Thoughtful and provocative.
Debut author Phipps offers a challenging reexamination of the connection between the “evolutionary dynamics of the universe and the very being of the divine.”
As the executive editor of the magazine EnlightenNext, the author has kept abreast of leading trends in modern science, theology and philosophy, and he denies that there is an inherent contradiction between science and religion. Phipps has coined the word “evolutionaries” to describe a group of scientists, futurists, sociologists, psychologists, philosophers and theologians who share an “evolutionary vision and a care for our collective future.” He cites writings of the Jesuit anthropologist priest Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) as exemplary of those who seek inspiration from the past but are not bound by a fixed system of beliefs. Phipps is also sharply critical of environmentalists who deny the unique position of man as the highest expression of creation. He suggests that the chaos bred by rapidly changing environments creates the potential for evolution, whether of species or in the realm of culture, and he compares the “rough and tumble world of globalization in the twenty-first century [to] the dynamics at play in Earth's prebiotic soup billions of years ago.” Both are chaotic environments that foster evolutionary transformation by bringing natural selection into play. At the same time, Phipps believes that evolution is not a random process; rather, it embodies directionality and purpose. “Might we in some way represent the feedback loop for the universe itself,” he asks, “fulfilling the next stage in our development…[and] creating the next novel stage of cosmogenesis?” Phipps interviews a number of physicists, futurologists working in artificial intelligence, and cognitive psychologists seeking an explanation for consciousness.
Thoughtful and provocative.Pub Date: July 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-191613-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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