WRAPPING IT ALL UP

Nasser Zakariya, A Final Story: Science, Myth, and Beginnings, The University of Chicago Press, 2017

A Final Story is a study of those sweeping scientific epics, presented in books such as Steven Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes or television extravaganzas like Carl Sagan’s classic Cosmos, which confidently set out the entire story of the universe from Big-Bang beginning to middle (our time) and on to its possible ends, pulling all the great discoveries of science into a single narrative to give the big – the biggest – picture, and putting humanity in its place (in all senses). 

🔽

FLIPPING THE FUTURE

Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge. Belvue Literary Press, 2019. 

Every now and then a book comes along that you just want everybody to read. Readers of my previous reviews of Jeffrey Kripal’s books will know I’m a fan of his writing and thinking, and in The Flip he’s crystallised his ideas into a vision that he purposely presents in a punchier way than usual – just 200 pages – in order to give it as wide an appeal as he can. And he deserves to be heard.

🔽

SOMETHING AND NOTHING

Richard Grossinger. Bottoming Out The Universe; Why There is Something Rather than Nothing. Park Street Press, 2020.

The sub-title of this book is a helpful guide to its intention - why there is something rather than nothing? A question you may never have asked yourself before. But, one that, it turns out, is rather important. This is posed here in reference to the universe, and, most particularly, to the nature of consciousness interacting with it. 

🔽

HELL FIRE AND DAMNATION

Geoffrey Ashe. The Secret History of Hell-Fire Clubs from Rabelais and John Dee to Anton LaVey and Timothy Leary. Bear & Company. 4th ed. 2019.

Geoffrey Ashe is not a name you would associate with Hell-Fire Clubs. He is a venerable British historian known for his expert research on the subject of King Arthur. At the time of writing this review, in May 2020, I found that he is still thriving at the age of 97 and living in Glastonbury, where he is an Honorary Freeman 'in recognition of his eminent services to the place as an author and cultural historian'.

🔽

SWIMMING AGAINST THE CURRENTS

Jeffrey J. Kripal, Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions, University of Chicago Press, 2017.

One of the most original and fearless thinkers around, Jeffrey J. Kripal is that rarest of creatures: an academic (Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought) at a respected institution (Rice University) who is willing to admit his acceptance of paranormal and Fortean phenomena of the highest degree of strangeness. 

🔽

SEARCHING FOR WONDER

Patrick Curry. Enchantment - Wonder in Modern Life.  Floris Books 2019.

As Patrick Curry argues eloquently in his thoughtful examination of the human condition in these challenging modern times, "enchantment is an experience of wonder". This is no mere academic exercise, although he is surprisingly erudite in his choice of texts, writers and cultural icons to illustrate his thoughts on this vital feature of being fully human. Nor is this a fluffy 'New Age' extended essay on how much better this world would be if we were all nice to each other.
🔻

BELIEVING IN NOT-BELIEVING - THE NEW ATHEISTS

Nathan Johnstone. The New Atheism, Myth and History: The Black Legends of Contemporary Anti-Religion. Palgrave Macmillan 2018.

The New Atheists is a term coined to described the group of militant atheists that emerged after the shock of 9/11. Comprising the biologist Richard Dawkins, the journalist Christopher Hitchens, the philosophers Daniel C. Dennett and A.C. Grayling, the neuroscientist Sam Harris, the astronomer Victor Stenger, and others.
🔻

GOTHIC REVIVAL

Sam Wiseman. Locating the Gothic in British Modernity. Clemson University Press, 2019.

Until reading Sam Wiseman’s brilliant book I hadn’t comfortably connected elements of the gothic with what constituted modernity. It’s not that there aren’t thematic overlaps in the sense that they can both seriously attack rationality or create a new rationale - that a ‘natural’ (Modern Life) under stress and the stress of the supernatural (Gothic Rupture) affected each another. 

🔻🔻🔻

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGED

Susannah Gibson, The Spirit of Inquiry: How One Extraordinary Society Shaped Modern Science. Oxford University Press, 2019.

This year sees the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and to mark it Susannah Gibson, of Cambridge University’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science, has produced this lively account (oddly, published by Oxford) of its place in the story of British science.

🔻

CULTURAL LEADERS

Carl Abrahamsson, Occulture: The Unseen Forces that Drive Culture Forward, Park Street Press, 2018

Although coined back in the 1980s, in the last decade ‘occulture’ has emerged as something of a buzzword in the art world and among cultural commentators in academia. As Carl Abrahamsson – a self-proclaimed ‘cultural entrepreneur’ and founder and editor of the ‘annual occultural journal’ The Fenris Wolf - notes, it has almost entered the mainstream.
⬇⬇⬇

PURITY IS DANGER

Michael Robertson. The Last Utopians: Four Late 19th Century Visionaries and Their Legacy. Princeton University Press. 2018.

Concluding the very last piece he wrote for Magonia, our dear friend Peter Rogerson said: “The anthropologist Mary Douglas once wrote a book called Purity and Danger, but a book called ‘Purity is Danger’ would be more apposite...

🔽

ANOTHER DIMENSION

Christopher G. White. Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions. Harvard University Press, 2018

When Times Higher Education published Simon Young’s review of Other Worlds it was headlined with the following statement, “He finds much to admire in an attempt to explain the history of a seemingly impossible idea.” Now I haven’t read Young’s review but like him have had to grapple with the idea of a higher state, or not to mince my words, the fourth dimension!
🔻

IDLE HOURS AND LAZY DAYS

Brian O'Connor. Idleness - A Philosophical Essay. Princeton University Press 2018.

This book appealed to me instantly when I saw its synopsis in the Princeton University Press catalogue. Reading a book of choice is naturally a pleasure, but it often seems that the commitment to writing a review adds a sense of duty that can press the procrastination button.

🔻

LIVING WITH DEATH

Seneca. How to Die - An Ancient Guide to The End of Life. Selected and translated by James Romm. Princeton University Press, 2018.

I didn’t expect to be writing a review of Seneca’s thoughts about dying and be compelled to refer to the ingestion of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Well I am for two good reasons. (a) They are mentioned, in the introduction to How to Die, by editor James S. Romm: the reason being a psychedelic experience where you “stared directly at death…in a kind of dress rehearsal.”

🔻

PLATONIC MYSTICISM

Arthur Versluis, Platonic Mysticism: Contemplative Science, Philosophy, Literature, and Art. State University of New York Press, 2017

Although Platonic Mysticism is written for fellow academics by a scholar specialising in the subject – Arthur Versluis is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University – much of what it has to say has a wider relevance to we Magonians.

🔻

THE MAN WHO INVENTED SCIENCE

John Henry. Knowledge is Power: How Magic, the Government and an Apocalyptic Vision Helped Francis Bacon to Create Modern Science, Icon Books, 2017.

Knowledge is Power – reissued from 2002 as part of Icon Science’s 25th anniversary series on ‘groundbreaking moments in science history’ – is the perfect introduction to the life, work and legacy of Sir Francis Bacon, written by the ideal person for the job, John Henry being Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Edinburgh University. 

🔽

ENCHANTING MYTHS

Jason A. Josephson-Storm. The Myth of Disenchantment - Magic, Modernity and the Birth of the Human Sciences. The University of Chicago Press, 2017.

The key thought behind this scholarly work is the meaning and significance of 'disenchantment' (German: Entzauberung) in social science and Western intellectual culture. Max Weber (1864 - 1920), an influential German philosopher and one of the founders of 'sociology' as a new academic discipline

🔽

CONSCIOUS HUMOUR

David E. H. Jones. Why Are We Conscious? A Scientist’s Take on Consciousness and Extrasensory Perception.  Pan Stanford, 2017.

David E H Jones who died last July aged 79 was for many years the 'Daedalus' of the New Scientist and Nature. Daedalus was described in his Fortean Times obituary as “the court jester in the palace of science” and he himself described  it as “a region of scientific humour whose appeal lay in its closeness to reality”. (FT 359 p28)
🔻

SEEKING THE INTUITIVE GLUE

Gary Lachman. Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. Floris Books, 2017.

“That is the job of the left brain…Its business is to ‘unpack’ what the right brain ‘presents’ to ‘spell it out’ as it were, to focus on the individual trees that make up the forest given it by the right brain – and eventually to focus on the individual leaves of a given tree with ‘meaning perception’ while the left is concerned with ‘immediacy perception.’ We could also say that the left brain knows through Aquinas ‘active search’ for knowledge while the right has the ‘intuitive possession’ of it.”

🔻

UNPOPULAR PHILOSOPHY

David Benatar. The Human Predicament. A Candid Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions. Oxford University Press 2017

Please note the book title: it’s not the human condition or the human problem but The Human Predicament. To have a condition or a problem suggests a coming to terms with things, an answer and even an optimistic outcome. Predicament infers something more difficult, final, unanswerable and pessimistic.
🔻