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Sunday, July 03, 2005

Most Referenced, Least Read

Posted by Jonathan Goodwin on 07/03/05 at 04:54 PM

Here are four that come to mind--can you top them?

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The Decline of the West
The Image of the City
Late Capitalism (this and previous both attributable to Jameson’s influence)

Comments

1. Structural Anthropology

2. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

3. Das Kapital (in its entirety)

4. Tie: Epistemology of the Closet and Between Men

By Scott Eric Kaufman on 07/03/05 at 07:28 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I don’t think Late Capitalism belongs on that list, can we exchange it for S/Z?

By on 07/03/05 at 07:42 PM | Permanent link to this comment

While it may be the case that there are more absolute references to an unread S/Z, the proportion of references to readings of Mandel has to be at least 100:1, perhaps higher.

By Jonathan Goodwin on 07/03/05 at 07:45 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I have to agree with Laura. I’ve read Late Capitalism, so I assume everyone else has. Then again, that’s the same faulty selection bias I think you’re using, Jonathan. My top five list is 70% the result of a quick Web of Science citation query and 30% gut instinct about what people have and haven’t read...so that should shunt Das Kapital to the top and leave my other four an uncouth four-way scrum. (Does research ruin the fun? I dig sabermetrics, though, so I’ll answer my own question with a resounding, er, exclamatory “No!")

By Scott Eric Kaufman on 07/03/05 at 07:53 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Here’s another, then: Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles

By on 07/03/05 at 07:54 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Research of any kind, when wild and hasty generalisations are called for, is definitely cheating.

By on 07/03/05 at 07:55 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Any Husserl, Heidegger’s Being and Time, and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.

By A. G. Rud on 07/03/05 at 08:02 PM | Permanent link to this comment

That stuff isn’t the thing. Things that could be read, perhaps, but aren’t.

By Jonathan Goodwin on 07/03/05 at 08:11 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Most referenced, least read is the instruction, and I still maintain that Husserl’s tiny opus, Heidegger’s main work, and Hegel’s early work fall in that category. What am I missing?

By A. G. Rud on 07/03/05 at 09:45 PM | Permanent link to this comment

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions certainly deserves to be in there, particularly if we’re allowed to count inappropriate uses of the word “paradigm” as well as explicit citations.

I’d like to suggest:

Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Kurt Gödel, Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme

(A while ago, Crooked Timber had <A HREF="http://crookedtimber.org/2005/03/10/all-bloggers-are-liars/"> discussion on abuses of Gödel’s theorem).

By on 07/04/05 at 01:45 PM | Permanent link to this comment

1. Auerbach’s *Mimesis*
2. Frye’s *Anatomy of Criticism*
3. Kant’s *Critique of Judgment* (all anyone reads is the beautiful/sublime sections)

Number 3 brings up the issue of Hegel’s Phenomenology and Marx’s Kapital, of which most lit folk seem to stick to the master/slave chapter and the opening chapters on commodity fetishism respectively.

By on 07/04/05 at 07:57 PM | Permanent link to this comment

1. Darwin - Origin of Species
(This is the biggest, I think. Most people have read a couple sections, but I doubt the entirety is widely read. The frequency with which the Spencerian adaptation is misattributed to Darwin’s original is testament)
2. Kant - Critique of Judgment
3. Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
(Though, many will excise a choice aphorism or two, it seems that most stabs at his overall viewpoint are cannibalized, at best)
4. Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged
(Unless you’re a fan, it would be hard to get through this stuff. Everyone seems to have an opinion, though)

By Alex on 07/05/05 at 01:03 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I do not think Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations should be included on this list. I am a literary critic and not a philosopher, but I love Philosophical Investigations and return to it often.

By on 07/05/05 at 09:59 PM | Permanent link to this comment

...Husserl’s tiny opus

Husserliana is up to Volume 38 this year, by the way.

By on 07/06/05 at 06:34 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Were we aphasiologists, according to a review of Paul Eling’s Reader in the History of Aphasia, the answer to this question would be Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke, as “hardly anybody in aphasiology is so often cited and so little read.” (How’s that for useless trivia?)

By Scott Eric Kaufman on 07/09/05 at 07:50 PM | Permanent link to this comment

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Sunday, July 03, 2005

Most Referenced, Least Read

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