A thoughtful and intriguing account of the relationship between science and spirituality.
A writer offers a critique of scientific materialism coupled with an argument in favor of an ultimate reality beyond empirical confirmation.
Shute avers that people live in an “intellectually inhospitable world,” one in which “overcertainty,” an inelastic and hyperbolic confidence in one’s beliefs, serves as a prohibitive bar to philosophical progress. His principal example is the “dogma of materialist science,” a reductive interpretation of the universe that, despite its increasingly obvious theoretical failings, remains the dominant paradigm for scientists. The author raises provocative questions about the inadequacy of materialism—his discussion is especially stimulating when he considers Darwinian evolution and its limitations, a perspective considered “sacrosanct” despite its incoherencies. In place of these scientific pieties, Shute argues that an ultimate reality exists that transcends perception, a spiritual dimension to life that couldn’t possibly be fully captured by the pinched categories of scientific conceptualization. The author mines psychology, physics, and biology for evidence of these “extradimensional sources of influence on the material world” as well as various altered states of consciousness, including hypnosis and near-death experiences. Shute’s analysis is wide-ranging and ambitious—he considers intractable problems like the nature of consciousness, proposes a more searching understanding of causality than science currently provides, and suggests the reasonability of a mind that survives the death of the body. Despite these grand aims, the author is impressively cautious and restrained regarding his conclusions: “This book seeks to neither prove nor disprove the existence of any particular god, nor the truth or falsity of any particular religion. What this book hopes to do is lend credibility to the idea that an ultimate reality exists behind the doors of perception.” His critique of materialism is not original but it is persuasive, and one can’t help but be impressed by his call for an authentic skepticism, one that refuses to yield easily to facile belief or stubborn disbelief.
A thoughtful and intriguing account of the relationship between science and spirituality.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73-581683-8
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Romar Philosophical Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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