Western Thought: Keepers

In personal news, I am planning on moving in a few months (20 min closer to work - not a huge move). This has meant looking around and seeing what I own that I may not need.

So, while rummaging through my stuff, I found a very interesting doc I'd forgotten about, where I justify which selections to include in my Western Tradition Compendium.

In a way it serves as a catalogue of the important contributions of Western Thought to the globe. What ideas, discoveries, ideals, histories, and epochs have been of value to the world, or, if not of value, have had a significant impact?

Many authors are outside of their comfort zone. Tolstoy is not presented in literature, as my selection of his work, War and Peace's second epilogue, is included as a work of historiography. So into the 'Social Sciences' it goes. While Austen's Pride and Prejudice is, undoubtedly, a great Regency novel, the reason it has a place in my compendium is to show, through literature, the arrival of The Middle Class in Europe. Many other examples follow.

The list was written some time ago, and is an interesting insight into the historical value of these selections. Below, I've grouped it based on category (which is not the case in the original list) and by date (which, again, is not original). I have also struck out those on the list which did not make the final cut, and highlighted those additions. Here goes:

Literature

Initial Epic Poetry - Homer
Initial Drama - Sophocles
Initial Comedy - Aristophanes
National Epic - Virgil
Saga - "Beowulf"
Chivalric Literature - "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"
Vernacular - Chaucer
Elizabethan Drama - Shakespeare
Initial Novel - Cervantes
Metaphysical Poetry - John Donne
Satire - Swift
Romanticism - Wordsworth
Symbolic Poetry - Rimbaud
Philosophical Novel - Dostoevsky
Modern Prose - Joyce
Graphic Novel - Ernst
Modern Drama - Beckett
Modern Poetry - Ginsberg

Mathematics

Geometry - Euclid
Quantification - Archimedes
Algebra - Viete
Pure Mathematics - Hardy

Science (Physics, Biology, and Astronomy)

Epicurean Atomism - Lucretius
Modern Astronomy - Copernicus
Scientific Method - Bacon
Anatomy - Harvey
Kinematics - Galileo
Chemistry - Boyle
Classical Physics - Newton
Modern Atomism - Dalton
Electromagnetism - Oersted
Evolution - Darwin
Genetics - Mendel
Germ Theory - Pasteur
Radiation - Rutherford
Relativity - Einstein
Quantum Physics - Heisenberg
Modern Cosmology - Hubble
Thermodynamics - Schrodinger
Computing - Turing
Environmentalism - Carson

Social Science (Politics, History, Sociology, Economics, and Psychology)

Initial History - Herodotus
Historical Method - Thucydides
Political Speech - Cicero
Initial Biography - Plutarch
Julio-Claudians - Tacitus
The Crusades - Comnena
Initial Feminism - Pizan
'The Renaissance Man' - Castiglione
Renaissance Politics - Machiavelli
Exploration and Colonization - Las Casas
Monarchism - Hobbes
Colonial Evangelism - Ines de la Cruz
Civil Society - Rousseau
Capitalism - Smith
Federalism - Hamilton, Jay, and Madison
Modern Historical Narrative - Gibbon
Women's Rights - Wollstonecraft
The Middle Class - Austen
Irrationality - Mackay
Communism - Marx
Civil Disobedience - Thoreau
Defense of Democracy - Lincoln
Libertarianism - Mill
Historiography - Tolstoy
Abolitionism - Twain
Zionism - Herzl
Civil Rights - Du Bois
Crime and Punishment - Kafka
Psychology - Freud
Child Development - Piaget
Modern Economics - Keynes
Industrialism - Benjamin
Anti-Totalitarianism - Orwell
Second Wave Feminism - de Beauvoir

Philosophy and Theology

Judaism and Christianity - "The Bible"
Madness - Euripides
Initial Philosophy - Plato
Logic - Aristotle
Stoicism - Seneca
Autobiography/Confessions - Augustine
Monasticism - Benedict
Theology - Aquinas
Medieval Theology - Dante
Protestantism - Luther
Moral Relativity - Montaigne
Modern Philosophy - Descartes
Cynicism - La Rochefoucauld
Catholic Apologism - Pascal 

Empiricism - Hume
Enlightenment - Kant
'Progress' - Hegel
Self-Reliance - Emerson
Existentialism - Kierkegaard
Mathematical Logic - Carroll
Will Power - Nietzsche

Metaphysics and Ontology - Heidegger
Infinity - Borges
Absurdity - Camus
Linguistic Philosophy - Wittgenstein

Art

Art of Painting - Da Vinci
Art Criticism - Sontag