Philip Marsden

Ideas are history

For centuries, the imagination has held sway. But as cultural differences are eroded, there will be a slowing down of ideas, argues Felipe Fernández-Armesto

issue 29 June 2019

  • Out of Our Minds: A History of What We Think and How We Think

    Felipe Fernández-Armesto

    Oneworld, pp. 462

Wallace Stevens called it ‘the necessary angel’. Ted Hughes thought it ‘the most essential bit of machinery we have if we are going to live the lives of human beings’. Coleridge described its role a little more vigorously: ‘The living Power and prime Agent of all human perception… a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM’.

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