The Discoverers

The Discoverers is a non-fiction historical work by Daniel Boorstin, published in 1983, and is the first in the Knowledge Trilogy, which also includes The Creators and The Seekers. The book, subtitled A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself, is a history of human discovery. Discovery in many forms is described: exploration, science, medicine, mathematics, and more-theoretical ones, such as time, evolution, plate tectonics, and relativity. Boorstin praises the inventive, human mind and its eternal quest to discover the universe and humanity's place in it. In "A Personal Note to the Reader", Boorstin writes "My hero is Man, the Discoverer. The world we now view from the literate West ... had to be opened by countless Columbuses. In the deep recesses of the past, they remain anonymous." The structure of the book is topical and chronological, beginning in the prehistoric era in Babylon and Egypt.