# Understanding an Author's Context Most people do not consider the context in which a book was produced, especially in the case for older books. For modern books we might often question what an author has written based on their ideologies or perceived goals but we don't really do this with old books. We should be spending more effort trying to understand: 1. The context which created the conditions for the author to write about that specific topic through the lenses he chose. What does he believe? What was it about that time period that created those beliefs? 2. Why did this piece of work survive and why is it in my field of view? How did some books survive through time and what were the books that didn't survive. Maybe we should be trying to understand the [[Framework for analysis and decision-making]] in the context of this author. What were his sources, mental models, alternative hypothesis and influences on his way of thinking. From my experience today, many books are popular not because they have the best analysis or writing, but because they are helpful to substantiate an ideology, or reading/owning them provides social status or let's you fit in. Surely that phenomenon has existed throughout all of time, and if that is the case then are the classics really _classic_? - Tolstoy argues that the historians of the 19th century where overly obsessed with the "great men" and wrote much about them but the history was driven by the masses. - Turchin argues that Gibbons was obsessed with the decline of Rome and exaggerated the extent and duration. It was actually a cyclical process with ups and downs. (These examples or discussion came from War and Peace and War) In the case of gibbons it probably started off as a good piece of research but now has morphed into a status symbol. Where is the book written by Gibbons critic from the same period? Does that even exist? One big takeaway for me is that I need to put more effort into understand this context especially as it relates to old texts. ##### Related - [[Harry Lee]] co-wrote a paper i which they used [[Piritrim Sorokin]] data to show that the changes in number of thinkers and influence of their ideas was related to climate (likely as a result of changes in economic well-being). They described is as a stress response.