A meticulous study composed in admirably accessible prose.
Physicist Hassani’s treatise critiques the appropriation of quantum physics by pop-spiritual gurus.
Hassani observes that quantum physics has always attracted those with an interest in New Age spirituality, especially since the “rush of gurus” to the West in the 1960s. The injection of Eastern thought into Western philosophy, and the fascination with occultism in the West, had much to do with this rush, as well as the inherent “weirdness of quantum physics.” Many of the founders of quantum physics, like Schrödinger, Bohr, and Heisenberg, encouraged this association by publicly linking their work to various versions of mysticism. But this is a “false marriage,” as the author spiritedly avers, one entirely based upon a rank miscomprehension of physics, a disingenuous sophistry, or both. Much of the alleged similarity between pop spirituality and quantum physics is the result of an astonishingly shallow analogy of the kind one finds in popular books like Deepak Chopra’s Quantum Healing. “They put a mystical statement next to a similar-sounding statement about science—or a quotation by a mystic scientist—and argue that the similarity of those statements implies the parallel between the contents.” The author explains that the stakes of these mischaracterizations are not purely theoretical: An unsuspecting public has been taken in by useless dietary supplements and ineffective alternative medical treatments as a consequence of this ignorance. Hassani impressively charts the principal mistakes made by the spiritual teachers looking for legitimacy via a connection to modern science, an undertaking that requires him to discuss quantum physics in some detail and with great clarity. He’s a touch out of his depth when he attempts to link his thesis more broadly to the history of Western philosophy—it is indefensible to assert that Augustine’s effort to link Christianity with Platonism is the same as what “New Age gurus are doing with Eastern theology and quantum physics.” Still, this is a rigorously researched and well-argued book that should be read by anyone interested in the commandeering of science by pseudoscience.
A meticulous study composed in admirably accessible prose.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9783031652585
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Springer
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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
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