Author
Mortimer J. Adler
The philosopher who treated reading as a skill with levels, and wrote the manual for it.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
Mortimer J. Adler was an American philosopher and educator who spent much of his career arguing that serious books belong to everyone, not only to specialists. He taught at the University of Chicago and became one of the best-known champions of the Great Books: the idea that adults can educate themselves by reading the major works of philosophy, history, science and literature.
He published How to Read a Book in 1940, and revised and expanded it with Charles Van Doren in 1972. The revised edition is the one most readers know. He also edited the Great Books of the Western World series and its index of great ideas, the Syntopicon, which grew out of the same conviction: that readers can follow one question across many authors.
The signature
Adler's method separates reading for information from reading for understanding. He describes four levels, from elementary reading to inspectional, analytical and syntopical reading, and asks the reader to be active at every level: ask what the book is about as a whole, what it says in detail, whether it is true, and what follows from it. Reading, for him, is a conversation in which the reader must eventually answer back.
The questions they work on
- What does it take to understand a book rather than merely get through it?
- How should a reader decide how deeply a particular book deserves to be read?
- How can one question be followed across many authors who use different words for it?
Thinking tools
- Levels of ReadingUses and explains it
The levels of reading are Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren's four depths of reading (elementary, inspectional, analytical and syntopical), each building on the one before, so that a reader chooses how deeply to read a book according to what the book is and what the reader needs from it.
Learn it: Read More and Remember It, Station 1 - Inspectional ReadingUses and explains it
Inspectional reading is Adler and Van Doren's systematic skimming: in a fixed, short time you examine a book's title, preface, contents, index, opening and closing chapters and a few pages here and there, to learn what kind of book it is, what it argues and whether it deserves a full reading.
Learn it: Read More and Remember It, Station 2 - Active Reading QuestionsUses and explains it
Active reading questions are the four questions Adler and Van Doren say every serious reader must answer about a book: what is it about as a whole, what is being said in detail and how, is it true in whole or in part, and what of it, so that reading becomes a conversation with the author rather than passive intake.
Learn it: Read More and Remember It, Station 3 - Syntopical ReadingUses and explains it
Syntopical reading is Adler and Van Doren's highest level of reading: reading several books on the same subject together, around a question you have chosen, translating their authors' different terms into a shared vocabulary, and working out where they agree, where they disagree and what answer you can build from them.
Learn it: Read More and Remember It, Station 8
Limits and fair objections
Every serious book rewards slow analytical reading, and readers should work through the major works themselves.
The full method is demanding and was designed around long, argued books. Much of what people read today is shorter, digital or practical, and applying every step to everything would leave little time to read. The levels are most useful as a way to choose how deeply to read, not as a rule to read everything at the deepest level.
Stands on: an argument · BookYol's reading