In the high-spirited Up my Mother's Flagpole (1974), Zohar characterized her early life as a process of individuation and alienation. Then, after marrying, she used the metaphors of physics, which she had studied at MIT, to redefine life as relationship (The Quantum Self, 1989). Here, Zohar (Science & Culture/Oxford) and psychiatrist Marshall extend these concepts to a vision of a new vast and inclusive society. Zohar and Marshall challenge the traditional Western dualities of mind and nature, spirit and matter, self and other, by liberally interpreting quantum physics as a theory that explains the fundamental operations of nature or reality as holistic, pluralistic, and integrative. The resemblance between the structure of the universe and the structure of the mind, they claim, enables individuals to conceptualize reality as it is pictured in quantum physics. They want to extend these qualities of the universe, shared with the human mind, as described by quantum physics, to the organization of social life. With charming hand-drawn diagrams and lucid explanations of classical physics, quantum physics, neurobiology and molecular biology, Zohar and Marshall develop models, analogies, and metaphors for the even more elusive ``physics of the mind'' and the ``science of consciousness.'' Their goal is a mutually creative relationship among mind, society, nature, a ``both/and'' form of thought rather than ``either/or,'' psychologies, families, and governments based on the principles of quantum physics, peacefully evolving. However, without concrete examples to illustrate such theories, this quirky work remains abstract and speculative. Zohar and Marshall offer the general reader a better introduction to contemporary science than to social philosophy while stretching the limit of fashionable interdisciplinary discussion.
Pub Date: April 22, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-10603-X
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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