If I could only study one subject for the rest of my life it would be intellectual history. That's kind of cheating because when you study intellectual history you still reserve the right to poke your nose into almost everything human beings have ever done.
You take anything that people know, or think they know, and trace the steps by which that knowledge was gained. You take any idea and study how that idea was first glimpsed and how it developed, over years or over centuries, and how it interacted with, supported, or conflicted with, other ideas.
What do we believe? Where did those beliefs come from? How did they come to be accepted? How have they influenced individual lives and societies for better or worse? How well supported are the beliefs that people live by and die for and argue about on Facebook?
That's my favorite subject....
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[Peter Watson's book "Modern Mind" is one of the great works of Intellectual History. This is a college education in one book!
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