Category Archives: Book Reviews
Some thoughts on Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind Of Science
By now, thanks to Newsweek, Time Magazine, the New York Times, and such, we have all heard about Stephen Wolfram and his new kind of book. It is a new kind of book in that a work of major scientific significance first finds its way through a book rather than via scientific journals, to …
Sanford, A. Whitney: Growing stories from India: religion and the fate of agriculture.
When small farm agriculture became big industrial it was thought that the transformation would solve all problems, and humanity would soon have plenty of grains to feed its growing numbers. But, as with all technology, far from solving our problems, industrial agriculture had led to other major problems. Books and articles have been written on …
Ferguson, Kitty: Stephen Hawking: an unfettered mind.
Stephen Hawking is a celebrity-physicist, known to physicists for his ground-breaking work on black holes, cosmology, imaginary time and such. To the general public he is an unusual genius: In spite of Lou Gehrig’s disease, he has been a prolific scientist, and a master-communicator of esoteric science. He became the occupant of a prestigious chair …
Greg Palast’s Book: Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivore
Such emotional and simplistic exclamations may soothe the confused minds and helpless predicament of the materially fattened Western world, which has been gradually realizing that industrialization involves environmental assault with implications for our survival, and good old capitalism can degenerate into obscene and callous greed leading to national suicide. However, such self-righteous book titles are …
Book Announcement
(New York, NY) Metanexus Institute announced today the publication of Indic Visions in an Age of Science as part of its continuing series of publications. Indic Visions is the tenth book by the scientist and humanist Varadaraja V. Raman. The book provides a detailed introduction to India’s religions with thoroughly contemporary interpretations thereof consistent with …
Kauffman, Stuart A. Reinventing the sacred: a new view of science, reason, and religion. Basic Books, 2008.
Stuart Kauffman is an ex-physician, expert in developmental genetics, founder of the BiosGroup in Santa Fe,and also highly respected for his work on complex systems. The book by this highly respected thinker of our times offers some insightful perspectives on the physical world. The classical and still current paradigm of science is that the “universe …
Martin A. Nowak with Roger Highfield’s SuperCooperators: altruism, evolution, and why we need each other to succeed, 2011
When grandma used to say, be good to others, when religions ask us to forgive, or when elders advice the young to work with rather than against one another, it all sounds old-fashioned and contrary to the competitive spirit. But in recent years psychology and empirical science have been suggesting that compassion, caring and cooperation …
S. Kalyanaraman, Rástram: Hindu History in the United Indian Ocean States, Sarasvati Research Center, 2011.
This is a book with an extraordinary sweep. It speaks of the commonalty of the nations (Ráshtras: States) bordering the vast expanse known as the Indian Ocean. It recalls their history, and shows the power and prestige of ancient Indic culture in these regions, not just in ages past but in modern times also. In …
Lorne Ladner, Ph.D., The Lost Art of Compassion: Discovering the Practice of Happiness in the Meeting of Buddhism and Psychology, 2004.
We live in an extraordinary age of wonderful scientific breakthroughs and marvelous technological achievements. Possibilities for cure of pernicious diseases and for health and longevity keep increasing. But ours is also an age of spiritual anguish and moral confusions, of promiscuous sex and savage violence. Crudeness, combativeness, and religious intolerance seem to be on the …
Judith P. Zinsser: Men, women, and the birthing of modern science (2005)
In any book on the history of science, ancient or modern, the majority of names are males. Yet from Hypatia of Alexandria and Lopamudra of Vedic India to a good many in current times, women have contributed to human knowledge and culture, often unobtrusively and under hindering restrictions. Nevertheless, in the 17th and 18th centuries, …
