The Seekers is a 1998 non-fiction work of cultural history by Daniel Boorstin and is the third and final volume in the "knowledge" trilogy.

In A Personal Note to the Reader, Boorstin writes, Caught between two eternities- the vanished past and the unknown future - we never cease to seek our bearings and our sense of direction.

We inherit our legacy of the sciences and the arts - works of the great Discoverers and Creators ... recounted in my earlier volumes.

A World In Process: The Meaning In The Seeking The Seekers was both praised and criticized for its adulatory treatment of Western culture.

[1] He remarked that Boorstin might be signaling a new trend, since other liberals were also speaking out, particularly against what they considered excesses of ideology: multiculturalism, radical academia, political correctness and affirmative action to name a few.

Roger Kimball of the Wall Street Journal praised his "formidable narrative gift and a great deal of common sense."

Publishers Weekly wrote a laudatory review stating "...what Boorstin does so well is bring together many ideas that fertilize and cross-fertilize the reader's imagination and curiosity."

"Amazon Editorial Reviews Boorstin notes that in the beginning we sought answers from special individuals - religious prophets.

He begins with Moses, the first Prophet whose greatest contribution was not the Ten Commandments but the idea of monotheism and Israel's special relationship.

Boorstin especially praises Aristotle for his searching and curious mind, his introduction of classification and his nascent hints at modern science.

His academy was a place where people collected information about their world and ... came to conclusions ... Gergen, David Online Newshour: The Seekers Christianity merged the Prophet and Philosopher creating theology and a new society.

Monasteries arose in the West and Boorstin considers them the most influential institutions of the time, both preserving and spreading knowledge.

In the forward he quotes Thomas Carlyle (approvingly): "the three great elements of modern civilization [are] gunpowder, printing and the Protestant religion."

Gergen, David Online Newshour: The Seekers He first warned of the dangers of ideology in 1953 in The Genius of American Politics.

Lord Acton, an English politician, tried to reconcile authoritarian Catholicism with liberty which he considered a process rather than a destination.

Boorstin concludes with Einstein who searched for ultimate truth in the cosmological unity of universal laws.

The Seekers ...ideology itself is a contradiction and denial of man's endless powers of novelty and change which are suggested by the very idea of progress.