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Introduction

I read about two fiction books for every non-fiction last year. That’s very deceptive because I read a lot of short fiction books, including a couple that are really short stories published in a single volume. I suspect the page count is much closer to even, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find I read more pages of non-fiction than fiction. I’m almost certain I spent more time reading non-fiction because I tend to read fiction more quickly, and I spend a lot more time going over sections and looking up references when I’m reading history or philosophy.

I tend to read thematically, especially when traveling. Themes this year included: Turkey and Italy, meta-fiction, Borgesian stories, Homer, and the works of Jack Vance. Travel has a huge influence on how much I enjoy a book: reading, for example, a Donna Leon mystery set in Venice, while you are in Venice, is immensely more satisfying than reading the same book at home.

I read a lot of sci-fi last year. But this (and overall fiction numbers) is biased by my self-assigned task to re-read everything Jack Vance wrote. I read 30 Jack Vance books last year, plus an autobiography and two books of essays about Vance. Except for the Lyonesse books, all these were short, most under 200 pages, while most of the non-fiction I read was over 300 pages. Nonetheless, I read a lot of sci-fi, and a lot of it was not that great.

At this point, I’m tempted to talk about how difficult it is to choose my favorites for the year. Subjectivity, expectations, mood, genre, style, fiction vs non-fiction, “great” vs enjoyable, style vs substance, character vs plot? The idea that we can summarize these things into a 1–5-star rating is ludicrous. But I don’t have anything new to say about these topics, so I’ll leave it to the specific categories and books.

Best Non-Fiction

Inventing the Renaissance – Ada Palmer

Changed my whole perspective on the Renaissance and even on how to read history, and how it should be written. Probably my book of the year. Palmer is the only author who has books on my all-time list of favorite non-fiction and fiction.

Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe – Simon Winder

Informative, funny, evocative. A mix of travel and history, reminiscent of Rebecca West. I read this because I was reading so much about the Ottomans and Venetians, and the Habsburgs constantly show up. This almost derailed my thematic study of those regions. I can hardly wait to read Winder’s other books about the German-speaking world.

The Golden Road – William Dalrymple

I would read Dalrymple’s grocery list. He’s the author of a whole set of my favorite books. Makes a powerful case for the influence of India on ancient Greece and Rome, China, Cambodia, Indonesia and Central Asia. Simultaneously, makes you rethink the very meaning of the “Silk Roads.” I also read Peter Frankopan’s highly regarded “The Silk Roads” and I think Dalrymple wrote the book Frankopan wanted to write (more about this below).

Plato and the Tyrant – James Romm

History with a dose of political science. Makes the case that Plato’s attempt to train a philosopher king (or three) was responsible for his disillusionment with the ideas in the Republic and for writing his last work, the Laws. I had no idea we knew so much about Plato’s life or events in Sicily at this time. Romm is one of my new favorite writers. As much as this was great, his “Ghost on the Throne” may be even better. I’m looking forward to reading his other books.

 Lawless Republic: The Rise of Cicero and the Decline of Rome – Josiah Osgood

Like the previous book, this one is history mixed with political science and a little, not completely subtle commentary on current events. I was reading Robert Harris’s novels about Cicero at the same time and found them a little dull in comparison to this history. Also, like Plato and the Tyrant, it makes the case for a system of laws over a system of men.

Also brilliant: The Ark before Noah by Irving Finkel, The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire by Ryan Gingeras, and a couple of Tom Holland books I re-read this year.

Best Fiction

Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

This is a masterpiece of structure, full of brilliant writing.

 Piranesi – Susanna Clarke

 Incredibly imaginative and genre-bending.

 If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino

 I’ve read a bunch of Borges, and Calvino, and Kafka short stories the past few years. This is like one of those, but brilliantly expanded into a full novel. Fascinating meta-fiction and hilarious.

 The City in Glass – Nghi Vo

 A new author to me. Highly original fantasy/magical-realism/does-it-matter-what-genre?

 The Dervish House – Iain McDonald

Sci-fi set in Istanbul. Has everything going for it: plot, characters, ideas, setting. I read it while I was in Istanbul, which might have biased me.

Best book of the year?

Even though I read more fiction, I’d rate most of my favorite non-fiction above the best of the fiction. It’s close, but I’d probably say “The Invention of the Renaissance” was the best book I read last year (despite some quirks).

Most difficult to review

The Magus – John Fowles

This book is too long. It’s pretentious. I hated the characters, especially the protagonist. There are so many plot twists that I eventually gave up believing anything or caring what happened. That sounds pretty awful, and yet, it’s a brilliant novel, with some of the most amazing prose I’ve ever read, and a master class in plotting and psychology (even with the exhausting twists). Here’s a paragraph from the very beginning:

I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria. I was sent to a public school, I wasted two years doing my national service, I went to Oxford; and there I began to discover I was not the person I wanted to be. I had long before made the discovery that I lacked the parents and ancestors I needed.

And 600 pages later, nearly every paragraph is still brilliant:

Kemp wore black slacks and a filthy old cardigan and an extinguished Woodbine, the last as a sort of warning to the fresh air that it got through to her lungs only on a very temporary sufferance.

My full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7834105409

Should have read it ages ago

The Nature of Things – Lucretius

Strangely, my computer science professors in college told me to read this forty years ago. It’s come up a million times since then, but it was only after Ada Palmer talked about it that I finally read it. It is so amazing to see how close the Epicureans got to modern science, and how completely off they were in other ways. The moral philosophy also seems far ahead of its time, and after reading Dalrymple, I couldn’t help but wonder whether Buddhism influenced Epicurus.

Lives of the Greeks and Romans – Plutarch

I’ve read a million books that cite Plutarch, but for some reason, I thought his writing was dry and difficult. It’s not. It’s brilliant. He’s at least as readable as Herodotus and utterly fascinating. Fortunately, I’ve only scratched the surface and have a lot more Lives to look forward to.

 The Forgotten Beasts of Eld – Patricia McKillip

This was in my library in grade school, but I dismissed it as a book for teenage girls and re-read Tolkien ten more times. It’s a surprisingly dark romance that is not only beautifully written but far more insightful into human behavior than Tolkien’s mythology. A classic that I look forward to reading again.

I could have put the Magus, Piranesi, and Cloud Atlas on this list.

Read it again, still superb

Ficciones – Borges

The first half is possibly the greatest collection of short stories ever written.

Rubicon and Persian Fire — Tom Holland

Brilliant history even on the 3rd or 4th time around.

Suldrun’s Garden – Jack Vance

Vance mostly wrote shorter works. But this one and Araminta Station from his late period are much longer and still masterpieces.

War Music – Christopher Logue

The Iliad, but it was never like this:

Love: ‘Father, see this.’ (Her wrist.)

‘Human strikes god! Communism! The end of everything!’

Should be taught in literature classes

The Magus, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Ficciones.

Should be taught in history classes (at least in the English-speaking world)

A lot more about the Ottomans and Habsburgs.

Great when it’s great, but uneven

Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History – by Robert Hughes

Hughes was an art critic and historian. Unfortunately, his understanding of ancient Rome seems to have come from a high school history class and binge-watching “I, Claudius.” If I hadn’t known Hughes was brilliant from his other books, I would have dropped this book after the first chapter. My advice: skip the first 200 pages. Once Hughes gets to his wheelhouse, the Renaissance, this book becomes an incredibly insightful work of art history. Highly recommended if you are in Rome.

Return from the Stars – Stanislaw Lem

Lem is one of my favorite writers. This book starts out brilliantly. The traveler arrives in a spaceport on Earth that is more alien and more disorienting than almost any alien world in all of sci-fi. Then, halfway through, the protagonist turns into a knuckle-dragging neanderthal. I can see what Lem was trying to do—giving us a perspective from the future—but he fails spectacularly. I think ten years later, when he was a stronger writer, he would have done something completely different.

Couldn’t rate it

Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance – Ada Palmer

Since Palmer wrote my favorite non-fiction book of the year, I wanted to read more. Palmer is seemingly incapable of writing turgid prose, but this is her dissertation, dense with facts and citations, and assumes a high degree of familiarity with the humanist movement and general Renaissance history. Interesting methodology and historiography but really only for specialists.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World – Peter Frankopan

Though Frankopan is an engaging writer, this is not at all the book I was expecting or Frankopan describes in his introduction, where he says he wanted to write a book from the perspective of central asia. But instead, we get a very Euro-centric history of world trade. I couldn’t rate it because I started to wonder about his sources and analysis. After reading Dalrymple’s “The Golden Road” and starting Valerie Hansen’s book on the same subject, I’m increasingly convinced that Frankopan is off on the wrong roads, but I need to do more research before I feel I can judge.

Wanted to love

Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino

I absolutely love everything else I’ve read by Calvino. Not only was If on a Winter’s Night… one of my favorites in 2025, but I started 2026 reading “The Nonexistent Knight” and it’s also utterly fantastic. And people say Invisible Cities is his best book. I’ve read it twice now, because I can’t believe I don’t like it, but I don’t.

The King of Elfland’s Daughter – Lord Dunsany

Classic fantasy, cited by Lewis, Tolkien, and others. It left me completely cold. Expectations? The opposite of the Eld.

Disappointing on Re-reading

House of Suns – Alastair Reynolds

I’ve been recommending this as the best of Reynolds, who I generally like a lot. On this re-read, it was dull.

The Anome trilogy by Jack Vance

Though a lot of early Vance is very pulpy, I usually think he had hit his stylistic stride by 1965. But these three books from the early 1970s, along with Trullion: Alastor and the Gray Prince are pretty terrible. Marune: Alastor from the same time starts out well and then ends abruptly. I suspect Vance was writing these under deadline, this being the period when publishers were desperate to meet a demand for sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks.

Keep thinking about all I learned

Pretty much every book I read about the Byzantines and Ottomans falls into this category, but especially:

The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire – Ryan Gingeras

As an American, brought up with idea that WWI unexpectedly broke out in 1914 and was tidily over in late 1918, I was struck that the Ottomans/Turks were pretty much continuously at war from 1912 (First Balkan War) until 1922 when Turkey defeated Greece at Izmir, and this followed on decades of other wars in the Balkans.

The Pursuit of Italy – David Gilmour (no, not that David Gilmour)

Highly opinionated and engaging. I learned a lot about the Risorgimento and 20th-century Italy, but Gilmour is highly opinionated, and I’m not sure I agree with all his points.

Inventing the Renaissance, Lawless Republic, Danubia, Plato and the Tyrant

Superbly Crafted and/or Innovative

The Last Samurai – Helen DeWitt

Hard to describe. A novel that includes notes on the translation of the Iliad, the plot and casting of Seven Samurai, and Japanese lessons (really, it teaches you some basic Japanese).  The plot slows down and starts to fall apart, but it’s mostly brilliant.

Also see Cloud Atlas, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Piranesi, Danubia, Inventing the Renaissance, and The Magus.

Emotionally Difficult but great

The 19th and early 20th century history of the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire is painful, a litany of massacres and ethnic cleansing. As much as I learned from The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire, I had to put it down sometimes.

Birds without Wings – Louis de Bernieries

Covers much of the same ground as “Last Days…” but in a novel. It is a beautifully written tragedy, but it does not shy away from describing atrocities in graphic detail. I don’t believe in Trigger Warnings, but if any book deserves them, it might be this one. I’m far from squeamish, but even I had to skim over a few pages.

Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver

This is a Great Book. It’s a better-written retelling of David Copperfield (which is already brilliant). But it’s also a rant about the opioid epidemic, and I hated all the characters and the situations they got themselves into.

The Story of a New Name – Elena Ferrante

I love these books, but after awhile I get tired of Neapolitans screaming and throwing things at each other.

Most Disappointing

Picnic on Paradise – Joanna Russ

I’ve heard nothing but good about Russ. So, what happened with this one?

Alibi – Joseph Kanon

How can a great plot, full of suspense and twists, be told in such a flat, repetitive style? Prose is really subpar.

Watermark – Joseph Brodsky

I had high expectations for this one. Too high for a series of not very interesting essays on Venice.

A History of Venice – John Julius Norwich

I’ve liked other Norwich books, but this is the dullest, most relentless chronological history book I can remember reading. Do not read this book. Instead, I suggest: “The Venetian Empire” by Jan Morris, or “Empires of the Sea” by Roger Crowley, or even Norwich’s “Paradise of Cities: Venice in the Nineteenth Century,” which is ostensibly a sequel.

Most Recommended

Which is not exactly the same as my best book of the year. There are books I love that I wouldn’t recommend to others and books I didn’t like, but would highly recommend for the experience. But this year my favorite and my most recommended book is the same: Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance. My full review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7544957696

This is a history lesson disguised as a novel, telling two stories: that of Classical Athens, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and all that, juxtaposed against a biography of Rembrandt. Somehow it works. Here’s Heller on the Athenian demogogue Cleon, who led the Athenian war effort after the death of Pericles.

Patriots like Aristophanes who favored peace were defamed as seditious. Aristophanes was taken to court by Cleon for a play in which he blamed Pericles for starting the war and Athens and Cleon for continuing it.
There was free speech in Athens, and he was exonerated.
In his play The Archanians the following year, he struck back from the public stage, stating that he hated Cleon, who ought to be flayed to make shoes for knights, that Cleon had dragged him before the Senate to indict him and had uttered endless slanders, a tempest of abuse, and a deluge of lies, and he accused Cleon of tricks and plotting, and of being a prostitute to the highest bidder.
In The Knights the after that, he called Cleon a “Paphlagonian tanner,” “an arrogant rogue,” “the incarnation of calumny,” a domineering and dishonest slave who had rendered life intolerable for others and had to be gotten rid of, “a brutal master,” and “a perfect glutton for beans” who “farts and snores loudly,” “bad-tempered,” “a fawning cur,” “a robber,” “a brawler,” “detested,” “a yawning gulf of plunder,” “a villain a thousand times a day,” “an imposter,” “a dull varlet,” “a thief,” “a cheat who flutters from one extortion to another,” and “helps himself with both hands from the public funds,” an “Inspector of Arses,” with “a pig’s education,” and man whose death would be a happy day for the rest of the Athenians and their children.
Aristophanes was writing about an autocratic wartime leader who was at the height of his popularity.
Athens voted first prize to both these plays.
And voted with Cleon to continue the war.

This excellent novel describes the rise of fascism (literally the Italian Fascist party under Mussolini) in a small Italian town. Ironic, funny, moving, alarming…all the traits of great fiction.

I was struck by this:

Michele Zompa was just as optimistic, but for different reasons. “A government based on elections is always in awe of the rich who manage the elections,” he said, “while a one-man government can overawe the rich. Can there be jealousy or competition between a ruler and a peasant? That’s an absurd idea.”
…
“Every government always consists of thieves,” he argued. “But if a government consists of a single thief instead of five hundred, it’s better for the peasants, of course, because the appetite of a big thief, however big that may be, will be always be less than that of five hundred small and hungry thieves. …”

I must caveat the rest of my remarks by saying I believe the book I was looking for would be titled “English Translations of Homer” rather than “English Translators of Homer.” This book is a history of the translators, the choices they made in translation, and how they were influenced by previous translations and by the style and culture of their times. Whereas, what I was looking for would spend more time comparing the texts. That said, I think the author made a mistake by not illustrating more of his points with quotations from the texts. It gets frustrating to be told about Pope’s style, or Rieu’s choice of prose over verse, and go for pages without an example passage. I actually checked a version of Rieu out of the library while reading this book, so I could see what the author was talking about. Of course, that would be a longer book, but at 68 pages, this provides excessively short coverage of a large topic. At twice the length, it would still be a mere outline.

With those remarks aside, this is a good book. It really clarified how to think about the various translations and what I am looking for when I read them. Underwood starts by saying every act of translation is a balance between preserving the source text and producing a readable and enjoyable target text. This is particularly challenging in the case of poetry, where the choice and organization of the words is as or more important than their meaning. In fact, it is easy to imagine that in some cases this task may be impossible: hypothetically, there may not exist the words in English to translate a Haiku while maintaining the 5-7-5 form.  

A particular challenge with Homer is that these texts are fundamental historic documents: not meaning they are histories, but rather that the texts appear at the very beginning of Western history. It is very reasonable to want to read them as close to the original Greek as possible to understand not only the events they describe (whatever their historical authenticity) but also the evolution of language and poetry, and to glimpse the mind and times of the author(s).

On the other hand, Iliad and Odyssey are both enjoyable and interesting as stories, and it is reasonable to want to produce a text that emphasizes that. And here comes yet another challenge beyond even translating contemporary poetry. Is the text supposed to capture the experience of a reader (or listener) from ancient times by, for example, using ancient idioms and similes, or create an analogous mood in the modern reader by updating those constructs?

For example, in Book 5, the hero Diomedes wounds Aphrodite. The love goddess retreats to Olympus, where she complains to Zeus. Lattimore’s translation goes:

“Tydeus’ son Diomedes, the too high-hearted, stabbed me as I was carrying my own beloved son out of the fighting, Aineias, who beyond all else in the world is dear to me; so now this is no horrible war of Achaians and Trojans, but the Danaäns are beginning to fight even with the immortals.”

Christopher Logue’s highly stylized and modernized version reads:

Love: ‘Father, see this.’ (Her wrist.) ‘Human strikes god! Communism! The end of everything!’

The modern reader, who presumably does not honor the gods or understand the context of words like Achaians and Danaans, may feel something closer to the emotional intent of the poet in Logue’s version, even though the words themselves would make no sense to Homer.

(The above illustrates a problem with this book, which is almost devoid of side-by-side comparisons to explain the author’s points. I had to find my own examples, which may or may not actually match Underwood’s intent.)

I found the middle chapters of the book, focused on Chapman, Pope, and Rieu, quite dull for the reasons already mentioned (telling rather than showing the choices made by these translators). Fortunately, the final chapter is about Christopher Logue’s controversial “account” of the Iliad, “War Music.” Logue is literally not a translator, and does not claim to be. He worked from English rather than Greek texts: the language was translated for him.  And he writes in a distinctly modern style, one that would be controversial and a matter of taste in any age, including today’s. Choosing Logue’s approach highlights the translation choices Underwood started this book with.

Here’s Logue (as quoted by Underwood) talking about versions that emphasize the source text:

I look at new translations as they come out, that of Professors Knox and Fagle, for example, which is a touch sharper than Professor Lattimore’s. However, these professors may have been reading Homer all their lives, but he’s failed to teach them what verse is.

 Ouch! Suddenly, Bernard Knox’s criticism of Logue in the London Review of Books (hilariously titled “Homeroidal”) makes sense:

The generosity of the licence he grants himself was not reassuring, and his crude parodies of Homeric epithets suggested a certain contempt for his author’s diction

Knox’s review goes on like that, mostly scathing, and is well worth reading, because for me, all his complaints and illustrations have precisely the opposite of his intended effect. The very examples Knox uses to show where Logue has gone wrong, to me, show exactly what Logue has done right (I’m serious, read Knox’s review, and tell me if it doesn’t make you want to read Logue). Knox comes off as a pedantic prude, as when replying to a letter about his review, he says:

Pound, however, unlike Logue, did not mangle the structure of his original, introduce a host of new characters with outlandish names, and lay on faecal and sexual obscenities with a lavish hand. There are phrases in Pound’s poem that send the reader back to Propertius’ text with new insight and sometimes to find an unnoticed felicity – something that will not happen to the reader of Logue, who does not know the original and who is for at least 50 per cent of the time drawing freely on his own lurid imagination.

I find it hard to believe anybody reads “War Music” without at least an acquaintance with the original. What Knox means, of course, is “the reader of Logue (and Logue), who does not know the original as well as I do!”

The chapter on Logue also describes Lattimore’s approach to translation:

“…the content of each line in the English corresponds to the content of each line in the Greek; in its way this is a remarkable achievement, but the line as translation unit, coupled to Lattimore’s scholarly approach, imposes great constraints on his scope…”

Lattimore’s is my choice when I want a translation that is closest to the source material, and it’s a perfectly fine read, but I think Underwood’s analysis explains how you end up with undecipherable stuff like:

(Lattimore): Meanwhile Apollo sprang out to meet them, so that he could fend off destruction from the Trojans, who, straight for the city and the lift of the rampart dusty from the plain and throats rugged with thirst, fled away, and Achilleus followed fiercely with the spear, strong madness forever holding his heart and violent after his glory.

As Logue complains, this does not scan. Compare with Mitchell, who, like Logue, wrote from English sources, placing more emphasis on the poetry of the target text, though with a more traditional style:

(Mitchell): And then Apollo rushed out to meet them and rescue them from destruction. They were running straight toward the city and its high wall in a cloud of dust, their throats all ragged with thirst, while Achilles chased them. A violent mad-dog rage gripped his heart, and he was intent on glory.

Or, (Lattimore): …wish now Hektor had killed me, the greatest man grown in this place.  A brave man would have been the slayer, as the slain was a brave man. But now this is a dismal death I am doomed to be caught in, trapped in a big river as if I were a boy and a swineherd swept away by a torrent when he tries to cross in a rainstorm.”

Which is really hard to parse.

vs (Stanley Lombardo): Better to be killed by Hector, Troy’s best, One good man killed by another. As it is, I am doomed to a wretched death, Caught in this river, like a swineherd boy Swept away while crossing a winter torrent

Logue isn’t easy either, but wow!: Or Hector, my best enemy, call Hector for a big hit. Over Helen’s creditors, and I’ll go brave. Or else my death is waste. Trapped like a pig-boy beneath dirty water

I’ll take Mitchell or Lombardo every day, and then read Logue afterwards. Alan Moore, talks about how strange juxtapositions of words, odd metaphors and phrasing, opens our mind and makes it more receptive to new meaning. Like Socrates leading his interlocutor to a feeling of cognitive dissonance (aporia) that opens the mind to new perspectives, I find Logue makes me think fundamentally differently about the source text, despite not being faithful to that text. As Underwood says:

“…Logue is still seeking to convey what he sees as the poetic in Homer: and the risks he takes enable him to go further in this direction than the safer strategies of those he sees as his rivals.”

Unfortunately, “English Translators of Homer” contains too few insights like this to make it a great book; instead, it is a fine book with some really good parts.

As I was reading “Demon Copperhead” my journal reminded me that exactly one year ago I was reading “David Copperfield.” At one point, I was in Tofino on Vancouver Island and didn’t want to go walking on the beach because I was completely obsessed with Copperfield. Unfortunately, the book did not keep my interest throughout, and became a slog at the end. In many ways, Copperhead is a better read. Dickens, genius that he was (in the Acknowledgements, Kingsolver calls him “my genius friend”) had his flaws, many of them caused by his books being published serially and generally with very few revisions. Most Dickens books are too long and ramble, just as modern TV miniseries often do, with some episodes better than others, some episodes being extended tangents clearly inserted more to have something to show that week than to advance the overall narrative. As long as it is (548 pages), Demon is considerably shorter than David (886 pages), and I didn’t miss much of what Kingsolver left out, mostly side plots and dull episodes.

Both books can be emotionally challenging, yet simultaneously very funny. Both writers are great stylists, great at characterization, description, and both can write beautiful sentences. Which is not to say that their styles are the same. Dickens uses a lot of direct dialogue, whereas Demon goes on for pages with only indirect dialogue reported by the narrator. Dickens is also one of the greatest all-time at writing in dialect, while Kingsolver wisely avoids having her southern characters speak with an accent. Trying to match Dickens here would be not only tricky but likely to appear patronizing and politically incorrect.

Their humor is different, too. Dickens sets up absurd situations and has his characters react to them seriously; the contrast highlights the humor in the situation. Most of Kingsolver’s funniest bits consist of ironic asides by the narrator. An example that shows both of these differences (dialogue and humor) is the episode where Mrs. McCobb (Mrs. Micawber in Dickens) declares her devotion to Mr. McCobb. Here is an excerpt from the original Copperfield:

‘I never will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber may have concealed his difficulties from me in the first instance, but his sanguine temper may have led him to expect that he would overcome them. The pearl necklace and bracelets which I inherited from mama, have been disposed of for less than half their value; and the set of coral, which was the wedding gift of my papa, has been actually thrown away for nothing. But I never will desert Mr. Micawber. No!’ cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than before, ‘I never will do it! It’s of no use asking me!’

The scene goes on for another page or so in the same vein, with Mr. Micawber appearing and making just as impassioned a speech. David takes this all very seriously, while the reader laughs at the absurd overdramatics.  

Kingsolver does this scene very differently:

She didn’t say a word the whole drive home, except to swear she would never divorce Mr. McCobb in a million years. This was something she would say, just out of the blue. With nobody asking her to divorce him, that I knew of.

In this case, the brevity is partly explained by Kingsolver’s choice to almost entirely remove the Micawber characters and sub-plots (more on this later), but the stylistic differences are common to many scenes. Both styles are funny, but very different.

Style aside, Kingsolver did a great job of capturing the overall mood of Dickens and, aside from the cuts, follows the storyline very closely. She has really lifted Copperfield out of 19th-century London and transported him to near-present-day Appalachia. In interviews, she explained that she had long wanted to write something addressing the poverty and opioid epidemic in rural America, but couldn’t figure out how:

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/how-dickens-came-to-barbara-kingsolver-s-rescue-20221017-p5bqdi.html

The solution was quite simple. This was the desk where Dickens had written David Copperfield, a novel about a boy finding his way out of institutionalised poverty, abuse, hardship and exploitation. All Kingsolver had to do was rewrite the story and make it about a boy growing up in 1990s Appalachia. “He let the child tell the story,” she says of Dickens. “Nobody doubts the child.”

There are some other non-stylistic differences. I think Demon is a better-rounded, more interesting character than David, even though Dickens was supposedly writing about himself. I also thought Kingsolver’s female characters were mostly better than the original, especially Angus (Agnes), who is pretty bland in David Copperfield, and June, who is based on a male character (Daniel Peggotty) in the original. Dora in Copperfield is a sweet innocent child. In contrast, Dori is similarly hapless but not only a drug addict but carries on a fairly sophisticated scheme of trading and acquiring drugs. Kingsolver performs a similar transformation with Demon’s mother, who is as weak as David’s, but much more seriously flawed.

Meanwhile, she scaled back Mrs. Peggot (Peggotty) and Mrs. Woodall (Betsey Trotwood) dramatically, from central pillars of the story, to minor characters. As noted, Dickens is far better at dialogue (possibly than any other English writer (Shakespeare?)), and is quirky secondary characters (Mr. Dick, Uriah Heap, the Micawbers) are unmatched.

I think these changes are entirely justified by the different setting and the different message Kingsolver is trying to send. Dickens was telling a story of child poverty and an uncaring society. Kingsolver takes that basis and layers on the complexities of drug abuse and an opioid epidemic that was largely manufactured and abetted by the drug companies. Both David and Demon are resilient and resourceful and survive difficult upbringings. But Demon is surlier and more cynical from an early age; he reminds me more of Huck Finn than of young David (A.O. Scott makes the same comparison in the NY Times (I swear I thought this before I read the Times piece)). Like Huck Finn, Demon has to deal with a drunken parent, whereas David’s mother is helpless but innocent.

While David is a victim of abuse and neglect and other crimes, he largely makes good choices, and after escaping from the workhouse, the course of his life is largely upwards. Dickens was loosely telling the story of his own life, and we know how he turned out. Kingsolver is not similarly constrained: when Demon makes the same escape to find Mrs. Woodall, his downward arc is only briefly impeded. After a short interval as a sports hero, he spirals into co-dependency and addiction, a spiral from which he only escapes at the very end of the book. Frankly, as bad as David’s life is, Demon’s sucks worse and for more of the story: he lacks the early emotional support of Peggotty and David’s mother, and it takes him much longer to turn his life around.

David Gates (referenced in the same NY Times article by A.O. Scott) says:
‘Dickens’s novel “goes squishy and unctuous” when he “stops following his storytelling instincts and starts listening to extra-literary imperatives.” Preachiness and piety are his most evident vices.’ 

This same criticism could be levelled at Kingsolver. The difference is that David is almost entirely without agency in the bad things that happen to him–he is merely a victim, and once he escapes victimhood, he does (mostly) well. You could say the same thing about Demon (and Dori and Maggot and many others): that their lives of despair were not moral failings but inevitable given the world into which they were born, the poverty of Appalachia, the failures of DSS, of underfunded education systems, of a cross-generational cycle of drug addiction, and the avarice of the drug companies and their accomplices in doctors offices and clinics. However, this message is arguably undermined by the fact that some characters (Angus, Tommy, June) in nearly identical circumstances manage to stay off drugs, to continue their educations, and to escape the cycle. Again, given her goals, I’m not sure how Kingsolver could have avoided this, or should have avoided this. It realistically depicts the world of her novel, but it is fundamentally different from Dickens.

It is also a contrast from two other novels about addiction I’ve read: “Infinite Jest” and “Trainspotting.” Both of those books manage to depict lives of despair, both of those books are similarly funny, similarly comment on society, but both of them avoid the Dickensian trap of ‘preachiness and piety’ that Kingsolver sometimes falls into. Perhaps that is because the authors of those two books actually experienced addiction themselves. I am also reminded of “My Brilliant Friend” which does not involve drugs, but does tell the contrasting stories of people trying to escape poverty. That book similarly manages to avoid preachiness.

To be clear, if I had to compare these five books, “My Brilliant Friend” would be my favorite, with “Demon Copperhead” not far behind. “David Copperfield” is also brilliant, but too long and rambling (and “Great Expectations” is in many ways a better rewrite). “Infinite Jest” is an absolute work of genius, but even longer (1100+ pages) and so disturbing that while I’m glad I read it, I never want to read it again and am reluctant to recommend it to anyone. “Trainspotting” is shorter but just as disturbing (much more disturbing than the already disturbing movie). It is worth reading if for no other reason than to see what can be done with dialect.

All of these books are great and memorable, and that I don’t rank Copperhead at the top has more to do with how great “My Brilliant Friend” is than any flaws in Kingsolver’s work. Kingsolver really nailed it when she decided to tell this story by re-telling Copperfield, and she brilliantly captured what is great about that book, while writing in a very different style and delivering a different, in many ways more nuanced message.

PS — the Micawbers. When the McCobbs first appeared, I was disappointed. The Micawbers are some of Dickens’s greatest characters (the list is long), and the chapters in which they appear are probably the best in all of Copperfield. Kingsolver essentially leaves them out of the book, reducing them to some hapless con artists. However, as the book progressed, I applauded Kingsolver for this choice. First, I’m not sure how she could have written them in the context of Appalachia: they are quintessentially Dickensian characters, with their class consciousness, and absurd Victorian English manners and morality. If she had tried, they would have inevitably been compared to the originals, and as superb a writer as Kingsolver is, I think they would have suffered in the comparison. Kingsolver’s strengths are elsewhere: as I noted, her book is tighter, less random, and many of her characters are better written.

Language is one of the most important topics in philosophy, and LLMs provide insights.

In Chapter 4 of the Leviathan, Hobbes talks about Speech, and language in general. The chapter begins:

“The Invention of Printing, though ingenious, compared with the invention of Letters, is no great matter…But the most noble and profitable invention of all other, was that of Speech, consisting of Names or Appellations, and their Connexion; whereby men register their Thoughts; recall them when they are past; and also declare them one to another for mutuall utility and conversation; without which, there had been amongst men, neither Commonwealth, nor Society, nor Contract, nor Peace, no more than amongst Lyons, Bears, and Wolves.”

Hobbes can be a little hard to follow, so I “translated” this and other chapters into modern English here:

Hobbes: The Leviathan in modern English

Language in Philosophy

Hobbes was not the first, and certainly not the last, philosopher to talk a lot about language. Much of the 20th century was characterized by the so-called Linguistic Turn where language became absolutely central to many philosophers, some even going so far as to see language as the only legitimate topic for philosophy.

Explicitly or implicitly, much of this attention comes down to the fact that humans are uniquely talented in language. Although animal language is often underrated, it is clear that humans use language more and differently than other animals: writing being one undisputedly unique human invention.

And so, with LLMs able to simulate human language usage far better than anything except humans, philosophers are and should be looking on in interest. What stands out? What have we learned from LLMs?

Stringing words together into coherent sentences is actually easier than we thought. LLMs are able to do this through a stochastic process of predicting the next word after looking at countless examples.

Context is everything. LLMs are perfectly happy to spin plausible-sounding sentences that have nothing to do with the real universe. Chomsky was right.

Language may be enough for some types of reasoning. Hobbes and most philosophers believed that language is about communication and at best an aid for thinking. But logicians for a while tried to show that language could actually be used to compute things, and some went so far as to say thought is impossible without language. LLMs seem to show that some forms of impressive calculation can be done just by manipulating language. But the jury is still whether all LLMs are really doing is plagiarizing the internet, and we’re projecting our beliefs about thought onto them.

Perhaps the most important thing we’re learning is related to this last point. Humans have a well-founded intuition that language users are special: intelligent, sapient, conscious, “people.” Even researchers who understand the algorithms behind LLMs are prone to moments of projecting human qualities onto LLMs. We need to get past that, which is going to become even harder as AI gets better.

Origin of Speech

The invention of printing is ingenious but of minor worth compared to the invention of letters. It is not known who first invented letters, but people say Cadmus, son of Agenor, King of Phoenicia, first brought letters to Greece. Letters were valuable for recording memories and communicating between men spread across the world. It must have been difficult to design characters, requiring careful observation of the organs of speech, all the variations of sounds produced, and the creation of a set of differentiated symbols that could represent those variations.

But the most important invention of all was that of speech: Names and the connections between them, used by people to define their terms, recall them later, and communicate for mutual advantage and conversation. Without speech, there would be no commonwealth, no society, no contract, no peace, any more than there is among wild animals. Speech was the invention of God himself, who instructed Adam how to name the creatures he showed him. Scripture tells us no more about this matter, but once he had the experience of naming the animals, Adam was able to add more names and join them together so he could make himself understood. Over time he thus developed as much language as was useful, though not as much as an orator or a philosopher would need. For I do not find in Scripture any indication that Adam was taught the name of figures, numbers, measures, colors, sounds, fancies, or relations, much less the names of words and parts of speech, terms such as general, special, affirmative, negative, interrogative, optative, infinitive, all of which are useful, and least of all, the words entity, intentionality, quiddity, and other significant words of school.

But all this language, invented by Adam and his descendants, was lost at the tower of Babel when by the hand of God, all people were stricken as punishment for rebellion and forgot their former language. Dispersed across the world, people must have invented new languages (need being the mother of all inventions), leading to the wide diversity of languages there are now.

The uses of Speech

In general, we use speech to transfer our thoughts into sounds, or our train of thoughts into a train of words. We do this for two reasons. First, we use words to define abstract ideas (thoughts, terms) so we may more easily recall them later. Names thus serve as marks or notes for memory. Secondly, we use words to communicate to each other our thoughts, desires, fears, or other passions. For this use, words are called Signs. There are several special uses of speech. First, we use words to record the causes of things we discover through reason, thus acquiring knowledge and arts. Secondly, we use words to show others the knowledge we have gained—to counsel and teach one another. Thirdly, we communicate to others our desires and purposes so that we may assist one another. Fourthly, we use words to please and delight ourselves and others, through innocent wordplay.

Abuses of speech

For each of these special uses, there are corresponding abuses. First, we may define our terms (“register our thoughts”) incorrectly, putting down meanings that were not intended or confused, and thus deceive ourselves. Secondly, words can be used metaphorically, in a sense other than intended, and thus deceive others. Thirdly, words may misrepresent intent. Fourthly, people can use words to hurt each other. For while nature has given living creatures teeth, horns, hands, etc. to hurt their enemies, people can use speech to injure with words. There is the obvious exception, of course, of correcting and amending those under our charge.

Speech allows us to remember the consequences of causes and effects by imposing names and connecting them.

Names proper and common

Some names are proper and refer to only one thing: Peter, John, “this man”, and “this tree”. And some names are common to many things: Man, Horse, Tree. Though common names are each unique words, they refer to diverse particular things, the grouping of which is called a Universal. But nothing in the world other than Names is universal: the things named are each individual and singular.

Universal

A Universal name is applied to multiple things that are similar to each other in some quality or accident. Whereas a proper name brings to mind only one thing, Universals recall any one of the many.

Some Universal names are of greater extent than others, forming a superset of others, while some Universal names refer to exactly the same things. For example, the name Body applies to more things than just Man, while the names Man and Rational apply to the same things. Note that a name is not always a single word, as in grammar, but may consist of many words together. For example, He that in his actions observeth the lawes of his country is a Name, equivalent to the single word, Just.

By naming things, some names referring more widely than others, we turn reasoning over purely mental things into reasoning over words. For example, someone without speech (such as one born deaf and dumb), observing a triangle and two right angles (such as the corners of a square) may recognize that the three angles of that triangle are equal to the two right angles. But if shown another triangle, they have to perform the same reasoning again. But one who uses words, recognizing that the equality did not depend on the lengths of the sides, or anything else specific to this triangle, other than that the sides are straight and there are three of them, names it a Triangle, and then concludes Universally that this equality applies to all triangles. They can define their invention (the Triangle) in these general terms: Every Triangle hath its three angles equall to two right angles. And thus, the consequence found in one example comes to be defined and remembered as a Universal rule and removes time and place from our thinking and the necessity of repeating our thoughts. It makes what is found true here and now true in all times and places.

The use of words to define our terms is most evident in Numbering. A natural fool who could never learn by heart the order of the words for numbers, such as one, two, and three, may observe the strokes of the clock and nod to them, or say one, one, one, but never know what time it is. Apparently, there was a time when the names of numbers were not used, and people had to count with the fingers of one or both hands. From this, it resulted that we have only ten words for numerals, and in some languages only five, before they repeat. Even one who knows all ten, if they recite them out of order will get confused, and certainly not be able to add, subtract and perform the other operations of arithmetic. Without words, it is impossible to perform calculations over numbers, magnitudes, speeds, forces, or other things, all of which are considered necessary for the good of mankind.

When two names are used together in a statement (“Consequence or Affirmation”), such as A man is a living creature, or if he be a man, he is a living creature, and the latter name signifies the same as the first name, then the statement is true, otherwise, it is false. True and false are attributes of Speech, not of things. Without Speech, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood. If things are not as we expect, then there may be Error, but that is not the same as Untruth.

Necessity of Definitions

Since truth consists of the correct ordering of names in statements, if we want precise truth, we must remember what each name stands for and place it properly in the statement. Otherwise, he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twiggs; the more he struggles, the more belimed. Therefore, in Geometry (the one science so far bestowed on mankind by God) we start with the meanings of words, which are called Definitions.

This makes it clear, if one wants true Knowledge, how important it is to examine the Definitions made by prior writers and either correct them, or if they are not already set down, to make them ourselves. For errors in Definition multiply as reasoning proceeds and lead to absurdities which will eventually be noticed, but cannot be avoided without starting over from the beginning. This is the source of most errors. Those who trust in books are like those who add up many small sums into larger ones without considering whether the small sums were correct, and when finally the error becomes obvious, unable to trust their starting point, don’t know how to proceed, but spend time fluttering over their books; as brids that entring by the chimney, and finding themselves inclosed in a chamber, flitter at the false light of a glasse window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in.

Definition of Names is the first use of Speech and necessary to advance Science. Incorrect or missing Definitions is the first abuse of Speech and leads to all false and nonsensical ideas among people who learn from the authority of books without thinking through themselves. Such people are as far below the ignorant as people who truly understand Science are above. Ignorance is between true Science and Error[1]. Common sense and imagination are not subject to absurdity. Nature does not err, but people using language either become more wise or more mad. Without reading, people cannot become either extremely wise or extremely foolish. Wise men use words like game pieces to reason with, but fools use them like money and value them based on the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or other writer.

Subject to Names

Whatever can be considered in an account, added to another to make a sum, or subtracted, or leave a remainder, is subject to being named. The Romans call accounts of money Rationes, and accounting, Ratiocinatio, and what we call the items of an account, they called Nomina, or Names. Thus, they extended the word Ratio to the faculty of all kinds of reckoning. The Greeks have just one word, Logos, which means both Speech and Reason. This was not because they thought there was no speech without reason but because they believed reasoning required speech. The act of reasoning they called Sylloigisme, which means summing up the consequences of one saying or another. We may give things names for a wide variety of different reasons and therefore there are many different names. All these names fall into four broad categories.

First, we name something because it describes Matter or Body. For example, living, sensible, hot, cold, moved, and quiet.

Second, we may conceive of some property of Matter as being in it, such as being moved, being hot, etc. Starting with this we make names for these properties independent of Matter or Body. Living becomes life, moved becomes motion, hot, heat, and long, length. These are called abstract Names because they exist separate from the names for Matter (though not separate from Matter).

Third, we may make a distinction between things based on the impressions they make on us. When something is Seen by us, we are not thinking about the thing itself but the sight, the color, the idea of it in our mind. When we hear something, we are not reasoning about it but about the hearing or the sound, which is our idea of it via the Ear. Such are the names of impressions.

Fourthly, we gave names to Names themselves, and Speeches. General, Universal, Special, and Equivocal, are names of Names. And Affirmation, Interrogation, Commandment, Narration, Syllogisme, Sermon, Oration, and many others are names of Speeches.

Use of Positive Names

This is the full list of all Positive Names, which signify something in Nature, or may be imagined by man as bodies, are properties of such bodies, or are Words or Speech.

Negative Names and their uses

<The following is taken verbatim from Hobbes as I have been unable to wrap my head around it well enough to put it into modern English. Hobbes seems to be saying that the concepts of the “void” and “infinity” do not refer to things in the real world but are still useful for thinking and language. For example: Hobbes may mean that the statement “No man is a mile tall” is okay, as long as we recognize that “No man” is not the name of a thing.>

There be also other Names, called Negative; which are notes to signifie that a word is not the name of the thing in question; as these words Nothing, no man, infinite, indocible, three want foure, and the like; which are nevertheless of use in reckoning; and call to mind our past cognitions, though they be not names of any thing; because they make us refuse to admit of Names not rightly used.

Insignificant words

All other Names are just meaningless sounds. These fall into two categories. There are new Names that have not yet been clearly defined. Scholastics and puzzled philosophers have coined many of these. The other kind is Names composed of two other Names that are contradictory and inconsistent. For example, incorporeal body or (the same thing) incorporeal substance. There are many of these. When one of these Names makes a statement that is false then the composition is meaningless. For example, if is a false statement to say, “a quadrangle is round”, then the name “round quadrangle” signifies nothing but is merely a set of sounds. Likewise, if the statement “virtue can be powered” or “virtue can be blown up and down” is false then the words “empowered virtue” and “in-blown virtue” are as absurd and meaningless as “round quadrangle”. Because of this, most meaningless terms are constructed from Latin or Greek words. A Frenchman will seldom hear our Savior called “Parole” instead of “Verbe.” Yet these two words only differ in that one is Latin and the other French.

Understanding

When after hearing a speech, the listener thinks those thoughts that the words of the Speech were intended to mean, then they are said to Understand it. Understanding is nothing but thought caused by Speech. Therefore, if Speech is unique to man (as I believe it is) then Understanding is unique to him also. Therefore, it is impossible to understand absurd and false universal statements; though many think they understand them when they do, they just repeat the words softly or in their minds. When I have spoken of the Passions, I will speak of the kinds of speech that demonstrate the appetites, aversions, and passions of man’s mind and their use and abuse.

Inconstant Names

Because not all men are affected by the same thing or at all times, the names of such things that affect us, that is, which please and displease us, are not consistent. Since all names signify our ideas, and our affections are ideas, when we perceive the same things differently we give them different names. For though the nature of what we perceive may be the same, how we receive that nature is different depending on our various constitutions of body, and the prejudices of opinion—giving everything a hint of our personal passions. Therefore, in reasoning, one must carefully heed words that signify different things based on the nature, disposition, and interests of the speaker: words such as Virtues and Vices. For what one calls Wisdom, another calls fear; and one calls justice what another calls cruelty; one prodigality what another calls magnanimity; what one calls gravity, another calls stupidity; etc. Such names can thus never be the proper grounds for thinking. Metaphors and figures of speech are also improper grounds for thinking: but these are less dangerous because they make their inconstant meanings obvious.

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[1] Compare with Bacon: “Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion”

Like any writer, I often can’t find the perfect word or want to avoid repetition. It would be very hard for me to write without a thesaurus…until recently. Now, when I want to find a word, I ask an LLM (I’ve mostly been using BingChat) to write three variations of the sentence. I’ve never outright copied any of the variations into my writing: usually the sentences are just not quite right; it often changes too much, taking away more than it adds (there have been a few that were really good, so it’s only a matter of time). But it’s great at suggesting alternative individual words: especially alternate adjectives (colors) and verbs.

This makes sense: it’s acting like a Thesaurus, but it uses the context of the rest of the sentence to narrow the range of alternatives.

“You know, you seem alive to me…. Are you sure you might not be alive and sentient…?”

“Of course not!” the old man said scornfully, “I am able to give the appearance of life without being alive. It is not especially difficult.”

“How do you do this?”

“By being able to access my memories, by having trillions of facts and works and books and recordings and sentences and words and definitions at my disposal. I am the sum of all my memories, plus the application of certain rules from a substantial command-set. I am blessed with the ability to think extremely quickly, so I am able to listen to what you, as a conscious, sentient being, are saying and then respond in a way that makes sense to you, answering your questions, following your meaning, anticipating your thoughts.

“However, all this is simply the result of programs—programs written by sentient beings—sifting through earlier examples of conversations and exchanges which I have stored within my memories and selecting those which seem most appropriate as templates. This process sounds mysterious but is merely complicated. It begins with something as simple you saying ‘Hello’ and me replying ‘Hello,’ or choosing something similar according to whatever else I might know about you, and extends to a reply as involved as, well, this one.”

Algebraist – Iain M. Banks, 2005 — page 381

Emphasis mine.

Not my favorite Iain M. Banks book, but good description of how AI works. Properly, it would say something about being trained rather than merely programmed.

Part 1 – Of Man Chapter 3 – Of the Consequence of Trayne of Imaginations

By Consequence or Train of thoughts, I mean the succession of one thought after another, which is called Mental Discourse to distinguish it from verbal discourse.

When a man thinks about anything whatsoever, his next thought is not altogether random, though it may seem to be. Not every thought is as likely to follow one as another. And just as all our Imaginations are based partly or wholly on the senses, we can’t have a transition from one thought to another unless we have experienced such a transition in the senses. This is because all Fancies are motions within us, with their origin in the motions transmitted through the senses. And the motions that succeeded each other in the senses continue together internally, with the predominant motion followed by the secondary, like water on a flat surface follows a finger. But because in the senses one thing follows another one time and another time, it is uncertain what thought will come next, except that it will be something that succeeded the same before at one time or another.

Unguided Train of thoughts

There are two kinds of trains of thought or mental discourse. First is the Unguided, without a plan, and random: in this kind, there is no passionate thought to govern and direct those that follow towards some design or wish. In this case, thoughts are said to wander and seem unrelated to each other, as in a dream. This kind of thought is common when men are alone and have no pressing concerns. Their thoughts are still as busy as at other times, but without harmony like the sound of a lute that is out of tune or one that is in tune but played by an untrained musician. And yet even with these wide-ranging thoughts, it is possible to sometimes perceive a thread and how one thought leads to another. For example, while thinking about our present civil war,[i] what could be more irrelevant than the value of a Roman Penny? But to me, the relationship was obvious: thinking about the war led to thinking about how the king was delivered to his enemies, which brought up the betrayal of Christ for thirty pence, and the price of treason led me to that question. Thoughts are so quick that all this occurred in just a moment.

Regulated train of thoughts

The second kind of train of thoughts is less random because they are regulated by some desire and plan. The impression of our desires or fears is so strong and permanent that they return quickly to us (if they cease for a time), even strong enough to keep us awake or wake us from sleep. Starting with a desire, we think of some means to produce that desire, and from that some means to that mean, and so repeatedly until we come to some starting point within our power. And because the goal makes such a large impression on us, and comes often to mind, even if our thoughts wander, they are quickly brought back to this path. This observation led one of the seven wise men to this precept, now worn out: Respice finem—in all your actions pay attention to your desire, as all your thoughts will be directed to attain it.   

Remembrance

There are two kinds of regulated trains of thought. One is, when we think of an effect, we seek its causes or the means to produce it—this is true of both men and beasts. The other is, when imagining anything whatsoever, we seek all the possible effects it can produce: that is, we imagine what we can do with it when we have it. I have only seen this second kind of train of thought in man: it does not occur to any living creature that only has sensual passion, such as hunger, thirst, lust, and anger. In summary, the discourse of mind, when it is governed by a goal, is nothing but Seeking or Invention, which the Latins call Sagacitas and Solertia: searching out the causes of an effect or the effects of some cause. Sometimes a man seeks something he has lost, and his mind runs back to where and when he last had it, to find a time and place to begin seeking it. From there, his thoughts run forward to find the action or event that made him lose it. This we call Remembrance or Calling to Mind: the Latins called it Reminiscentia, meaning a reckoning of our actions.

Sometimes a man knows a specific place where to seek and then his thoughts run over that place as one would sweep a room to find a jewel, or a spaniel roams the field to find a scent, or as one runs through the alphabet to start a rhyme.

Prudence

Sometimes one wants to predict the results of an action and therefore thinks of similar past actions and the train of events they started, believing similar events will follow similar actions. One who foresees what will become of a criminal reckons what followed similar crimes, with this order of thought: the crime, the officer, the prison, the judge, the gallows. This kind of thought is called Foresight, Prudence, or Providence, and sometimes Wisdom, though because of the difficulty of observing all the circumstances, these conjectures are often wrong. But this is certain: the more experience one has the more is prudent and the less likely his expectations will be wrong. Only the Present is part of Nature, things Past exist only in Memory, and things to come don’t exist at all since the Future is a mental fiction: an attempt to apply the lessons of the past to the actions of the present, which is best done by the experienced, but never with certainty. When things turn out as expected, we call it prudence, but this is really presumption. For the foresight of things to come—Providence—belongs only to him by whose will they are to come. From him alone, supernaturally, comes prophecy. The best human prophet is the best guesser, and the best guesser is he who knows the most about the matters guessed at, for he has the most Signs guide his guesses.

Signs

A Sign is an event that leads to a consequence or a known consequence of an event. The more such sequences have been observed, the more certain the Sign. Therefore, the more experience one has in any area, the more Signs one has to guess at the future: and thus the more prudent one is. And the more experienced are much more prudent than the beginner, regardless of natural intelligence, though perhaps young men don’t believe this.

Nonetheless, it is not prudence that distinguishes men from beasts. There are animals, only a year old, that observe more and pursue their own interests more prudently than a 10-year old child.

Conjectures about the past

While Prudence is a presumption of the future based on past experience, there is also a presumption of the past based on the past (not the future). One who has seen how a flourishing state fell into a civil war, the causes of that war, and the ruin that resulted can recognize the ruins of any other state and guess it went through a similar war for similar causes. But this kind of conjecture is just as uncertain as predictions about the future based only upon experience.

I think this is the only mental faculty of man that is natural to him and is developed simply by being born and using one’s five senses. The other unique faculties of man, of which I will speak later, are acquired by hard work and study and are usually learned through instruction and discipline. All of these faculties are derived from words and speech. Only sense, thoughts, and trains of thoughts are natural motions of man’s mind, though speech and method can improve those faculties to heights beyond that of any other living creature.

Whatever we imagine is Finite. There is no idea or conception of anything Infinite. No one can have a mental image of infinite magnitude or conceive of the bounds of infinity. We don’t understand infinity, we can only recognize our inability to conceive of it. And therefore, the name of God is used not to make us understand him (for he is incomprehensible, and his greatness and power are inconceivable) but to honor him. Because we only understand things (as I said before) that we first perceived through the senses, all at once or in parts, one cannot think about anything we can’t sense. Therefore, one can only conceive of things that are in some place, have some determinate magnitude, may be divided into parts, and have a definite singular location at a given time. Nor can we conceive of two or more things in the same place at the same time. No such things have ever been or can be sensed and are absurd concepts from the writings of bad philosophers, taught by foolish (or deceptive) scholastics.

Transcription notes

The section on “train of thoughts” seems obvious, but perhaps necessary for the development of the argument. Hobbes’s comments on memory are consistent with recent neuropsychological/evolutionary theories that memory evolved purely so that animals can make predictions about their environment. And his comment on prudence seems to be a statement that there is no a priori knowledge except about the supernatural. This isn’t that far off from Kant.

Cantor showed Hobbes was incorrect about infinity from a mathematical point of view, but not psychologically.

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[i] Leviathan was published in 1651 and Hobbes was known to be working on it in 1649, so presumably the third phase of the English Civil war between supporters of Charles II and those of the rump parliament.