An engaging, supple scientific text, blessedly free of weighty academic jargon.
A lucid, thought-provoking and wide-ranging metaphysical treatise by novelist, scientific researcher and Stanford Ph.D. Smith.
Heralded as “the first complete history of consciousness ever written,” The Dimensions of Experience covers an astonishing amount of ground, from evolutionary theory to postmodernist linguistics, physics and even obscure Victorian literature. Smith’s central contention is that “the miraculous is much closer to home” than many human beings understand. By this he does not mean a hidden realm of elves and dragons–or any sort of religious transcendence, at least as understood in the biblical sense–but a miracle of dimensions. “However many dimensions there are in the universe, we–all of us, all forms of life–exist in all of them,” Smith argues. “They are all within our reach. What we lack–some species more than others, but again, all of us to some extent–is the ability to experience all of these dimensions.” Over 11 tightly written and edited chapters, Smith goes on to explicate the evolution of consciousness and how we came to understand the world as we do today. He discusses transcendental meditation and the benefits and fallacies therein; he ventures bravely into the world of coral reefs, worm colonies and bacterium, showing how even the simplest of organisms experience life in a range of dimensions. “According to science,” he writes, “the three major dimensions of space are a condition of all existence, within which the entire evolutionary history of earth has played out.” Not so, he counters. The Dimensions of Experience makes the case for a more dynamic form of evolution, where beings evolve through time and space, but also through dimensions we do not yet properly understand. Smith’s great accomplishment is verisimilitude: he holds forth with equal skill on both the biology of proto-organisms and the knottiest work of post-structuralists like Derrida, and he weaves every chapter deftly into a convincing narrative.
An engaging, supple scientific text, blessedly free of weighty academic jargon.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4363-7083-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
In a whirlwind tour of 13 archaeological sites around the world, Fagan's sleepy, fact-heavy narrative fails to present major scientific discoveries as much more than the sum of their plodding details. Fagan (Quest for the Past, 1994, etc.) has a solid grasp of the complexities and innovations of the discipline's techniques. Nevertheless, his central point, that archaeologists are now using advanced scientific technology and have transformed themselves from ``diggers to time detectives,'' should come as no surprise to anyone with even a mild interest in science. The book is compelling in those sections where Fagan details the highly specific conclusions that archaeologists draw from mundane bits of evidence (bone-fragment analysis reveals the prehistoric Anasazi of the American Southwest practiced cannibalism) and the use of high-technology instruments to explain the mysteries of ancient civilizations (the use of NASA satellites to determine how the Maya fed their large population). But Fagan undermines his stated purpose by discussing several major discoveries that were based on low-technology innovations (the flotation tank that separates out prehistoric seeds from a site on the Euphrates river) and no technology (the interpretation of Mayan glyphs by creative linguists). Nowhere does the book explain why these particular discoveries were profiled, and not all chapters include explanatory illustrations beyond a map. As such, Time Detectives is plagued by a general sense of incoherence, which is heightened by overgeneralizations, absurd arguments (the ``similarity'' between violent conflict among the pre-Columbian Chumash Indians and present-day homicide statistics), and glaringly obvious statements: ``No single genius `invented' agriculture.'' The most serious flaw is Fagan's failure to communicate the excitement of archaeological research. We are left with a detailed but superficial review of the important findings of several modern archaeologists. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen; 26 line drawings)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-79385-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
In this eloquent memoir, on the eve of his 80th birthday, Hay (The Bird of Light, 1991) reviews the lessons of a life lived close to nature. Widely recognized as the dean of modern nature writing, Hay divides his retirement between Cape Cod and Maine. Here he cultivates a deepening connection to nature, whether in reading the wild grasses to understand the land that lies beneath or observing in trees the stages of growth that parallel his own. As a child in Manhattan, he was first enchanted with nature in a diorama of timber wolves chasing deer across the moonlit snow at the American Museum of Natural History. There is much to be said for the ``eye of a child,'' Hay recalls, as it conveys a wonder that does not seek to control or define what it sees. Adults miss that wonder when they rush to explain rather than appreciate such mysteries as why pilot whales strand themselves on a beach. He laments the distance that the introduction of technology has opened up between humankind and nature. In the fishing industry, dragnets and radar have encouraged grossly wasteful harvesting that has destroyed entire marine ecosystems. When we repeatedly cut ourselves off from the realities of nature by viewing fish in terms of profit and loss rather than as essential food, we risk ``casting ourselves into a limbo, a darkness of our own making.'' Everywhere around him, Hay sees our desecration of nature, from the death of the Chesapeake Bay to the Dust Bowl of the Great Plains. Both his point and his examples are less than fresh, but he compellingly presents his argument that ``we ignore a deeper reality that the land is better known through respecting its mysteries than putting it on a shopping list.'' This memoir shows no diminution in Hay's genius for expressing a powerful and contagious appreciation of nature.
Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1995
ISBN: 0-8070-8532-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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