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Facts and Fallacies: a Book of Definitive Mistakes and Misguided Predictions
History, Literary Studies
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
4 people want to read
About the author
Chris Morgan
211 books1 followerThere is more than one author by this name on Goodreads.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 12, 2025
The year is 1981, the internet is not widespread yet, and any quotes dump from books older still in grandma's bookcase can be made into a book.
There are many things wrong with Facts and Fallacies, and thankfully, I think books like these can no longer be published. In this day and age, this would be a mildly successful Facebook page, hoping hard that one of their posts goes viral. There is no structure, no grouping of the quotes by historical period, by margin of error or reason for error, and the very loose separation into chapters is very much arbitrary, with a lot of overlapping areas. Furthermore, in the 45 years since the book was published, the world has changed, and some of the positions of the authors now feel laughable and antiquated.
Plus, some of the prophecies laughed at as fallacies have come round, and technology has shown in the intervening decades that there might be something to them.
Predicting the future is more often than not a useless pursuit, even when necessary. More useless still is laughing at how wrong future predictors got it, especially without any attempt at understanding their paradigm and the position from which they were speaking.
I bought this book as I expected some sort of heuristic investigation into what constitutes a fact and what constitutes a fallacy. It's none of that. It's literally a collection of quotes interspersed with smug comments.
And what's more, the authors are 'expecting readers' suggestions for a second volume'. Presumably, grandma's bookcase has been exhausted.
There are many things wrong with Facts and Fallacies, and thankfully, I think books like these can no longer be published. In this day and age, this would be a mildly successful Facebook page, hoping hard that one of their posts goes viral. There is no structure, no grouping of the quotes by historical period, by margin of error or reason for error, and the very loose separation into chapters is very much arbitrary, with a lot of overlapping areas. Furthermore, in the 45 years since the book was published, the world has changed, and some of the positions of the authors now feel laughable and antiquated.
Plus, some of the prophecies laughed at as fallacies have come round, and technology has shown in the intervening decades that there might be something to them.
Predicting the future is more often than not a useless pursuit, even when necessary. More useless still is laughing at how wrong future predictors got it, especially without any attempt at understanding their paradigm and the position from which they were speaking.
I bought this book as I expected some sort of heuristic investigation into what constitutes a fact and what constitutes a fallacy. It's none of that. It's literally a collection of quotes interspersed with smug comments.
And what's more, the authors are 'expecting readers' suggestions for a second volume'. Presumably, grandma's bookcase has been exhausted.
Displaying 1 of 1 review