My Book Reviews

  Spirituality My deepest belief is that spirituality is essentially a thrust within the human soul to connect with others and with whatever is the principle of life.  Capra gives the following descriptive definition which is quite similar but far more complete: “When the concept of the human spirit is understood as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels a sense of belonging, of connectedness, to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is spiritual in its deepest essence.  It is, therefore, not surprising that the emerging new vision of reality based on deep ecological awareness is consistent with the so-called "perennial philosophy" of spiritual traditions, whether we talk about the spirituality of Christian mystics, that of Buddhists , or the philosophy or cosmology underlying the Native American traditions .” (p. 7) Capra underscores the paradigm shift in our modern world from HIERARCHY to NETWORK in social organiza...

Some years back I read Fritjof Capra 's wonderful book, The Tao of Physics (Flamingo, 1992), which explored the parallels between Western (modern) physics and Eastern mysticism.   I have also read his Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with Remarkable People (Flamingo, 1988) and The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter (Flamingo, 1997).   My comments here will mostly focus on this last book as Capra attempts a new synthesis of Mind and Matter.   I am aware that these books are now somewhat dated. Still, their import and insights into the relationship between Spirituality and Science are universal and timeless, a sort of modern Perennial Philosophy . Here we have a highly trained physicist to a Ph.D. level, with an interest in Eastern and Ecological thinking arguing strongly and convincingly for the inherent power in life without taking refuge in either religious or metaphysical metaphor.   He is not setting out to convert anyone.   He merely sets out his...

Ivan Turgenev  ( 1818  —  1883) was a Russian novelist, short story  writer, poet, playwright, translator, and popularizer of Russian literature  in the West.  His dates make him a contemporary of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821  —   1881)  They differed greatly in social background, sensibility, style, and character.         Unlike Dostoevsky, Turgenev was of noble stock, had inherited much money, and had a much broader education than his fellow author, having studied  classics, Russian literature, and philology at the University of St Petersburg, and philosophy for three years at the University of Berlin.  Moreover, he spoke French, German, and English fluently.        Having spent time in the West, he is the most obvious example of what Russian traditionalists of the time called disparagingly the "Westernisers," being one of the intellectual revolutionaries of the 1840s as contrasted with...