Syntopical reading, the fourth level of [The four levels of reading](The%20four%20levels%20of%20reading.md), is about reading multiple books on the same subject within the same temporality. The term "same subject" can be hard to discerne. To know whether or not different books are on the same subject, we need to perform [Inspectional reading](Inspectional%20reading.md) on each first. Given a pile of books, once we read these according to the inspectional reading phase, we can think of performing syntopical reading to finaly end up performing [Analytical reading](Analytical%20reading.md) on each separately. It is important to say again that analytical reading is a technic said "to be done for one's with unlimited time", because of its complexity and the amount of questions we need to answer. This need to be done on one book at the time. So chonologicaly, we would rather have to do: 1. [Elementary reading](Elementary%20reading.md) 2. [Inspectional reading](Inspectional%20reading.md) 3. [Syntopical reading](Syntopical%20reading.md) 4. [Analytical reading](Analytical%20reading.md) Otherwise, we end up reading every book with the same level of commit and thus, the samme speed, which will be a big loss of time. ([Reading technics should differ depending on book type](Reading%20technics%20should%20differ%20depending%20on%20book%20type.md)). Syntopical reading require the most profound and advanced objectivity. Even though it is nearly/humanly impossible to be 100% objective, we should try and taking no sides to this. That what will help us to define similar treatment of the same subject across the books and optimize the output of our syntopical reading. ## The steps of syntopical reading Here are the different steps in order to perform a great syntopical reading: 1. **"Finding the relevant passage"**. For this, we should convince ourselves that we're the master of our own research and that we're skimming the book to better prepare the syntopical output. We should just pay attention to the first book we're skimming when doing this step, and try to be exhaustive within the searched subjects, to avoid coming back later to that first book because we feel that we missed subjects. 2. **"Coming to terms with the author"**. Just like in [Interpretative reading](202107061345%20Interpretative%20reading.md), but with our own words rather than his/her, and on each book. 3. **"Establishing a set of neutral proposition and generic question"** that will help navigating throughout the book and finding the answers we want to find. Just like the second step, we need to make up our own set. 4. **Analyzing and finding the issues across books** 5. **Analyzing the discussion and find solutions/answers**. Same as before, with our own words, using aspects and technics of [Analytical reading](Analytical%20reading.md). ## On the Syntopicon The name of this technic comes from the "Syntopicon: An index to The Great Ideas" from 1952, a two volume index of relevant passages, sorted by subjects, of nearly 2000 books to help readers to get different point of view from the same idea. This was released by Mortimer J. Adler within the Great Books of the Western World collection and is constituting one of the most expansive book to be made, because it require not less than 400 000 man-hours and cost over two million dollars. Here's the volume 2: <iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/in.ernet.dli.2015.460726" width="100%" height="684" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe> Some collaborative and online initiative had been intended, but still nothing that came out, nor at the level of the Syntopicon: - [The Syntopicon Anti-Book Club](https://tasshin.com/blog/the-syntopicon-anti-book-club/) - [Praxis Anti-Book Club](https://fortelabs.co/blog/praxis-anti-book-club-instructions) More on this: - [Classical Learning's Unicorn: A Syntopicon](https://medium.com/birds-with-teeth/classical-learnings-unicorn-the-syntopicon-729d5e159aca) - [A Syntopicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Syntopicon) - [How To Read A Book, The Classic Guide To Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren](How%20To%20Read%20A%20Book,%20The%20Classic%20Guide%20To%20Intelligent%20Reading%20-%20Mortimer%20J.%20Adler,%20Charles%20Van%20Doren.md) (page 326 for the summarized steps)