Best practices for searching in Logos — for research on Greek philosophical influences on Christian

Patrick S.
Patrick S. Member Posts: 766 ✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

I am researching into the influence of Ancient Greek philosophy (specifically the 'big three', Socrates, Plato & Aristotle) on Christian thought — from first century (NT writers) through to the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages.

I am looking at the best way, best practices, to do this in Logos — assuming a desktop (not subscribtion yet) Logos with an average library, but not wanting to necessarily have results limited to what is in my (current) library. That is, I am open to purchasing promising new books found in my searching.

My question is (and again this is a sort of best practices/how to question) what are all of the options available in Logos to achieve this? For example (and this obviously is not an exhaustive list — hence my reason for this post) I could think of the following:

  1. Simple search by one or more keywords
  2. Searching in the book library list
  3. Factbook
  4. Topic Guide
  5. ?

Of course there is a wealth of information and books in Logos / my library, for example just doing the most fundamental search, "plato OR aristotle OR socrates OR philosophy AND theology", brings up a lot of books (downloaded and Cloud books) but does not show available (not purchased) books. 

If I do a Factbook search, for example, on "Biblical Interpretation" in the Factbook I see 'Recommended Reading' which includes books not owned and 'Bookstore'

If however I do a Factbook search "Greek Philosophy" I get very little returned, only one book from my library when obviously there are many more — for example hundreds returned in the simple search.

What would everyone recommend as the best way, which tools to use, to do such a topic based research.

"I want to know all God's thoughts; the rest are just details." - Albert Einstein

Comments

  • John Fidel
    John Fidel MVP Posts: 3,470

    Patrick,

    I have a subscription and as a result smart search and smart search synopsis. I ran a search on all Logos books first since I do not have a lot of philosophy books in my library and got this with many spot on book selections.

    Here is a list of books I do not own that would be helpful:

    I then ran it on my books and got this:

    I know you said you did not have a subscription and I will let someone else walk you through the many ways you can do a precise search, but I wanted to show you how effective the smart search feature can be, especially is starting your research and finding additional resources that may be impactful in your study. You may want to  try it for a month or so.

    I hope someone provides you an answer using the precise search, Facebook and other tools.

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 36,207

    Patrick S. said:

    I am looking at the best way, best practices, to do this in Logos — assuming a desktop (not subscribtion yet) Logos with an average library, but not wanting to necessarily have results limited to what is in my (current) library

    A subscription with a Smart (AI) ALL Search would be the best way as your query can be more natural and the whole Logos library is searched (providing previews with the option to purchase).
    I got reasonable results from "what is the influence of  Socrates, Plato and Aristotle on Christian thought?" and links to Factbook.

    Patrick S. said:

    • Simple search by one or more keywords
    • Searching in the book library list
    • Factbook
    • Topic Guide

    • A simple Books search e.g. socrates  christianity  would provide too many results
      • socrates NEAR christianity is more useful (use the option Match All Forms)
    • A Books Search for e.g. headword:plato will provide results in your bible dictionaries
    • A Bookstore Search for e.g. socrates  NEAR christianity will provide book suggestions for your libarary
    • Factbook can provide links to your bible dictionaries e.g. from articles on Plato
      • similar results to a Search with additional information
    • Topic Guide would give same results as the headword Search, but will provide additional related topics.

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Lew Worthington
    Lew Worthington Member Posts: 1,662 ✭✭✭

    You didn't mention your experience with Greek, but I find it helpful to use Multiple Book Display while reading, say, Aristotle. It's not a search, per se, but it'll make your returns from searches of primary sources easy to deal with.

    But also, I would also suggest making sure you have the free Perseus books.

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