't.
Basically this single poetry line is reflected in so much of both their works:
Silmarillion has several threads of this sentiment woven into it.

------
mci

      For out of olde feldys, as men sey,
      Comyth al this newe corn from ȝer to ȝere,
      And out of olde bokis, in good fey,
      Comyth al this newe science that men lere.
    

Geoffrey Chaucer, _The Parlement of Foules_ (c. 1380)

------
brlewis
If we were to apply this idea to computer science or software engineering,
where would we draw the line between old and new books?

~~~
coldtea
Technological books do not age as well, because technical knowledge is
predominantly cumulative.

It's for fields where thoughts are evergreen (basically, anything to do with
being human, literature, poetry, philosophy, etc) where this advice matters.

A good modern book on math, or chemistry, or compiler construction has more
knowledge than any old one.

A good modern poet is not better than Shakespeare or Homer (and in many eras
the poets are way worse than previous eras).

~~~
inimino
The best geometry textbook hasn't changed for more than 2000 years.

Mathematics textbooks are just as likely as anything else to suffer from
modern pedagogical theories that have not been tested by time and will come to
be regarded as mistakes.

~~~
buckthundaz
Do you have a recommendation for best geometry textbook?

~~~
kd5bjo
I suspect 'inimino is referring to Euclid's "Elements"

[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21076/21076-h/21076-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21076/21076-h/21076-h.htm)

~~~
inimino
Indeed.

Not only do you learn geometry, but you participate in the same understanding
of geometry that all later mathematicians started from.

I've always encouraged reading Euclid, Newton, Einstein. In my humble opinion,
mathematics is much easier to understand historically, as it developed, and
the best historical perspective comes from primary sources.

I must acknowledge, however, that for whatever reason very few people share my
perspective on this.

~~~
Koshkin
It is indeed a widely held opinion that most (but not all, of course) original
works are not the best sources to learn from. Over time ideas become clearer,
better explanations arise, etc. Professional educators and instructors are
important, too.

------
pc2g4d
Old books are intellectual broccoli, necessary when you're in the diabetic
coma that is modernity.

------
MrDrDr
He also wrote a great book called Studies in Words about how the meaning of
words change over time, apparently in similar ways in different languages. It
was based on a series of lectures he gave students reading old texts, that
they should not apply modern meaning to an old word:
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Studies-Words-Canto-Classics-
Lewis/...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Studies-Words-Canto-Classics-
Lewis/dp/1107688655)

------
aestetix
I think the phrase "Old Books" here is a bit dated, ironically. A phrase that
would be more immediately understood to us might be "original sources."

------
audiolion
My friend who is an English Professor will not read books from an author who
is not dead. Books need to stand the test of time, if they are still in
circulation after the author dies, then there is something of worth there.

It was sometime in the middle ages where it became impossible to read every
book in existence, consider now you get to read a fraction of a percent of all
books in your lifetime.

------
pmoriarty
_" When I was thirteen years of age we all went on a party of pleasure to the
baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day
confined to the inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of
Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to
demonstrate and the wonderful facts which he relates soon changed this feeling
into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with
joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at
the title page of my book and said, "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do
not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash."_

 _" If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me
that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern
system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than
the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of
the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should
certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed
as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even
possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal
impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my
volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I
continued to read with the greatest avidity."_

 _" When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this
author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied
the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures
known to few besides myself..."_

\-- Mary Shelly, _Frankenstein_

[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84)

------
enriquto
"The UNIX programming environment" by Kernighan and Pike will be cherished by
computer scientists in 200 years, just like mathematicians today cherish
Gauss' disquisitions on curves and surfaces. PHP, javascript, python will be
long forgotten.

~~~
slededit
I'm more with Dave Cutler and think Unix's win was a sad historical accident.
It worked great in a world with teletypes but is a horrible model for our
world of multimedia.

Ioctls are a sad blemish on the face of computing and fork() while again
beautiful in the simple world of single threaded programs forces far too many
constraints on modern OS services. Modern OSs get around it by barely
supporting it except for exec() calls immediately after.

Simply put... not everything is a byte.

~~~
eadmund
OTOH, I go completely in the other direction and think that the failure of
Plan 9 to take over the world is the _real_ historical accident, because
everything on a computer _is_ , ultimately, a byte.

~~~
slededit
I disagree with the premise that everything is bytes - Harvard architecture
computers more cleanly separate nouns (the data) from verbs (the
instructions). There is no fundamental requirement the two be mixed although
it is done for convenience. With fixed function hardware there is no binary
code to execute at all.

Objects - which make verbs first class citizens more cleanly represent the
true state of affairs and cover a much broader variety of cases more cleanly.

~~~
enriquto
> Objects - which make verbs first class citizens (...)

There's much to be said for and against "objects" from philosophical,
scientific, technological and engineering standpoints. Personally, I agree
with the great men that think that object orientation is bullshit (torvalds,
stepanov, pike, ...). Still, whatever you think about the appropriateness of
objects, they do not make _verbs_ first class citizens, but _nouns_!

~~~
slededit
Its been a while since I've gotten into the theory here. But ultimately an
object is a set of data and mutators upon that data.

The Unix model does not link the two together - where for most hardware the
two are inseparable. A sound card can only work on certain formats of data -
it is more than mere bytes. It may have only limited processing ability (e.g.
an EQ functionality or FM synthesizer). Ioctls are a hack around this - and of
course they do "work" but they are not clean. They are also clearly not
congruent with the Unix philosophy, you can't cleanly chain and pipe them or
compose them into a larger whole.

NT did much better on this front, but much of the beauty is hidden by the
horrid win32 layered on top. Cocoa is much nicer and probably the best real
world example of how nice it can be when done right. You _can_ use the UNIX
APIs on a mac, but why would you want to?

~~~
enriquto
> A sound card can only work on certain formats of data - it is more than mere
> bytes.

But you can keep this "data" that is only understandable by your sound card,
and send it over the net, or compress it with gzip, or do whatever you want
with it because, yes, it _is_ merely bytes!

> You can use the UNIX APIs on a mac, but why would you want to?

because they are much more beautiful, and not a layered pile of unneeded
abstractions.

Object orientation is to computer science what category theory is to
mathematics. Yes, it is a very interesting intellectual exercise. Yes, it
_can_ be used to provide a foundation for everything. Yes, if you are using it
daily in your work then you are either batshit crazy or severely misguided.

~~~
twodave
That's one of the more broad-sweeping statements I've come across. Object
orientation is perfectly well-suited to every-day productive work _of certain
kinds_. Just like most other programming methodologies.

------
Maultasche
A few years ago, my dad gave me my grandfather's history textbook from when he
was in high school in the 1930s in California. That was an interesting read.

In addition to it having a slight racist bent when discussing non-European
civilizations, it contained facts that are now considered to be nonsense. The
further in the past it went, the more it contradicted what are now considered
to be well-known facts about the past.

It really demonstrated the many decades of changes in attitudes toward non-
European people and all the incredible things that have been discovered since
then through archeology, carbon-dating, and genetics.

I thought it worth reading to give me an insight on how people thought back
then and their view of the world.

~~~
watwut
> it contained facts that are now considered to be nonsense. The further in
> the past it went, the more it contradicted what are now considered to be
> well-known facts about the past.

Can you give examples?

------
walljm
This is less about old vs new than it is about original vs derived sources.
There is just a lot of wisdom, in most fields, in going back to original
sources if the opportunity is present.

------
budadre75
How about old tech and science books? Anyone has experience in going back to
the classics? My first thought is just they are outdated and not really
relevant to the latest development and better explanations in the newer books,
but I can be wrong.

------
WalterBright
I've managed to find on netflix some TV shows I fondly remembered from the
1970s.

They stunk. All of them.

TV shows have gotten a lot better. I think it's because the production of them
has soared, and the competition is fierce.

~~~
draw_down
I would expect a TV show from the 70s to work as well now as a current show
would back then.

------
init0
I am the only one who read it as C.K Lewis?

------
KSS42
Did anyone actually read the referenced C.S. Lewis essay?

Or did you just read the linked article?

------
verbify
I'm going to take a contrarian view on this.

About 1/15 humans who have ever existed are still alive. And that includes the
period before writing.

I think it's not unreasonable to think that most books have been written in
the past 125 years.

I do not see any reason to deify the past. I say this as someone who has read
the Bible in the original Hebrew and the Talmud in original Aramaic. They're
of interest as a window to a different time, but fundamentally they're
probably no smarter than many people today, and they have less mental tools
and worse nutrition (which is linked to intelligence).

~~~
inimino
This doesn't address Lewis's point that all those books written in the last
125 years share more of our perspective and our biases than something written
a thousand years ago.

Furthermore it's not just that they are old, but that they are old _and have
survived_ that recommends old books to us.

~~~
verbify
I thought I addressed perspective in my post. In addition often all you have
to do to change your perspective is go to another continent.

There's also an element of survivorship bias. The Antikythera Mechanism, while
not a book, is amazing, yet it and devices like it and its instruction manual
didn't survive through the ages. Many books on the minutiae of the regiments
and classification of angels did.

------
smcameron
Don't know why anyone pays any attention to C.S. Lewis. The books he's most
famous for, (e.g. "Mere Christianity") are laughably bad.

~~~
brink
What's so bad about Mere Christianity? It ranks among my top 5.

~~~
smcameron
It's completely idiotic. Lord, Liar, or Lunatic? Um, lunatic, obviously. He
dismisses atheism with a single sentence, and exhibits an _astonishing_ level
of ignorance. If you read it as a Christian, you might not notice the idiocy,
but if you aren't a Christian, it's really really bad, so many assumptions, so
many times something is glossed over as if "obviously so", when it's so not.
Fucking terrible, and obviously so. So overrated. If it's in your top 5,
then... wow. That's not good. I mean, it's not quite as bad as the likes of
"The Case For Christ" by Lee Strobel, but that's not saying much at all.

~~~
NateEag
The irony of your "Um, lunatic, obviously," followed by loud complaints about
things being "...glossed over as if 'obviously so', when it's so not" is hard
to ignore.

Regardless, I don't recall him dismissing atheism in a single sentence, but it
has been years and it's quite possible I've just forgotten.

What's the sentence?

~~~
mjrpes
I have the book and the argument is on pg. 33-34 in my edition:

1\. There exists a moral law within ourselves that instructs us on what we
"ought" to do.

2\. There must be a "mind" behind this force, as "you can hardly imagine a bit
of matter giving instructions".

I think Lewis would revise or abandon his argument if he lived in our age.

~~~
NateEag
Okay, thanks for the info.

