抄书的我是多寂寞-HOW TO READ A BOOK
HOW TO READ A BOOK
《如何读一本书》重点抄写
Part 1 The Dimensions of Reading
THE ACTIVITY AND ART OF READING
Active Reading
By “readers” we mean people who are still accustomed, as almost every literate and intelligent person used to be, to gain a large share of their information about and their understanding of the world from the written word…. A certain amount of information and understanding was acquired through spoken words and through observation. But for intelligent and curious people that was never enough.
Perhaps we know more about the world than we used to, and insofar as knowledge is prerequisite to understanding, that is all to the good. But knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed. We do not have to know everything in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understand as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding.
The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements- all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics – to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all.
Since reading of any sort is an activity, all reading must to some degree be active. Completely passive reading is impossible; we can not read with our eyes immobilized and our minds asleep. Hence when we contrast active with passive reading, our purpose is
a. To call attention to the fact that reading can be more or less active
b. To point out that the more active the reading the better. One reader is better than another in proportion as he is capable of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort. He is better if he demands more of himself and of the text before him.
Many people think, compared with writing and speaking, which are obviously active undertakings, reading and listening are entirely passive. The write or speaker must put out some effort, but no work need to be done by the reader or listener. Reading and listening are thought of receiving communication from someone who is actively engaged in giving or sending it. The mistake here is to suppose that receiving communication is like receiving a blow or a legacy or a judgment from the court.
It suffices to say that, given the same thing to read, one person reads it better than another,
a. By reading it more actively,
b. By performing each of the acts involved more skillfully
The Goals of Reading: Reading for Information and Reading for Understanding
You have a mind. Now let us suppose that you also have a book that you want to read. The book consists of language written by someone for the sake of communicating something to you. Your success in reading it is determined by the extent to which you receive everything the writer intended to communicate.
If you understand perfectly everything the author has to say or you do not, then you may have gained information, but you could not have increased your understanding. If the book is completely intelligible to you from start to finish, then the author and you are as two minds in the same mold. The symbols on the page merely express the common understanding you had before you met.
If you don not understand the book perfectly. Let us even assume- what unhappily is not always true- that you understand enough to know that you do not understand it all. You know the book has more to say than you understand and hence that it contains something that can increase your understanding.
What is the Art of Reading?
The process whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside*, elevates itself by the power of its own operations. The mind passes from understanding less to understanding more. The skilled operations that cause this to happen are the various acts that constitute the art of reading.
*There is one kind of situation in which it is appropriate to ask for outside help in reading a difficult book. Chap 18.
To the extent that we can keep these two goals of reading distinct, we can employ the word “reading” in two distinct senses
1. Reading newspapers, magazines, or anything else that, according to our skill and talents, is at once thoroughly intelligible to us. Such things may increase our store of information, but they cannot improve our understanding, for our understanding was equal to them before we started. Otherwise, we would have felt the shock of puzzlement and perplexity that comes from getting in over our depth- that is, if we were both alert and honest.
2. Reading something that at first, he does not completely understand. Here the thing to be read is initially better or higher than the reader. The writer is communicating something that can increase the reader’s understanding.
The conditions under which this kind of reading – reading for understanding
• The initial inequality in understanding (The writer must be “superior” to the reader in understanding, and his book must convey in readable form the insights he possesses and his potential readers lack)
• The reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree
In short, we can only learn from our “betters” We must know who they are and how to learn from them. Entertainment is another goal of reading, besides gaining information and understanding, it’s not discussed.
Reading as Learning: The Difference Between Learning by Instruction and Learning by Discovery
To be informed is different from to be enlightened. This distinction is familiar in terms of the differences between being able to remember something and being able to explain it. Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it, or even, if his point is true.
Learning by Discovery
Unaided Discovery The learner acts on something communicated to him. He performs operations on discourse, written or oral. He learns by acts of reading or listening.
Learning by Instruction
Aided Discovery Learning are performed on nature or the world rather than on discourse.
Montaigne speaks of “an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it” One is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their ABC’s cannot read at all. Second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. They are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantly read. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores.
It is probably true that one does less thinking when one reads for information or entertainment than when one is undertaking to discover something. Thinking is only one part of the activity of learning.
《如何读一本书》重点抄写
Part 1 The Dimensions of Reading
THE ACTIVITY AND ART OF READING
Active Reading
By “readers” we mean people who are still accustomed, as almost every literate and intelligent person used to be, to gain a large share of their information about and their understanding of the world from the written word…. A certain amount of information and understanding was acquired through spoken words and through observation. But for intelligent and curious people that was never enough.
Perhaps we know more about the world than we used to, and insofar as knowledge is prerequisite to understanding, that is all to the good. But knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed. We do not have to know everything in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understand as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding.
The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements- all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics – to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all.
Since reading of any sort is an activity, all reading must to some degree be active. Completely passive reading is impossible; we can not read with our eyes immobilized and our minds asleep. Hence when we contrast active with passive reading, our purpose is
a. To call attention to the fact that reading can be more or less active
b. To point out that the more active the reading the better. One reader is better than another in proportion as he is capable of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort. He is better if he demands more of himself and of the text before him.
Many people think, compared with writing and speaking, which are obviously active undertakings, reading and listening are entirely passive. The write or speaker must put out some effort, but no work need to be done by the reader or listener. Reading and listening are thought of receiving communication from someone who is actively engaged in giving or sending it. The mistake here is to suppose that receiving communication is like receiving a blow or a legacy or a judgment from the court.
It suffices to say that, given the same thing to read, one person reads it better than another,
a. By reading it more actively,
b. By performing each of the acts involved more skillfully
The Goals of Reading: Reading for Information and Reading for Understanding
You have a mind. Now let us suppose that you also have a book that you want to read. The book consists of language written by someone for the sake of communicating something to you. Your success in reading it is determined by the extent to which you receive everything the writer intended to communicate.
If you understand perfectly everything the author has to say or you do not, then you may have gained information, but you could not have increased your understanding. If the book is completely intelligible to you from start to finish, then the author and you are as two minds in the same mold. The symbols on the page merely express the common understanding you had before you met.
If you don not understand the book perfectly. Let us even assume- what unhappily is not always true- that you understand enough to know that you do not understand it all. You know the book has more to say than you understand and hence that it contains something that can increase your understanding.
What is the Art of Reading?
The process whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside*, elevates itself by the power of its own operations. The mind passes from understanding less to understanding more. The skilled operations that cause this to happen are the various acts that constitute the art of reading.
*There is one kind of situation in which it is appropriate to ask for outside help in reading a difficult book. Chap 18.
To the extent that we can keep these two goals of reading distinct, we can employ the word “reading” in two distinct senses
1. Reading newspapers, magazines, or anything else that, according to our skill and talents, is at once thoroughly intelligible to us. Such things may increase our store of information, but they cannot improve our understanding, for our understanding was equal to them before we started. Otherwise, we would have felt the shock of puzzlement and perplexity that comes from getting in over our depth- that is, if we were both alert and honest.
2. Reading something that at first, he does not completely understand. Here the thing to be read is initially better or higher than the reader. The writer is communicating something that can increase the reader’s understanding.
The conditions under which this kind of reading – reading for understanding
• The initial inequality in understanding (The writer must be “superior” to the reader in understanding, and his book must convey in readable form the insights he possesses and his potential readers lack)
• The reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree
In short, we can only learn from our “betters” We must know who they are and how to learn from them. Entertainment is another goal of reading, besides gaining information and understanding, it’s not discussed.
Reading as Learning: The Difference Between Learning by Instruction and Learning by Discovery
To be informed is different from to be enlightened. This distinction is familiar in terms of the differences between being able to remember something and being able to explain it. Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it, or even, if his point is true.
Learning by Discovery
Unaided Discovery The learner acts on something communicated to him. He performs operations on discourse, written or oral. He learns by acts of reading or listening.
Learning by Instruction
Aided Discovery Learning are performed on nature or the world rather than on discourse.
Montaigne speaks of “an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it” One is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their ABC’s cannot read at all. Second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. They are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantly read. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores.
It is probably true that one does less thinking when one reads for information or entertainment than when one is undertaking to discover something. Thinking is only one part of the activity of learning.
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