From Science to God
A Physicists Journey into the Mystery of Consciousness
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- £9.49
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- £9.49
Publisher Description
From Science to God offers a crash course in the nature of reality. It is the story of Peter Russell's lifelong exploration into the nature of consciousness — how he went from being a strict atheist, studying mathematics and physics at Cambridge University, to realizing a profound personal synthesis of the mystical and scientific. Using his own tale of curiosity and exploration as the book’s backbone, Russell blends physics, psychology, and philosophy to reach a new worldview in which consciousness is a fundamental quality of creation. He shows how all the ingredients for this worldview are in place; nothing new needs to be discovered. We have only to put the pieces together and explore the new picture of reality that emerges.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Russell, a "scientist at heart," seems somewhat oversold as a physicist, although his undergraduate work at Cambridge brought him into Steven Hawking's office on occasion. But his curiosity about the mystery of consciousness is real enough, leading him from a fascination with TM in his student days to studies in India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, to a successful career as a corporate consultant on meditation, creativity and personal development. Russell's explanations and arguments are generally clear enough presumably well-suited for seminar audiences if a bit superficial when presented in book format. He rightly complains that the establishment science and philosophy of the 1960s showed minimal interest in problems of consciousness, but barely acknowledges subsequent developments in neuroscience, cognitive science and philosophy of mind that have attempted more or less successfully to grapple with these problems. Instead, he offers readers an unexceptional argument for a "metaparadigm shift" in which consciousness is accepted as a fundamental constituent of the universe and of scientific explanations, supplemented by analogies between consciousness, light and God and a lavish abundance of epigrammatic quotes from Einstein, Schr dinger and Eastern religious teachers. Readers in search of "a journey of ideas that starts with science and arrives at God" can find much more to work with in the writings of Douglas Hofstadter, Paul Davies and John Polkinghorne.
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