- Hardcover: 344 pages
- Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (11 July 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 033379270X
- ISBN-13: 978-0333792704
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.4 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,149,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Review
'No one who wishes to understand the great modern transformation of the industrialized world - the immense rise in human wealth even with an increase in population - can do so without studying the remarkable scholarship of the great British historian and anthropologist Alan Macfarlane. In The Riddle of the Modern World Alan Macfarlane looks at three thinkers - Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville - who were alive when the great change took place to see if they, from direct observation, could explain what happened. - James Q. Wilson, Wall Street Journal
Product Description
What conditions the chances of liberty, wealth and equality at the start of the third Christian millennium? Why did human civilizations develop so slowly for thousands of years, and then transform themselves during the last three hundred? This study of four great thinkers who lived between 1689 and 1995, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, De Tocqueville, and Ernest Gellner, weaves their lives and works together and through their own words shows how they approached the question of the nature of man, his past and his future.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you wish to have a good summary of certain aspects (i.e., the interactions and relations between liberty, wealth and equality) of three great thinkers (Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Tocqueville; Ernst Gellner is also treated but not to much in depth, really), this book is interesting. But not at all enough to cope with its ambitious aims: i) to explain the obstacles which had halted the growth of all great agrarian civilizations up to the18th century ; and ii) to try and explain what has happened since the 18th century. By the end of the book, the author recognizes that "there is still a large gap in the explanation of how the transition to the modern world has occurred" and that there is still pending an explanation of the technological and scientific growth in western Europe between the 12th-19th centuries and why, during the same period, it slowed down, ceased and even partially regressed in other civilizations which had previously been far more advanced than Europe. As of today, nobody has a definitive answer to this, but I would suggest to read the following books: "The Rise of the West" by William H. McNeill, "World History. A new perspective" by Clive Ponting, "Reorient" by Andre Gunder Frank, "The Great Divergence", by Kenneth Pomeranz, "The Dynamics of Global Dominance. European Overseas Empires 1415-1980", by David Abernethy and "The Cash Nexus" by Niall Ferguson.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Love it!
30 Mar 2001
Format:Hardcover
Fantastic book! MacFarlane examines the riddle of why mankind has done so well over the last 300 years, and what prevented these advancements from occuring earlier in our history. He uses the work of four "philosophers"; Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Ernest Geller to throw light on the role that liberty, wealth, and democracy have played. The book is broken down into four sections. Each section starts with the life and times of the philosopher in question. Then their ideas and discoveries about the world around them are examined in detail. Each one contributes to the "solution" to the "riddle". I have been reading a lot of Hayek lately, and many of the ideas he refers to in passing in his work are laid out much more throughly here. If you enjoy history, and are particularly interested in the development of liberty and understanding how individual liberty leads to wealth and better conditions for all, you should buy this book. Also, if you are interested in anyone of the four philosophers mentioned above, you'll be treated to a clear overview of their life and work in the context of the book's subject. It's expensive, but worth it. Buy it before it goes out of print again!
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Rather too much an ambitious work for so scarce results.
3 Mar 2002
Format:Hardcover
If you wish to have a good summary of certain aspects (i.e., the interactions and relations between liberty, wealth and equality) of three great thinkers (Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Tocqueville; Ernst Gellner is also treated but not to much in depth, really), this book is interesting. But not at all enough to cope with its ambitious aims: i) to explain the obstacles which had halted the growth of all great agrarian civilizations up to the18th century ; and ii) to try and explain what has happened since the 18th century. By the end of the book, the author recognizes that "there is still a large gap in the explanation of how the transition to the modern world has occurred" and that there is still pending an explanation of the technological and scientific growth in western Europe between the 12th-19th centuries and why, during the same period, it slowed down, ceased and even partially regressed in other civilizations which had previously been far more advanced than Europe. As of today, nobody has a definitive answer to this, but I would suggest to read the following books: "The Rise of the West" by William H. McNeill, "World History. A new perspective" by Clive Ponting, "Reorient" by Andre Gunder Frank, "The Great Divergence", by Kenneth Pomeranz, "The Dynamics of Global Dominance. European Overseas Empires 1415-1980", by David Abernethy and "The Cash Nexus" by Niall Ferguson.
2 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Convinving Look Into Sources of English Exceptionalism
4 Sep 2003
Format:Paperback
In "The Riddle of the Modern World," Alan Macfarlane "seeks to find the sources of English exceptionalism that ushered in the modern world, looking through the eyes of a number of witnesses from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries who have thought about these sources in a comparative framework. The first of these authors is Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), who lived around the time England was breaking away from the European herd and establishing the institutions that would bring about the Industrial Revolution. The next is Adam Smith (1723-90), who lived just at the cusp of the changeover from an agrarian economy to an industrial mineral-energy-using economy. The third is Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), who lived when modernity had become manifest both in England and in its offshoot, the United States of America. The fourth is the contemporary sociologist and anthropologist Ernest Gellner (1920-95)."
"This strategy is an interesting one, and Macfarlane's thumbnail sketches of the lives and though of these thinkers are cogent and concise. I learned a great deal from his discussion of Montesquieu, and I am sure that readers who do not know the writings of the other thinkers discussed in the book will likewise find much of interest in it."
-From "The Independent Review," Fall 2002
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