| Acknowledgments | xiii |
| Author to Reader | xv |
| Progress in Knowledge | xv |
| Kinds of Progress in Knowledge | xvi |
| Universal History | xvi |
| Primitive Man | xviii |
| Knowledge of Particulars | xix |
| General Knowledge | xix |
| Certain Knowledge | xxi |
| Knowledge and Happiness | xxiii |
| Outline of the Book | xxiii |
| 1. | Wisdom of the Ancients | 3 |
| Egypt | 4 |
| India | 6 |
| China | 7 |
| Mesopotamia | 9 |
| Aztec and Inca | 11 |
| Human Sacrifice | 13 |
| Judaism | 15 |
| Christianity | 16 |
| Judaism and Christianity Compared | 18 |
| Islam | 19 |
| Judeo-Christianity and Islam Compared | 20 |
| Buddhism | 21 |
| Lessons from the Past | 23 |
| Alphabets | 25 |
| Zero | 27 |
| 2. | The Greek Explosion | 29 |
| The Problem of Thales | 30 |
| The Invention of Mathematics: The Pythagoreans | 34 |
| The Discovery of Atomic Theory: Democritus | 38 |
| The Problem of Thales: The Ultimate Solution | 41 |
| Moral Truth and Political Expediency: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle | 42 |
| The Fallacy of the Consequent | 44 |
| Greece versus Persia: The Fruitful Conflict | 48 |
| The Tragedy of Athens | 51 |
| Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Invention of History | 53 |
| The Spirit of Greek Thought | 56 |
| 3. | What the Romans Knew | 60 |
| Greek Theory, Roman Practice | 65 |
| Law, Citizenship, and Roads | 67 |
| Lucretius | 70 |
| Cicero | 72 |
| Seneca | 77 |
| Tacitus | 81 |
| What the Romans Did Not Know | 84 |
| 4. | Light in the Dark Ages | 86 |
| The Fall of Rome | 86 |
| Post-Roman Europe | 88 |
| The Triumph of Christianity: Constantine the Great | 91 |
| The Promise of Christianity: Augustine | 92 |
| After the Fall | 95 |
| 5. | The Middle Ages: The Great Experiment | 98 |
| The Struggle for Subsistence | 98 |
| A World of Enemies | 99 |
| The Problem of God | 100 |
| The Science of Theology | 100 |
| Theology in Other Religions | 102 |
| Principles of Theocracy | 103 |
| Empire and Papacy | 105 |
| Monasticism | 106 |
| Crusaders | 109 |
| Millennial Fears, Postmillennial Achievements | 110 |
| The Dispute about Truth | 112 |
| Boethius | 113 |
| Pseudo-Dionysius | 113 |
| Avicenna | 114 |
| Peter Abelard | 115 |
| Bernard of Clairvaux | 116 |
| Averroes | 117 |
| Thomas Aquinas | 119 |
| The Pyrrhic Victory of Faith over Reason | 122 |
| Dante's Dance | 124 |
| 6. | What Was Reborn in the Renaissance? | 127 |
| The New Style in Painting: Perspective | 128 |
| Man in the Cosmos | 129 |
| The Revival of Classical Learning: Petrarch | 130 |
| Inventing the Renaissance: Boccaccio | 132 |
| The Renaissance Man | 134 |
| Renaissance Men: Leonardo, Pico, Bacon | 137 |
| The Renaissance Man and the Ideal of Liberal Education | 141 |
| Renaissance Humanism | 142 |
| Montaigne | 144 |
| Shakespeare | 146 |
| Cervantes | 148 |
| The Black Death | 151 |
| Gutenberg's Achievement | 153 |
| Renaissance Cities | 155 |
| Nation-States | 156 |
| The Crisis of the Theocratic State | 158 |
| Erasmus | 159 |
| Thomas More | 160 |
| Henry VIII | 161 |
| Martin Luther | 163 |
| Tolerance and Intolerance | 165 |
| Man at the Center | 166 |
| 7. | Europe Reaches Out | 168 |
| Mongol Empires | 169 |
| Marco Polo | 170 |
| Voyages of Discovery | 172 |
| Columbus | 174 |
| Sailing Around the World | 177 |
| The Birth of World Trade | 178 |
| Trade in Ideas | 179 |
| Homage to Columbus | 182 |
| 8. | The Invention of Scientific Method | 184 |
| The Meaning of Science | 184 |
| Three Characteristics of Science | 187 |
| Aristotelian Science: Matter | 190 |
| Aristotelian Motion | 191 |
| The Revolt Against Aristotle | 192 |
| Copernicus | 195 |
| Tycho Brahe | 196 |
| Gilbert | 197 |
| Kepler | 198 |
| Galileo | 199 |
| Descartes | 203 |
| Newton | 205 |
| Rules of Reason | 209 |
| The Galilean-Cartesian Revolution | 211 |
| 9. | An Age of Revolutions | 213 |
| The Industrial Revolution | 213 |
| Human Machines and Mechanical Humans | 214 |
| An Age of Reason and Revolution | 216 |
| John Locke and the Revolution of 1688 | 218 |
| Property, Government, and Revolution | 220 |
| Two Kinds of Revolution | 222 |
| Thomas Jefferson and the Revolution of 1776 | 223 |
| The Declaration of Independence | 224 |
| Property in Rights | 226 |
| Robespierre, Napoleon, and the Revolution of 1789 | 228 |
| The Rise of Equality | 232 |
| Mozart's Don Giovanni | 234 |
| Goethe's Faust | 238 |
| 10. | The Nineteenth Century: Prelude to Modernity | 243 |
| The Difference Money Makes | 244 |
| Economic Life Before 1800: The Peasant | 245 |
| The Lord | 247 |
| The Cleric | 248 |
| The King | 248 |
| The Merchant | 249 |
| The Rise of the Labor Market: Economics | 251 |
| Faustian Development | 255 |
| Marxism: Theory and Practice | 257 |
| Marxian Insights | 261 |
| Economic Facts: Steam Power | 264 |
| Equality in the Muzzle of a Gun | 266 |
| The Magic of Electricity | 269 |
| Magical Mathematics | 271 |
| New Ways of Seeing | 273 |
| The End of Slavery | 275 |
| Shocking the Bourgeoisie | 278 |
| Darwin and Freud | 280 |
| 11. | The World in 1914 | 284 |
| Economic Divisions | 284 |
| The Study of War | 285 |
| Colonialism | 287 |
| The Boer War | 289 |
| The Powder Keg of Europe | 289 |
| Character of the 1914-1918 War | 291 |
| Thoughts on War and Death | 292 |
| Causes of War | 295 |
| 12. | The Twentieth Century: The Triumph of Democracy | 297 |
| The Progress of Democracy | 299 |
| Communism | 304 |
| Totalitarianism | 307 |
| Theocracy in the Twentieth Century | 311 |
| Economic Justice | 313 |
| Why Not World Government? | 314 |
| One World, One Human Race | 317 |
| 13. | The Twentieth Century: Science and Technology | 321 |
| Greek Atomic Theory | 321 |
| The Revival of Atomic Theory | 323 |
| What Einstein Did | 325 |
| What the Bomb Taught Us | 327 |
| The Problem of Life | 328 |
| The Science of Heredity | 329 |
| How DNA Works | 330 |
| The Size of the Universe | 332 |
| Galaxies | 332 |
| The Smallness of Earth | 334 |
| The Big Bang and the Primordial Atom | 334 |
| Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle | 337 |
| Uncertainties of Knowledge | 338 |
| One Giant Step | 341 |
| Green Rebellion | 342 |
| The Terrestrial Greenhouse | 343 |
| Digital Computers and Knowledge | 345 |
| Turing Machines | 348 |
| Technological Dependence | 350 |
| Triumphs of Medicine | 351 |
| Drug Cultures | 353 |
| The AIDS Challenge | 354 |
| 14. | The Twentieth Century: Art and the Media | 356 |
| The Media and Their Messages | 356 |
| A Visual Revolution: Picasso, Braque, Cubism | 359 |
| Pollock, Rothko, and the Hexagonal Room | 361 |
| Urban Revolution: The Bauhaus and Le Corbusier | 363 |
| Literary Prophets: Yeats | 365 |
| A Passage to India | 366 |
| The Castle and the Magician | 367 |
| Waiting for Godot | 369 |
| Mass Media and Education | 370 |
| 15. | The Next Hundred Years | 375 |
| Computers: The Next Stage | 377 |
| The Moral Problem of Intelligent Machines | 379 |
| Companion Computers | 379 |
| The Birth of Thinking Machines | 381 |
| Three Worlds: Big, Little, Middle-sized | 383 |
| Chaos, a New Science | 384 |
| Mining Language: Ideonomy | 386 |
| Exploring the Solar System | 387 |
| The Message? | 390 |
| Man as a Terrestrial Neighbor | 392 |
| The Gaia Hypothesis | 395 |
| Genetic Engineering | 397 |
| Eugenics | 398 |
| Mapping the Genome | 400 |
| Democracy and Eugenics | 402 |
| Speed | 403 |
| Addictions | 406 |
| War in the Twenty-first Century | 408 |
| Computer Revolt | 410 |
| Index | 413 |
