The Flip
Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
“One of the most provocative new books of the year, and, for me, mindblowing.” —Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind
“Kripal makes many sympathetic points about the present spiritual state of America. . . . [He] continues to believe that spirituality and science should not contradict each other.” —New York Times Book Review
“Kripal prompts us to reflect on our personal assumptions, as well as the shared assumptions that create and maintain our institutions. . . . [His] work will likely become more and more relevant to more and more areas of inquiry as the century unfolds. It may even open up a new space for Americans to reevaluate the personal and cultural narratives they have inherited, and to imagine alternative futures.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
A “flip,” writes Jeffrey J. Kripal, is “a reversal of perspective,” “a new real,” often born of an extreme, life-changing experience. The Flip is Kripal’s ambitious, visionary program for unifying the sciences and the humanities to expand our minds, open our hearts, and negotiate a peaceful resolution to the culture wars. Combining accounts of rationalists’ spiritual awakenings and consciousness explorations by philosophers, neuroscientists, and mystics within a framework of the history of science and religion, Kripal compellingly signals a path to mending our fractured world.
Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University and is the associate director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. He has previously taught at Harvard Divinity School and Westminster College and is the author of eight books, including The Flip. He lives in Houston, Texas.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kripal (Secret Body), a professor of religion at Rice University, provocatively argues against the supremacy of science in this theoretical exploration of consciousness. He lays out several examples of what he calls "the flip": an experience so anomalous and moving that it radically affirms a cosmic consciousness. His examples come from scientists who have had near-death experiences or apparently telepathic or prophetic communication, and other seemingly paranormal events. For instance, Francis Bacon, the "father of modern empiricism," also experienced "natural divination." Kripal assails the scientific fixation on consciousness as a mechanical process and advances a theory of the brain as a filter of external information rather than the originator of thought. He questions the uncanny ability of mathematics to model reality and the dominance of physics by drawing from ancient and contemporary philosophies that offer alternate understandings of reality, such as the ancient Greek philosophers, the modern skeptic Michael Shermer, and even Albert Einstein. Then, taking a wider focus, he closes with the possible ethical implications of valuing the humanities, which he believes could be a counterforce to the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism. At times unsettling and always precise, this polemic will ignite conversations about the limits of science and the potential for dramatic shifts in perspective.
