The art of reading many books, placing them in relation to each other, and the topics which they concern. This is generally done through the process of conducting an Analytical Reading of individual texts while taking Conceptual Notes on the topic of interest, followed up with Extrinsic Reading and conducting a comparison of the sources by making Dialectical Notes of some kind.
Steps to Syntopical Reading
Part 1: Pre-reading
- Build a tentative bibliography of potentially relevant books.
- Inspect all chosen books for relevancy to the topic of interest and prune unnecessary sources to get a clear idea of the scope of the project. Part 2: Syntopical Reading
- Inspect all books for relevant chapters and sections through Systematic Skimming.
- Bring all of the authors to terms by Coming to Terms with each one and establishing a unified terminology.
- Establish a list of questions to which all authors give answers to. (See Identify an Author’s Solutions)
- Identify key points of conflict.
- Order the questions and issues from most general to most specific, the begin analysis and comparison.
How to read a book by Mortimer Jerome Adler, Charles Van Doren