Adam's apple

the long version

Adam's Apple is a study of a theme in Western intellectual history. Through a metaphor, it traces the idea over the past three centuries that increased knowledge is somehow both a gain and a loss, a path to enlightenment and, simultaneously, the road to tragedy. Each chapter has a discrete topic, ranging from Malthusian economics to American nature writing, as the whole works toward a complex interweaving of major motifs about an increasingly scientific world. Together, they reflect humanity's anxieties over its efforts to improve itself by acquiring knowledge.