How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [33]
concerned with the certainty or validity of knowledge in the one case, and with the end or purpose of government in the other. Questions about the validity of something are theoretical, whereas to raise questions about the end of anything, the purpose it serves, is practical.
In describing the art of inspectional reading, we noted that you should not ordinarily stop after reading the front matter of a book and perhaps its index. You should read passages in the book that appear to be of a summary nature. You should also read the beginning and end of the book and of its major parts.
This becomes necessary when, as is sometimes the case, it is impossible to classify a book from its title and other front matter. In that case, you have to depend on signs to be found in the main body of the text. By paying attention to the words and keeping the basic categories in mind, you should be able to classify a book without reading very far.
A practical book will soon betray its character by the frequent occurrence of such words as "should" and "ought,"
"good" and "bad," "ends" and "means." The characteristic statement in a practical book is one that says that something should be done ( or made ) ; or that this is the right way of doing ( or making) something; or that one thing is better than another as an end to be sought, or a means to be chosen. In contrast, a theoretical book keeps saying "is," not "should"
or "ought." It tries to show that something is true, that these are the facts; not that things would be better if they were otherwise, and here is the way to make them better.
Before turning to theoretical books, let us caution you against supposing that the problem is as simple as telling whether you are drinking coffee or milk. We have merely suggested some signs whereby you can begin to make discriminations. The better you understand everything that is involved in the distinction between the theoretical and the practical, the better you will be able to use the signs.
For one thing, you will have to learn to mistrust them.
70 HOW TO READ A BOOK
You have to be suspicious in classifying books. We have noted that although economics is primarily and usually a practical matter, there are nevertheless books on economics that are purely theoretical. Similarly, although understanding is primarily and usually a theoretical matter, there are books ( most of them are terrible ) that purport to teach you ''how to think."
You will also find authors who do not know the difference between theory and practice, just as there are novelists who do not know the difference between fiction and sociology. You will find books that are partly of one sort and partly of another, such as Spinoza's Ethics. It remains, nevertheless, to your advantage as a reader to detect the way an author approaches his problem.
Kinds of Theoretical Books
The traditional subdivision of theoretical books classifies them as history, science, and philosophy. Everybody knows the differences here in a rough way. It is only when you try to refine the obvious, and give the distinctions greater precision, that you get into difculties. For the moment, let us try to skirt that danger and let rough approximations suffice.
In the case of history, the title usually does the trick. If the word "history" does not appear in the title, the rest of the front matter is likely to inform us that this is a book about something that happened in the past-not necessarily in the far past, of course, because it may have happened only yesterday. The essence of history