Peter Watson (b. 1943) is an intellectual historian and author from London, England. He was educated at the University of Durham, University of London, and University of Rome. He was the deputy editor of New Society, and was on the "Insight" team of The Sunday Times for four years. He was also the New York correspondent of The Times, and has written for The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Observer, Punch, and The Spectator. He has also been a television presenter for the arts. In June 1997, he was appointed Research Associate, based in London and France, at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. He has written thirteen books.[Peter Watson, Modern Mind: An intellectual history of the 20th century (2001) ISBN 0-06-008438-3][Peter Watson\'s biography at MacDonald Institute]
Ideas: A history of thought and invention, from fire to Freud
This book offers a broad overview of human intellectual and cultural development. Included in the book is a chronology of ideas, with approximate dates:
- 60,000 to 40,000 years ago: cave art and carvings in abundance, \'creative explosion\'
- 14,000 to 6,000 years ago: domestication of plants and animals
- 11,000 BC: first use of clay
- 5500 BC: first writing, in India
- 2900 BC: Gilgamesh, first imaginative epic
- 2100 BC: first legal code
- 2000 BC: invention of the wheel
- 1200 BC: first alphabet
- 640 BC: invention of money
- 600 BC: first evidence for written Latin
- 585 BC: Thales of Miletus predicts solar eclipse, for Aristotle this was the moment when science and philosophy began
- 538 BC: Buddha begins his travels
- 507 BC: democracy introduced in Athens by Cleisthenes
- 336 BC: Aristotle classifies the world
- mid 3rd century BC: Aristarchus proposes that the earth goes around the sun
- 200 BC: paper in use in China
- 160 BC: concepts of Resurrection and the Messiah gain wide currency in Israel
- 120 BC: the term \'Judaism\' first used in Second Book of Maccabees
- 1 AD: wheelbarrow invented in China
- 242 AD: Neoplatonism flourishes in Alexandria
- 431 AD: Mary beatified as the Mother of God
- 570 AD: birth of Muhammad
- 633 AD: Qu\'ran collated
- 700 AD: crop rotation system introduced
- 751 AD: paper reaches the West from China
- 904 AD-906 AD: gunpowder first used in anger in China
- 1001 AD: Leif Eriksson explores Vinland
- 1087 AD: Irnerius teaches law at Bologna University
- 1094 AD/1117 AD: first named teachers at Oxford
- 1200 AD-1300 AD: origins of capitalism and banking in Italy
- 1300 AD: explosion of universities in Europe, first hints of perspective in Western art
- 1400 AD: double entry bookkeeping in use
- 1403 AD: movable type in use in Korea
- 1440 AD: invention of printing
- 1450 AD: rediscovery of Plato in Europe
- 1506 AD: first printed map to show America
- 1517 AD: Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, the Reformation
- 1519 AD: Magellan discovers southern route to Pacific and his assistant Sebastian del Cano circumnavigates the earth
- 1525 AD: Peasants Revolt in Germany, led by Anabaptists
- 1535 AD: Copernicus, \'On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs\'; Vesalius, \'The Structure of the Human Body\'
- 1605 AD: Francis Bacon, \'The Advancement of Learning\'; William Shakespeare, \'King Lear\' and \'Macbeth\', Cervantes, \'Don Quixote\'
- 1619 AD: René Descartes conceives the significance of doubt, and the mind-body dualism
- 1625 AD: rise of the novel
- 1669 AD: fossils first recognized as residue of living creatures
- 1670 AD: Spinoza, \'Tractatus theologico-politicus\'
- 1675 AD-1683 AD: Van Leeuwenhoek discovers protozoa, spermatoza, bacteria
- 1700 AD: rise of newspapers; learned journals and concert halls proliferate -- emergence of the "public sphere"; Index of Prohibited Books in China
- 1721 AD: first factory, in Derby
- 1729 AD: electricity transmitted over distance
- 1740 AD: David Hume attacks Christianity
- 1750 AD: the Great Awakening in America
- 1760 AD: Industrial Revolution begins
- 1789 AD: French Revolution, Declaration of the Rights of Man, in France; Jeremy Bentham, \'felicific calculus\'
- 1790 AD: middle classes first used
- 1799 AD: textual criticism of the Bible begins at Gottingen; vulcanism and neptunism -- rival theories of the history of the earth
- 1805 AD: Beethoven, \'Eroica\' symphony
- 1816 AD: first functioning telegraph; the term \'Hindoo\' first used (hitherto \'Gentoo\')
- 1831 AD: British Association for the Advancement of Science formed
- 1833 AD: the terms \'psychosis\' and \'psychiatric\' introduced
- 1838 AD: Comte coins the term \'sociology\', the term \'palaeontology\' first used
- 1840 AD: Louis Agassiz identifies the ice age
- 1848 AD: revolution in several European cities; Robert Owen shows vertebrates have a similar structure
- 1856 AD: Neanderthal skull discovered in Germany
- 1859 AD: Charles Darwin, in \'On the Origin of Species\', identifies natural selection as the mechanism by means of which evolution proceeds; John Stuart Mill, \'On Liberty\'
- 1864 AD, 1879 AD, 1893 AD, 1899 AD: papal edicts against modernism, biblical criticism and science
- 1874 AD: Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, opened
- 1880 AD: Josef Breuer treats Bertha Pappenheim
- 1885 AD: Pasteur discovers rabies vaccine
- 1897 AD: discovery of the electron -- founding of particle physics; Emile Durkheim, \'Suicide\'
- 1899 AD-1900 AD: Sigmund Freud, \'The Interpretation of Dreams\', lays the foundations of psychoanalysis
Books
References
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