If you even halfway decently read, worked through and tried to understand this stack you would have the equivalent of an above average physics undergraduate degree.
What is the functional equivalent for English? Philosophy? I reject the idea that there isn't one on the grounds that I am specifically referring to an -undergraduate- level. There must be a core distribution of topics to work through and texts to study.
English: Ulysses' prerequisites (Homer & Shakespeare key works, and Dubliners and Portrait), then read Ulysses, but analyze it as throroughly as possible. This exercise will make you more knowledgeable about literature than 99% of degree holders, plus literature peaked after Ulysses and In Search of Lost Time by Proust. Oh, and get In Search of Lost Time by Proust, Montcrieff translation, no prereqs needed. Maybe throw in The Brothers Karamazov too.
Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Lao Tzu, Marcus Aurelius, Kant, and maybe Nietzsche.
I think the problem with producing one for philosophy is that it is a very large field with undergraduate programs having different focuses from school to school. My program is largely comprised of ethics and politics courses due to that being what the majority of our professors are experts on (there are classes for the other core disciplines obviously, but very little). This is amplified as there's a lot of different things you can study in the broad sections of philosophy.
While there are certainly great works that will be read no matter what by every undergrad (Republic, Descartes' Meditations, etc), a large bulk of what their studying varies based on their interests and the limitations I mentioned earlier.
I think you can forge a list of literature that every undergrad should have read (such as in this post ) but fully capturing a philosophy degree in a stack of books is impossible.
I've read everything on your lit list save Proust (putting him off until my French is up to snuff). Literature to read is something I have a solid handle on, I suppose what I want to do is fix my stiff prose and dig into some, for lack of a better descriptor, textbooks. The kind of things you'd be forced to slog through and write banal essays about and eventually look back on and cry.
Example, I have Garner's Modern English Usage on my Amazon list for reading in the near future (yes, from that). I'm out of my element with these things and could use some direction.
WRT philosophy, fair enough. I have read almost none of the mentioned authors and can go ahead and nix that for now. Direction should be easy to find now that I think about it.
Thanks for your constructive replies. I hope this is of interest to more than just myself.
Not OP but I do have a follow-up question to this. Just how useful is it to have an instructor guiding you through the works of English or philosophy, compared to a physics professor?
What uni are you at
Really good thread. Hopefully some better responses come along that include various textbooks on the subject.
None. I graduated with a physics degree a few years ago.
Taylor's Classical Mechanics is a shit textbook. The easiest fuckin examples, but the hardest homework problems.
What should you start with from this stack OP?
To read Kant you need to read the rationalist and empiricist thinkers, who are important in their own right - esp. Descartes and Hume.
>This exercise will make you more knowledgeable about literature than 99% of degree holders
Either 99% of degree holders are morons or this is a bullshit "exercise". You decide which one is more likely.
Not that user but having done a physics major in undergrad, It's pretty clearly supposed to be done from bottom to top.
Pretty close to mine actually, although I don't know if electronics really belongs at the very top.
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism or Modern Theory and Criticism: A Reader
Dude I just got that norton anthology last week for $9.
Just finished Ion yesterday and I'm really struggling to understand how it fits in with the narrative the editors wanted to present, at least based upon the introduction and in terms of how criticism developed.
Am I just overthinking it?
>either 99% of people who pay $50k/year to read books available in a public library, under the guidance of an instructor/professor who bases their lessons on secondary literature also found in these public libraries, either these people are somehow "stupid"
unfathomable!
>or this exercise, of examining the deepest, most encompassing work of art in the history of humanity, is more valuable to understand literature than reading the identity-politics fueled shit tier works that you get in academia
this is BULLSHIT!
Look, you can study one piece of art as much as you want, but you won't have any breadth of knowledge whatsoever. Veeky Forums is actually very dumb and very anglo-centric, and you seem to have bought into its memes a bit too hard.
Read all the Norton Anthologies lol its easy
Seven physics classes got you a degree?
calculus
Would you trust your English professor to teach you physics?
Of course not. I realize I phrased that poorly now, but I meant that the physics professor would be teaching physics, his own field.
Why there is no lectures of Feynman?
OP here.
Regardless, if you worked through it in a vague way you'd be in good shape. Marion is better though, I just grabbed the books I was assigned back in the day.
It's pretty much bottom to top. Certainly you need the bottom four first, and then can tackle the upper division stuff in any order (mechanics should probably come first).
Electronics was an afterthought as I realized I was ignoring experimental stuff, but some of that you can't get away without just actually doing. It belongs near classical mechanics and after differential equations though.
Most of these are multiple semesters.
You need feedback at some level. Finding a surrogate for the mentor relationship is a challenge.
Feynman Lectures are good, but not to learn from. I used them to study for graduate prelims but he is so deeply understanding of physics that you can't really properly benefit from the lectures unless you've seen the material before.
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The BAs in English and Philosophy are intended as the first steps in life long learning processes that include MA, PhD, and professorship. So there is no equivalent. Autodidacticism is a meme.