The Great Ideas
A Guide to Exploration and Research
The Great Ideas are the 102
concepts Mortimer Adler used in writing the Syntopicon
to organize Britannica's "Great
Books of the
Western World" series.
On the pages that follow we list each
of the 102 concepts and provide the outline of topics related to that
concept. For each concept and for each item in its related
outline click on the hyperlink provided to see a list of
25 suggested readings related to the concept or the outline item.
These search results can be used to further explore a topic or to
gather ideas for further research. With the Great Ideas -- every item
in
the outline of topics for each concept has its own search results in
addition to the aggregate results for the concept.
If you wish to compile similar "bulk
search
results" use the Virtual
Research Assistant.
Queries to the
Virtual Research Assistant can be up to 5000 words in length.
Each query is parsed into sentence like chunks and each chunk is the
subject of its own search query. Results are presented chunk by
chunk and in the aggregate.
The Great Ideas:
All text from the Outlines and Essays is Copyright ©1990
Encyclopedia Britannica Inc.; this electronic edition is Copyright©
2005 by Michael R. Lissack and reproduced by permission.