Morris’s afterword makes it clear that science doesn’t have all the answers—perhaps never will—but it’s diverting and...
Really big questions: Morris, a physicist who writes frequently on science, borrows a leaf from the philosopher’s book to discourse engagingly on God, time, truth, mind, and such like.
There was a time when philosophers provided much of the enlightenment on matters metaphysical, cosmological, and ontological. Morris wants us to know that modern science can illuminate many of these issues, in some cases providing answers based on experimental evidence. Up to a point. For example, if we accept the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, then we can resolve the issue of free will versus determinism—because any and all possible futures exist in one or another parallel universe. But what about time? The laws of physics are indifferent to time’s arrows—with the exception of a couple of exotic particles. That still leaves us with questions about reconciling subjective time with the “t” in equations. Berkeley’s conundrum about whether the world exists if no one is looking? More quantum theory and, alas, no resolution. The question of whether Schrodinger’s cat is alive or dead (or capable of existing in both states until we look) remains a puzzle, but comes with an eerie aside about experiments that show that electrons streaming around superconducting loops appear to move clockwise and counterclockwise simultaneously. So it goes with most of the other questions Morris discusses: all wonderful foils for expounding on the five current superstring theories and the mysterious 11-dimensional M theory that relates to them all, or about quantum fluctuations that can produce a universe out of nothing. In the end, contemporary physics has some tantalizing ideas, but most of the issues remain ambiguous.
Morris’s afterword makes it clear that science doesn’t have all the answers—perhaps never will—but it’s diverting and instructive at least to see the process.Pub Date: June 5, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-7092-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002
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
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