Harvard biologist and feminist Hubbard and her son (as well as her Nobel laureate husband, George Wald) have long championed the antibiotechnology cause, raising the specter of genetic determinism, eugenics, and social control (read ``fascism'') that they see as imminent in genetics research. Their point of view is that of old-fashioned liberals, winning praise from the Richard Lewontins, Barry Commoners, Ralph Naders, and other defenders of the common man (and woman) and the natural environment against government bureaucrats, scientific reductionists, and others viewed as profiteers or manipulators and exploiters of humankind. In so doing, the authors serve a corrective function, offering the kind of countervailing sensibility that's so important in a democratic society. But, here, they go too far in their zeal, discounting the value of much genetics research and of the human genome project in particular. Certainly, we need safeguards regarding the collection and use of genetic data to prevent discrimination and abuses in education, employment, and insurance, as well as to prevent gene testing for such arbitrary purposes as sex selection and so on. But to deny the importance of genetic research in finding clues to development and aging, plus the causes and cures of disease, is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Interestingly, in contrast to Andrew Kimbrell in The Human Body Shop (reviewed below), Hubbard and Wald disavow claims that genes have been (or will be) discovered for intelligence, homosexuality, alcoholism, etc.; meanwhile, Kimbrell acts as though such putative genes will determine how we select offspring in the future. The moral of the story is that the pendulum swings both ways, but the truth lies somewhere in the middle. (Seven illustrations)
Pub Date: May 3, 1993
ISBN: 0-8070-0418-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
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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