The Perils of the Human Imagination

In previous books such as Civilizations (2001), Ideas (2003) and The World: A History (2007), he focused on global history through biomes or ecosystems – communities of living things rather than countries – and this geographical perspective has led some readers to view him as a materialist. But he has “always thought that ideas are literally primordial”, he writes here, and regarded world history as the history of the human imagination. In the comic-book history of ideas that is promoted by rationalists today, Isaac Newton is revered as one of the authors of “the Scientific Revolution”.

Source: www.newstatesman.com