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Introduction : the most important ideas in history - some candidates | |
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Prologue : the discovery of time | |
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Lucy to Gilgamesh : the evolution of imagination | |
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Ideas before language | |
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The emergence of language and the conquest of cold | |
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The birth of the gods, the evolution of house and home | |
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Cities of wisdom | |
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Isaiah to Zhu Xi : the romance of the soul | |
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Sacrifice, soul, saviour : 'the spiritual breakthrough' | |
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The origins of science, philosophy and the humanities | |
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The ideas of Israel, the idea of Jesus | |
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Alexandria, occident and orient in the year 0 | |
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Law, Latin, literacy and the liberal arts | |
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Pagans and Christians, Mediterranean and Germanic traditions | |
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The near-death of the book, the birth of Christian art | |
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Falsafah and al-Jabr in Baghdad and Toledo | |
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Hindu numerals, Sanskrit, Vedanta | |
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China's scholar-elite, Lixue and the culture of the brush | |
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The great hinge of history : European acceleration | |
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The idea of Europe | |
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Aquinas to Jefferson : the attack on authority, the idea of the secular and the birth of modern individualism | |
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'Half-way between God and Man' : the techniques of papal thought-control | |
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The spread of learning and the rise of accuracy | |
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The arrival of the secular : capitalism, humanism, individualism | |
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The explosion of the imagination | |
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The mental horizon of Christopher Columbus | |
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The 'Indian' mind : ideas in the new world | |
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History heads north : the intellectual impact of Protestantism | |
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The genius of the experiment | |
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Liberty, property and community : origins of conservatism and liberalism | |
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The 'atheist scare' scare and the advent of doubt | |
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From soul to mind : the search for the laws of human nature | |
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The idea of the factory and its consequences | |
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The invention of America | |
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Vico to Freud : parallel truths : the modern incoherence | |
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The oriental renaissance | |
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The great reversal of values - romanticism | |
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The rise of history, pre-history and deep time | |
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New ideas about human order : the origins of social science and statistics | |
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The uses and abuses of nationalism and imperialism | |
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The American mind and the modern university | |
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Enemies of the cross and the Qur'an - the end of the soul | |
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Modernism and the discovery of the unconscious | |
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Conclusion : the electron, the elements and the elusive self | |