'The Encyclopedia of Stupidity' is a modern 'In Praise of Folly'. In a myriad of instructive examples, stupidity is dissected with the help of fairy-tales, cartoons, Baroque painted ceilings, jokes, flimsy excuses, traffic accidents, garden designs, pieces of nonsense, science fiction ...
Stupidity manifests itself in every walk of life, in every person, at all times. A study of stupidity therefore automatically assumes encyclopedic dimensions.
Stupidity is unwitting self-destruction, the ability to act against one’s best interests, with death as the extreme consequence. If man was not to fall victim to his own stupidity, he had to develop his own intelligence. Indeed, stupidity is the engine that drives our civilization.
In 'The Encyclopedia of Stupidity' Matthijs van Boxsel introduces us to a past and present world of mishaps and misunderstandings, from tower-builders who lack a ladder to get into their tower to peasants who collect water with a sieve. In a myriad of instructive and entertaining anecdotes, such as “The Eggshells of Ignorance’, ‘The Hell of Fools’ ‘The Logic of Dual Stupidity, ‘The Not Terribly Good Club, and ‘On the Origin of Dullards’, we are shown that stupidity is in fact the foundation of our civilization. And in an attempt to fathom the logic of this nether world, the author posits that no one is intelligent enough to understand their own stupidity. Nor can anyone hope to comprehend all the institutional stupidity that results from science and academia.
In this erudite and witty book Matthijs van Boxsel argues that — contrary to what we've always thought — stupidity is a crucial condition for intelligence, that blunders stimulate progress, and that failure is the basis for success.
Matthijs van Boxsel is a man of letters who has been researching, writing and lecturing on stupidity for over 20 years. He lives in Amsterdam.
Author(s): Matthijs van Boxsel
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Year: 2003
Language: English
Commentary: scantailor + ocrmypdf
Pages: 216
City: London
Tags: stupidity;cognition;epistemology
The Encyclopedia of Stupidity
Contents
Introduction
I The Black Flag
The Academy of Stupidity
The Discovery
The Profile of Stupidity
The Terrarium
The Premise
The Design
Shagreen
The Peepshow
The Vanishing Handkerchief
Well-trodden Paths
II The Blunderers’ Club
The Knight in the Bog
The Topology of Stupidity
Road Signs
The Fatal Combination
The Principle of the Woodcutter out on a Limb
The Not Terribly Good Club
The Amsterdammer
Eggshells of Ignorance
No Pleasure without Pain
The Fluke
Adversity and Wisdom
The Retroactive Effect
Esprit d’escalier
Epimetheus
Productive Delusion
Stupidity as the Mystical Foundation of our Existence
The Automaton
The Credo of Stupidity
The Reversal
The Invisible Treasure
The Judge Judged
‘Kannitverstan’
Blessed are the Poor in Spirit
La Boétie and Boeotiana
Gothamite Wisdom
The Logic of Dual Stupidity
The Comic Hiatus
The Seventh Heaven
The Secret of Suspended Life
The Stupidity of Intelligence
The Riches of Spijk
Sowing Salt
Lodged in Stupidity
Methodical Stupidity
III Fallor, the Aerobat
Credo
Who is Fallor?
A Feast for Pessimists
The Earlobe
Personal Column
Towards an Aesthetics of Stupidity
Further Contributions to the Aesthetics of Stupidity
Homeopathic Stupidity
From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
The Unheard-of Study
Morology
Fallor on Holiday
IV The Ha-ha
Three Stupid Maps
The Foolishness of the French Garden
The Ah-ah!
The Foolishness of the English Garden
The Ha-ha
Second Nature
Nature’s Orchestra Pit
Erotic Empiricism
The Metaphysics of the Zigzag
The Moral
Epilogue
V Simpletons in Hell
The Hell of Fools
Ataraxia
Boeotian Hell
The Gate of Hell
The Final Anamorphosis
The Haunted House
The Gift of Discernment
Limbo
The Blot
The Paradise of Fools
The Ceiling of Stupidity
The Will to be Stupid
Appendix: The Apotheosis of a Gnat
VI The Genealogy of Dullards
On the Origin of Dullards
The Power of Palliatives
The Word made Flesh
The Triumph of Poor Excuses
The Hour of All
Zero Hour
The Jovial Gesture
The Unity of Opposites
VII On the Inherent Stupidity of Constitutional Monarchies
Prologue: The Frogs who Wanted a King
1 Stupidity as the Basis of Civilization
The First Stupid Act (A Fable)
Savageness and Rudeness
The Scorpion and the Tortoise
The Reversal
2 Man is a Grape
Ecstacy
Self-Love and Self-Liking
The Trick
Dumbing Down
Hypocrisy
The Good in Evil
The Fable of the Bees
The Fable of the Social Contract
The Punch-bowl
3 The Trifling Difference
The Truth of the Truth
Man is Good but not Stupid
The Legislator
The Fourth Kind of Law
The Rod and the Serpent
The Aesthetic of the Empty Gesture
The Holy Democrat
The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
The Strength of Democracy
4 Election Fever
The Paradox of Democracy
Elections
The Election Machine
Election Madness
The Centre of Power
The Terror
Stupor
5 Frogs, Logs, Snakes and Masks (Twelve Uneasy Pieces)
I The Log in the Lake
II The Sanctified Space
II Elbow Room
IV The Subject of Democracy
V The Body Politic
VI ‘A Mirror for Princes’
VII Pinocchio
VII Failure as a ratio cognoscendi
IX I Will
X The Point of Folly
XI L’état c’est moi
XII Stupor mundi
6 The Emperor’s New Clothes
Esse est non percipi
How Till Eulenspiegel Painted the Landgrave of Hesse
The Monarch’s Two Bodies
Voluntary Slavery
The Justification
The Emperor’s New Clothes
The Hypothetical Fool
Who did not Know?
Stupidity in Three Periods
The Fame Machine (With No State Guarantee)
Modern Ritual
A Final Note: Canned Laughter
VIII The Darwin Awards
1 Ecstasy
Nominations
Stupidity as the Basis of Civilization
An Explosive Mixture
Cunning Stupidity
2 The Missing Link
The Lapse
Forbidden Fruit
Buridan’s Ass
The Castle in the Air
Gatekeepers
Who am I?
The Boeotian Sphinx
Man’s Being
Errare humanum est
Bloomers
Second Nature
Hypothetical Stupidity and Toilet Paper
The Crux of the Matter
The Stone of Contention
Paradise Damned
3 Holy Madness
Nasreddin
I The Encyclopedia
II The Biggest Fool
III Happiness Favours the Foolish
IV The Eighteenth Camel
V The Holy Ass
VI Keeping your Head
VII Fifty Lashes
The Enlightened Fool
Morosophy
4 Clinamen
The Catastrophe
The Myth
Dumb Luck
Idiocy
Duplication
Nature, Chance and Artifice
Kairos
5 ’Pataphysics
The Science of Imaginary Solutions
6 The Stupidity of Encyclopedias
The Two Sides of the Apple
The Courage of Despair
The Spectre of Encyclopedias
The Spectre of Satire
The Encyclopedia of the Stupidity of Encyclopedias
The Syrup
The Choreography of Knowledge and Morality
Acknowledgements
