Posted by Geoffrey Clarfield
Books, Education, and the Life of the Mind – James Pew and Woke Watch Canada
Although its exact origins are debated, the phrase a place for everything, and everything in its place, is most commonly credited to Benjamin Franklin. I have spent many hours contemplating this phrase, and the brilliant man most often cited as coining it. In my view, here we have an extraordinary example, in both man and notion, of the excellence and exceptionalism of Western civilization. For what would be the enlightenment and the scientific revolution, if it had lacked the habit to sort and categorize things in order to study and distinguish between them?
In regards to the man, and since this arc of essays is primarily focused on books, let the first volume recommended herein be the excellent The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Published posthumously in 1791, and later included in the original 1952 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World – which at some point I will discuss in great detail – the book has long been considered an essential treatise foundational to modern Western thought. . .
Attribution of the exact words, a place for everything, and everything in its place, appears to have been given to Franklin in error. I was unable to uncover any instance where he employed the phrase. However, considering his voluminous writings, even beyond his autobiography, on discipline, efficiency and order, works such as Poor Richard’s Almanack, an annual series published between the years 1732 to 1758 under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, which contained aphorisms, proverbs, and practical advice promoting virtues like discipline, frugality, and efficiency, it is not surprising in the least that such a well known, and well applied Western sentiment, would call to mind one who lived out its principle with such dedication.
I think about order and efficiency and discipline, along with other Western virtues and habits of mind, because I am often confounded over the best way to approach any given subject of study. I call on habits of order, I create folders where I file things under headings meant to structure the inquiry. I studiously employ the maxim, a place for everything, and everything in its place, to the best of my ability. But things are never so black and white. What do I do when a thing, by all intents and purposes, belongs in not one place, but several all-at-once? …
I will expand in greater detail next time, but for now leave off with a little prelude of what is to come. It has long been a contention of many Western thinkers that all one needs to know, or all one has to do to attain a sufficient education, is study in depth a limited number of great books, perhaps 50, 100 or maybe a little more. This is the idea behind the 1909 series, The Harvard Classics, which were described as a quantity of books no greater than would fit on a standard 5-foot bookshelf. The Harvard Classics were put together by the then-president of Harvard, Charles W. Eliot. The collection was affectionately known as Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf. It’s worth mentioning that the first volume is The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. A number of years later Encyclopedia Britannica published their own collection of great books from the Western Canon, which led to a movement known as Great Books Learning.
I see the books we should read most as falling into a number of different categories. Great Books are the most important works, they are to not just be read casually, but studied closely. As mentioned there are a limited number of books in this category, making it accessible for anyone to study these works in depth and thereby develop Western habits of mind. There is another category of remarkable books often called classic works. These works exist in the many thousands. It is not possible to read all or even most of these books. But the very best of them, at least according to my subjective and eccentric literary fancies, I like to call Great-Good Books. Not all works deemed classics can rise up to the standards of a Great-Good Book, I would venture a guess that the total number of these titles may be under or around one thousand.
Anyway, let me leave it at that for today. Next time I will go into more details about Great Books and Great-Good books and recommend more titles than would take a voracious type to read in a year, unless they had time off work and unlimited caffeine.
The entire essay is here
