From Science to God

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAR 31, 2003

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.