1

Boorstin, Daniel J.  The Discoverers. New York: Random
House, 1983.


     Daniel Boorstin, former Librarian of Congress, wrote

The Discoverers to chronicle the man's heroic desire to

explore the unknown, terra incognita.  The author seems to

take a Weberian modernizing stance, watching the halting

progress of rationalization against irrational enchantment.

If this is so, man's curiosity (and perhaps technological

itself) act as the agents of change.  If not, perhaps the

chronological-cyclical ordering ("shingle effect", xvi) that

tempts the reader to assume a teleological view on the

author's part.

     Discoverers is broken up into four main parts.  part

one, "Time," is concerned with the "mysterious" relationship

between man and his temporal enviroment.  Boorstin

demonstrates that the way we measure time is no so much

rational as historical (he points out the Babylonian and

Egyptian astrological precedents, for example).  He then

traces the development of mechanical timekeeping (with the

attendant religious intentions).

     In part two, "The Earth and the Seas," man begins to

extend his environment through terrestrial and marine

exploration.  Boorstin points out the to which our

cosmological concepts are constructs growing out of a

society's point of view (the conservation of a conceptual

framework).  External objects (mountains, ziggurats,

pyramids) were icons as well as geographic features.

Boorstin soon posits an idea that is critical to the

remainder of his work: "feedback."  Feedback may be the

central concept in Boortstin's understanding of "Discovery."

The retrieved intelligence could be conferred to the ;"lone

explorer" (paradoxically, the stationary mastermind behind

an exploratory jaunt).

     Part three, "Nature," traces man's foray into natural

sciences.  Boorstin organizes his study of this topic by an

optical conceit: microscopics, telescopics.  These two

seemingly innocent innovations lead to ideologically

disturbing ideas about physiology and astronomy.  The latter

half of this section discusses the professionalization of

science, neatly leading to Boorstin's final section.

     Part Four, "Society," deals with the nature of learning

through mnemonics, printing, history , and modern methods.

The introduction of the printing press, vernacular (and

national) language and libraries dispersed information far

beyond the scientific parliaments of the previous section.

This change was not always a welcome one, as Boorstin points

out in his section on Islamic struggles with the press.

Cultures handled modernization differently, which, echoing

Weber again, reflects their spiritual heritage.   The latter

part of this section deal with perceptions of the human

Other: primitives, natives, the "monstrous.  Rounding out

this final section are surprisingly effective glosses on

economics and physics.

     This work is a synthetic tour de force (a lovely set of

bibliographic notes on published secondary sources follows

in the back matter).  The abscense of annotation makes the

work seem layman-friendly, as does the "personal note to the

reader" in the front matter.  This plan must have worked, as

the book enjoyed substantial market success as a hardback,

paperback, audiobook and even an iMax movie.  Boorstin

proves that the readability of a Cod can be achieved on a

grand scale.  This is a magnificent achievement.



jason carr