from Hacker News

Routledge Handbooks

by Igrom on 6/13/23, 3:47 PM with 2 comments

• by Igrom on 6/13/23, 3:47 PM

  There's a quote or anecdote whose origin I am unfamiliar with, in which it is claimed that ten or twenty books is all that's needed for an essential education. Given the amount of meaningful research that's put out every day in every discipline in order to extend our collective knowledge, and that often revises the curriculum we view as "foundational", that claim is surely fantastical.

  The counterpoint is that the applicability of research to daily life normally tapers off with its specificity. Generally speaking, it already makes a difference if we grasp the basics. Furthermore, given the right resources, the effort to get from zero up to basic competency in a topic is actually fairly miniscule, compared with the effort needed to become an expert.

  In the spirit of that last point, I wanted to share how sensational I find that there exist well-researched* and approachable introductory resources on very general and specific topics. That a single resource can collate and present decades, sometimes centuries of research in a way that is mind-boggling. I'm currently going through the Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Taiwan, but the praise is limited neither to that book, nor only to Routledge, though I endorse their books out of personal satisfaction.

  *Of course, I'm taking this as a prior — I have to hoist my ability to critique research in that field by the bootstraps!

• by jonjacky on 6/14/23, 2:26 AM

  ... given the right resources, the effort to get from zero up to basic competency in a topic is actually fairly miniscule, compared with the effort needed to become an expert.

  On that note, see also Very Short Introductions from Oxford University Press

  https://academic.oup.com/very-short-introductions/search-res...