There is arguably no more critical and pressing topic than the relation of science and religion in the modern world. Science has given us the methods for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Yet the two are seen as mutually exclusive, with wrenching consequences for humanity. In The Marriage of Sense and Soul, one of today's most important philosophers brilliantly articulates how we might begin to think about science and religion in ways that allow for their reconciliation and union, on terms that will be acceptable to both camps. Ken Wilber is widely acclaimed as the foremost thinker in integrating Western psychology and the Eastern spiritual traditions. His many books have reached across disciplines and synthesized the teachings of religion, psychology, physics, mysticism, sociology, and anthropology, earning him a devoted international following. The Marriage of Sense and Soul is his most accessible work yet, aimed at guiding a general audience to the mutual accord between the spiritual, subjective world of ancient wisdom and the objective, empirical world of modern knowledge. Wilber clearly and succinctly explores the schism between science and religion, and the impact of this "philosophical Cold War" on the fate of humanity. He systematically reviews previous attempts at integration, explaining why romantic, idealistic, and postmodern theories failed. And he demonstrates how science is compatible with certain deep features common to all of the world's major religious traditions. In pointing the way to a union between truth and meaning, Ken Wilber has created an elegant and accessible book that is breathtaking in its scope.
מתוך Publishers Weekly
Ever since the Copernican revolution, the battle lines between science and religion have been drawn. In succeeding generations, science and religion have been depicted as two cultural juggernauts slugging it out to establish their ideas as the dominant worldview. In his new book, Wilber (A Brief History of Everything) contends that attempts to reconcile science (sense) and religion (soul) have failed because scholars have not taken into account the fundamental differences between the two. Science, he argues, is a product of modernity characterized by differentiation?a spiritless materialism. Religion, on the other hand, is a product of a premodern worldview less enamored of a portrait of reality (viewed as so much soulless matter) and characterized by an emphasis on humanity's connection to a spiritual dimension. Using A.O. Lovejoy's idea of the Great Chain of Being, Wilber fashions what he calls "the Great Nest of Being" in which soul, body, matter, mind and spirit intersect and coalesce. Imitating Plato's scheme of realms of truth, knowledge and reality, Wilber divides his Great Nest into four quadrants, each of which has a subjective, objective, intersubjective and interobjective dimension. Wilber contends that this scheme of unity-in-diversity provides the key to integrating science and religion. As ambitious as it is, Wilber's study is filled with simplistic generalizations ("Modern science and premodern religion aggressively inhabit the same globe, each vying, in its own way, for world domination") and mushy quasi-romantic pronouncements ("Art is the Beauty of Spirit/ Art is in the eye of the beholder, in the I of the beholder: Art is the I of the Spirit."). Moreover, in order to marry sense and soul, Wilber does violence to science by representing it in terms of spirit rather than on its own terms. Wilber's attempt to integrate science and religion is far surpassed by physicist Ian Barbour's trenchant Religion and Science. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
מתוך Library Journal
This book is an intriguing attempt at finding common foundations or agreements between scientific and religious world views. Wilber (The Eye of Spirit, LJ 2/15/97) relies heavily on traditional philosophers to support his argument for multiple layers of knowing and the potential of empirical science to accept it. At the same time, he suggests that the religious world needs to be open to new ways of spiritual knowledge and validation. Wilber is writing for a popular audience, and his easy-to-read work will likely be compared to Paul Davies's The Mind of God (S. & S., 1992) and Connie Barlow's Green Space, Green Time (LJ 11/1/97). While he has not given us the ultimate answer to the division between science and religion, his book is worth reading. For large public and academic libraries.?Eric D. Albright, Duke Univ. Medical Ctr. Lib., Durham, N.C. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
uably no more critical and pressing topic than the relation of science and religion in the modern world. Science has given us the methods for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Yet the two are seen as mutually exclusive, with wrenching consequences for humanity. In The Marriage of Sense and Soul, one of today's most important philosophers brilliantly articulates how we might begin to think about science and religion in ways that allow for their reconciliation and union, on terms that will be acceptable to both camps. Ken Wilber is widely acclaimed as the foremost thinker in integrating Western psychology and the Eastern spiritual traditions. His many books have reached across disciplines and synthesized the teachings of religion, psychology, physics, mysticism, sociology, and anthropology, earning him a devoted international following. The Marriage of Sense and Soul is his most accessible wor
מתוך גב הספר
"No one--not even Jung--has done as much as Wilber to open Western psychology to the durable insights of the world's wisdom traditions. Slowly, surely, book by book, Ken Wilber is laying the foundations for a genuine East/West integration." --Houston Smith, author of The World's Religions
"Ken Wilber is one of the most important pioneers in the field of consciousness in this century. I regard him as my mentor. He is a source of inspiration and insight to all of us. Read everything he writes. It will change your life." --Deepak Chopra, M.D., author of The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents
"The Marriage of Sense and Soul handles this difficult topic as well as anything I've seen. At one and the same time, it offers the reader philosophy with a tender heart and spirituality with analytical rigor. After reading Wilber, it's impossible to imagine looking at the world the same way again." --Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus, Inc.
"Ken Wilber is one of the important philosophers of our era, and a writer of striking lucidity. His new book on religion and science is a transforming experience." --Daniel Yankelovich, president of Public Agenda, author of Ego and Instinct and The Magic of Dialog
"Ken Wilber might very well have succeeded in this most important of tasks. Nobody is integrating the sciences and spiritual knowledge with Wilber's scope and integrative power. This book is certainly the best treatment I have seen of this topic, and, like other of Wilber's books, promises to be history-making." --Michael Murphy, cofounder of the Esalen Institute, author of Golf in the Kingdom and The Future of the Body
"Ken Wilber is one of our most creative and significant thinkers, and his work models what philosophy, social theory, and intellectual life ought to be about. Wilber is brilliant at capturing the entire development of human thought, showing its limitations, helping us find avenues of transcendence. Wilber blends a perceptive sensitivity to the nuances of spiritual life with a profound intellectual sophistication. The upshot is a pleasure to read: accessible, deep, provocative, and ultimately very moving." --Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, author of The Politics of Meaning
על המחבר
Ken Wilber's first book, The Spectrum of Con-sciousness, written when he was only twenty-three, was hailed as "the most sensible, comprehensive book about consciousness since William James. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; A Brief History of Everything; and The Eye of Spirit; and his large readership has kept all of his books in print. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
There is arguably no more critical and pressing topic than the relation of science and religion in the modern world. Science has given us the methods for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Yet the two are seen as mutually exclusive, with wrenching consequences for humanity. In The Marriage of Sense and Soul, one of today's most important philosophers brilliantly articulates how we might begin to think about science and religion in ways that allow for their reconciliation and union, on terms that will be acceptable to both camps.
Ken Wilber is widely acclaimed as the foremost thinker in integrating Western psychology and the Eastern spiritual traditions. His many books have reached across disciplines and synthesized the teachings of religion, psychology, physics, mysticism, sociology, and anthropology, earning him a devoted international following. The Marriage of Sense and Soul is his most accessible work yet, aimed at guiding a general audience to the mutual accord between the spiritual, subjective world of ancient wisdom and the objective, empirical world of modern knowledge.
Wilber clearly and succinctly explores the schism between science and religion, and the impact of this "philosophical Cold War" on the fate of humanity. He systematically reviews previous attempts at integration, explaining why romantic, idealistic, and postmodern theories failed. And he demonstrates how science is compatible with certain deep features common to all of the world's major religious traditions. In pointing the way to a union between truth and meaning, Ken Wilber has created an elegant and accessible book that is breathtaking in its scope.
מתוך Publishers Weekly
Ever since the Copernican revolution, the battle lines between science and religion have been drawn. In succeeding generations, science and religion have been depicted as two cultural juggernauts slugging it out to establish their ideas as the dominant worldview. In his new book, Wilber (A Brief History of Everything) contends that attempts to reconcile science (sense) and religion (soul) have failed because scholars have not taken into account the fundamental differences between the two. Science, he argues, is a product of modernity characterized by differentiation?a spiritless materialism. Religion, on the other hand, is a product of a premodern worldview less enamored of a portrait of reality (viewed as so much soulless matter) and characterized by an emphasis on humanity's connection to a spiritual dimension. Using A.O. Lovejoy's idea of the Great Chain of Being, Wilber fashions what he calls "the Great Nest of Being" in which soul, body, matter, mind and spirit intersect and coalesce. Imitating Plato's scheme of realms of truth, knowledge and reality, Wilber divides his Great Nest into four quadrants, each of which has a subjective, objective, intersubjective and interobjective dimension. Wilber contends that this scheme of unity-in-diversity provides the key to integrating science and religion. As ambitious as it is, Wilber's study is filled with simplistic generalizations ("Modern science and premodern religion aggressively inhabit the same globe, each vying, in its own way, for world domination") and mushy quasi-romantic pronouncements ("Art is the Beauty of Spirit/ Art is in the eye of the beholder, in the I of the beholder: Art is the I of the Spirit."). Moreover, in order to marry sense and soul, Wilber does violence to science by representing it in terms of spirit rather than on its own terms. Wilber's attempt to integrate science and religion is far surpassed by physicist Ian Barbour's trenchant Religion and Science.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
מתוך Library Journal
This book is an intriguing attempt at finding common foundations or agreements between scientific and religious world views. Wilber (The Eye of Spirit, LJ 2/15/97) relies heavily on traditional philosophers to support his argument for multiple layers of knowing and the potential of empirical science to accept it. At the same time, he suggests that the religious world needs to be open to new ways of spiritual knowledge and validation. Wilber is writing for a popular audience, and his easy-to-read work will likely be compared to Paul Davies's The Mind of God (S. & S., 1992) and Connie Barlow's Green Space, Green Time (LJ 11/1/97). While he has not given us the ultimate answer to the division between science and religion, his book is worth reading. For large public and academic libraries.?Eric D. Albright, Duke Univ. Medical Ctr. Lib., Durham, N.C.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
מתוך Kirkus Reviews
Yet another unsuccessful attempt to integrate all of science and all of religion in one Grand Unified Theory. Wilber has attempted before to wed the warring camps of science and religion (A Brief History of Everything; not reviewed; Up From Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution, 1981; etc.). Here he claims that science is one of the major differentiations of modernity'' that have shattered a previously unified worldview in which all disciplines worked together in the same search for meaning. Today, he says, truth and meaning are distinct; science can provide the former, but religion is necessary to confer the latter. Wilber writes that we need tointegrate the Great Chain [of being] with the major differentiations of modernity,'' including science. Fair enough, but he never really explains how this is supposed to occur. Blithely brushing aside centuries-old epistemological dilemmas about how we can know the world, Wilber claims that the empirical methods of science can be applied to mental and spiritual experience. The words experience, knowledge, and empirical seem to be equated in Wilbers loose arguments. As for religion, he considers it in terms of function, devoid of specific contents, such as the belief that the Red Sea parted for the Israelites or in the virgin birth of Jesus. He never truly defines what he means by religion, which he inexplicably, continually refers to as premodern.'' So, too, scientists may quibble with Wilber's vague generalizations aboutthe scientific method.'' What kind of science? What types of religion? Wilber's lack of specificity makes this book an exercise in theoretical, purely academic navel-gazing. This fusion of science and religion fails to take either discipline seriously as multifaceted, complex sets of meaning. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
מתוך דש הספר
uably no more critical and pressing topic than the relation of science and religion in the modern world. Science has given us the methods for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Yet the two are seen as mutually exclusive, with wrenching consequences for humanity. In The Marriage of Sense and Soul, one of today's most important philosophers brilliantly articulates how we might begin to think about science and religion in ways that allow for their reconciliation and union, on terms that will be acceptable to both camps.
Ken Wilber is widely acclaimed as the foremost thinker in integrating Western psychology and the Eastern spiritual traditions. His many books have reached across disciplines and synthesized the teachings of religion, psychology, physics, mysticism, sociology, and anthropology, earning him a devoted international following. The Marriage of Sense and Soul is his most accessible wor
מתוך גב הספר
"No one--not even Jung--has done as much as Wilber to open Western psychology to the durable insights of the world's wisdom traditions. Slowly, surely, book by book, Ken Wilber is laying the foundations for a genuine East/West integration."
--Houston Smith, author of The World's Religions
"Ken Wilber is one of the most important pioneers in the field of consciousness in this century. I regard him as my mentor. He is a source of inspiration and insight to all of us. Read everything he writes. It will change your life."
--Deepak Chopra, M.D., author of The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents
"The Marriage of Sense and Soul handles this difficult topic as well as anything I've seen. At one and the same time, it offers the reader philosophy with a tender heart and spirituality with analytical rigor. After reading Wilber, it's impossible to imagine looking at the world the same way again."
--Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus, Inc.
"Ken Wilber is one of the important philosophers of our era, and a writer of striking lucidity. His new book on religion and science is a transforming experience."
--Daniel Yankelovich, president of Public Agenda, author of Ego and Instinct and The Magic of Dialog
"Ken Wilber might very well have succeeded in this most important of tasks. Nobody is integrating the sciences and spiritual knowledge with Wilber's scope and integrative power. This book is certainly the best treatment I have seen of this topic, and, like other of Wilber's books, promises to be history-making."
--Michael Murphy, cofounder of the Esalen Institute, author of Golf in the Kingdom and The Future of the Body
"Ken Wilber is one of our most creative and significant thinkers, and his work models what philosophy, social theory, and intellectual life ought to be about. Wilber is brilliant at capturing the entire development of human thought, showing its limitations, helping us find avenues of transcendence. Wilber blends a perceptive sensitivity to the nuances of spiritual life with a profound intellectual sophistication. The upshot is a pleasure to read: accessible, deep, provocative, and ultimately very moving."
--Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, author of The Politics of Meaning
על המחבר
Ken Wilber's first book, The Spectrum of Con-sciousness, written when he was only twenty-three, was hailed as "the most sensible, comprehensive book about consciousness since William James. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; A Brief History of Everything; and The Eye of Spirit; and his large readership has kept all of his books in print. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.