An enlightening, accessible science roundup combined with an intriguing metaphysical exploration.
Sattari recaps key advances in our understanding of physical reality and contends that consciousness both influences and completes the picture.
The author argues that the methodology for studying nature that arose during the 15th and 16th centuries created a “schism” that blew apart the ancient world’s previous holistic “natural philosophy.” The change split science from philosophy once practitioners, now called “scientists,” started “placing emphasis on physical phenomena, quantitative analysis, and material objects” and leaving out “the ‘subjective observer,’ the one at the center of reality experiencing and interacting with it.” In this book, the first in a projected trilogy, Sattari launches his mission to create a new “ontology that bridges the material and immaterial” by reviewing the major findings of the scientific revolution (the source of “the core ideas we have circulated in the human vernacular to understand the nature of things”) and beyond, then discussing how metaphysical elements—including consciousness, biases, and belief systems—affect the supposedly deterministic, machinelike world that’s often promulgated by traditional science. Key elements of this discussion include the author’s musing upon the more probabilistic findings of quantum science (including the fact that light and matter act as waves or particles seemingly in relation to the observer measuring them) and the ways behaviors can change how human genes work. Sattari, who provides few details about himself aside from expressing a long-held interest in his topic, offers an excellent and engaging overview of milestones and key discoveries in science, covering Newton, Einstein, Planck, and many others, and he explicates confounding concepts with clarity and drama. While skeptics might argue that some current mysteries will someday be mechanically explained via future scientific discoveries, the author effectively tees up his compelling metaphysical premise (presumably to be expanded upon in his series’ next installment) that “conscious experience is not spooky or mysterious. It is part of the natural order.”
An enlightening, accessible science roundup combined with an intriguing metaphysical exploration.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2023
ISBN: 979-8989627509
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Pragda Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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