This influential 1921 scholarly work sounded a call for intellectual freedom, which the author believed to be under attack by authoritarian tendencies in the United States. The centuries-long gains in scientific knowledge needed to be brought to bear in overcoming growing social ills and the forces of repression. The book considers Plato and Aristotle’s influence on thinking, science, revolution, repression, the power of creative thought to transform the world, and the sickness of an acquisitive society.
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James Harvey Robinson (1863-1936) pioneered the study of a new kind of history, which considered intellectual and social progress as well as political and military events. Born in Bloomington, Illinois, he resigned from Columbia University in 1919 because of a dispute over academic freedom, becoming a founder and first director of the New School for Social Research.