A look at every idea we ever had

From Dr. Johnson's famed Dictionary to H.G. Wells's grand attempt to offer "The Outline of History," we've seen a remarkable number of British writers willing - and, by and large, able - to take on huge projects that involve synthesizing massive amounts of information and presenting the results in a clear and lively form suited to the ordinary reader.

Unlike their American counterparts, who generally aim for objectivity (or at least its appearance) by adopting a more impersonal tone in works of this kind, quite a few British savants (not only Wells and Johnson, but more recently, writers like journalist Paul Johnson in "Modern Times" or literary critic Martin Seymour-Smith in "The New Guide to Modern World Literature") have not been shy about offering their own views along with the material.

Peter Watson, London-based author of 13 previous books, is no exception.

Having given us "The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century," he's now undertaken an even more ambitious project - Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, From Fire to Freud, a bold attempt to summarize the history of ideas from prehistoric times to the early years of the 20th century.

Perhaps it was the lure of alliteration, that led Watson (or his publisher) to single out "fire" and "Freud" in the subtitle. Watson himself is most interested in the ideas that contributed to the development of the natural sciences: This certainly includes fire, although the first primeval "ideas" discussed in his book, even before fire, are scavenging, bipedalism, and stone tools.

As for Freud, however, Watson is clearly no fan, concluding that the influential doctor, his writings, and the whole enterprise of psychoanalysis were - and are - useless fakes. Because Watson tends to evaluate ideas from the standpoint of hard science, one can see why he rejects the claim that psychoanalysis is one. (Still, his unequivocal dismissal of the "talking cure" ignores the fact that many have found it helpful to discuss their problems with a therapist.)

Rather than merely chronicle the history of ideas, Watson also describes various theories of contemporary scholars as to their origin and significance. By bringing us up-to-date on the thinking and research of such specialists, his book challenges what may be some of the general (nonspecialist) reader's long-held assumptions.

His pivotal section, "The Great Hinge of History," asks: How did Europe, once looked upon by sophisticated visitors from the East as a pathetically "backward" part of the world, suddenly (or not so suddenly) manage to forge ahead?

While previous scholars pointed to the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, locating the turning point in the 14th, 15th, or 16th century, many recent scholars, Watson tells us, see the beginning of the change much earlier - starting in the 11th century with the first stirrings of the idea of individuality: a turning-inward of faith and hope in the wake of the great surprise among Christian believers that the year 1000 did not bring in the widely expected apocalypse.

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