Perkinson provides an original historical interpretation that shows how our intellectual, political, economic, and social institutions emerged out of and are based upon the acceptance of human fallibility. However, ever since Plato, theorists have tried to flee from human fallibility in futile quests for certain knowledge, for legitimate government, for a just economy, and for a morality with a rational foundation.

These theorists ignore the fact that people in the West, by accepting their fallibility and relying on their experience, have actually constructed critical intellectual...

A highly original interpretation of the history of Western culture that presents a first in-depth analysis of the cultural impact of communication. Explains how the media have helped bring about economic, political, social, and intellectual progress.

Adopting the currently unfashionable theory that Western culture has improved over time, Perkinson argues that media of communication have played a pivotal role in helping to make things better. He shows how human speech, when it first emerged, enabled people both to understand better the world they inhabited and to construct political,...

Ever since the fifties, when television became ascendent in American popular culture, it has become commonplace to bemoan its -bad- effects. Little or nothing, however, has been said about its -good- effects. With this observation, Henry Perkinson introduces his provocative and original analysis of television and culture. Rejecting the determinism inherent in most studies of the effects of television (-We are what we watch-), he insists that it is people that actively change culture, media having no agency to do so. Nevertheless, he argues that television did facilitate the changes we...