Hi there, Writers! The thing about being a writer ... you gotta write! A book, a blog, a song, a short story ... there's no end to it. I write book reviews for a magazine called 'The Light Connection,' and every once in a while I'll be sharing a book with you that I particularly enjoyed. So here goes ... Punk Science |
When was the last time you sat under a tree (without a book) and let your mind go, marveling at the wonder of it all? Punk Science was born of such an experience. The author sat in an oak tree and attempted to feel the rotation of the earth, and ...
“Suddenly,” he says, “I was thrust into an infinity of spinning orbs. In a moment that seemed to transcend space and time, … I understood what I now call the Black Hole Principle. All the pieces of information I had been studying suddenly fitted together into a framework that is elegant and simple, but also allows for infinite, emergent complexity. This vision has formed the basis for this book and is nothing less than a new view of the cosmos.”
Pretty powerful claim, that. And all this from a medical doctor with a passion for putting his vision to work to offer physicists a framework big enough to hold the all-too-familiar details they wrestle with (and blog about) on a daily basis.
The early pages launch the conversation on which the book hinges: Is consciousness a result of chemical (and perhaps other) processes, or is it the other way around? Moving right into string theory and M-theory, he lays a layman-friendly foundation for seeing things in the latter light.
“We have gone as far as we can with the material paradigm,” he asserts. And then he asks, “Is anybody [today] making those giant leaps of consciousness that have always taken us forward in science? … We need people who firmly understand that consciousness is fundamental to the universe: people who know that the universe is intelligent, because they experience it as such. Like Pythagoras, Newton and Faraday, they have the skill of merging their consciousness with the universe in order to gain insights into its workings.”
Let me not give the impression he favors throwing the scientific method overboard. No, it has its place. But that place, he argues, is after-the-fact—once we have the vision, we must, as Einstein and others did, use mathematics and experimentation to support or disprove it.
I found the book an enjoyable and stimulating read. Of course, it probably helped that I agreed with him from the outset. I learned a few wonderful things and found that the book left me more able to converse about what's going on in physics, which in turn brought its own share of enjoyment. If you like to feel “in the know” without having to puzzle things out too much, you may enjoy it, too.
And check out my web site: www.wordweaver4U.com — a great place for a writer to go!
—Chiwah
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