Reenchantment of the World

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Summary: If you find this interesting...
Review: ...then I would highly recommend that you read "Maps of Meaning" by Jordan B Peterson.

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Summary: Heaven on Earth
Review: An examination of how science is predatory of other cosmologies. Ever wonder how and why we subordinate all other modes of knowing to the scientific mode? How we expect science to solve all the problems created by our misuse of science? How the natural world was purged of "God?" Read this book.

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Summary: A marvelous intellectual tour-de-force
Review: [e-mail] from Bendigo Australia, 03/19/98, rating=8: Towards a New Metaphysic by Ian Irvine, for 'The Animist' Electronic Journal, [e-mail] This ambitious and thought provoking work redefines two concepts few modern Westerners would recognise to be central to both the past and the future of the human species. The two concepts are 'enchantment' and 'disenchantment'. In Berman's text, these concepts carry much more weight than they do to the average person on the street. In the text they are defined and juxtaposed in relation to an overview of human psycho-history from primitivity to the present. In this sense, 'enchantment' relates to the inner perception of self, community and cosmos as 'animated', 'alive', replete with 'soul' and 'meaning'. In an less positive sense, 'disenchantment', according to Berman, is the condition of percieving those same things from a narrow 'materialistic' perspective alone. The disenchanted mind reduces/explains away people, animals, plants, community, nature etc. as mere chance events, chemical reactions, in short, as 'matter without soul or mind'. As you can see, Berman is hard indeed on the Cartesian worlview, critiquing it for the psycho-spiritual poverty and soul instability it fosters. To rectify the problem, Berman calls for a 'new animism' or 'pantheism'. To this end, he reworks Reichian, Batesonian/Cybernetic and, to a lesser extent, Jungian, insights, in an attempt to give birth to a less alienated worldview which might better serve our species into the new millenium. His own contributions to that outlook he labels 'A Prolegomena to a new Metaphysic.' Berman's critique is excellent and his aim is commendable and timely, however, one ends up feeling that the new 'animism without god' he outlines remains trapped, if not in materialistic paradigms, certainly in other paradigms arising out of the Western Enlightenment. The mind side of the Descartean dualism seems to dominate (as a corrective to the 'matter' obsessions of the scientist), however, the mind described strikes me as itself disenchanted. A paradoxical outcome given Berman's laudable intentions. The problem arises from his over-reliance on Reich and Bateson; two wonderful thinkers, certainly, but thinkers who themselves never quite addressed the full limitations of the scientific method. Despite these minor critiques, the book is clearly a classic critique of the 'philosophy of modernity', and as such will gain more publicity as the crisis of the postmodern deepens into the new millennium. The text deals with some of the great philosophical and psychological issues of the age, and one gets the impression that behind every sentence is a thinker fully conscious of the gravity of the times. Berman is an adventurous writer and is fully prepared to risk all for the sake of blazing new trails of thought that might shock us out of outdated, even noxious, worldviews. A must to read.

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Summary: Excellent work, highly recommended.
Review: Far from being antiscientific, with definitive precision Berman demonstrates the neurotic distortions that the Cartesian paradigm has set in motion, revealing his visionary comprehension of the human experience and his insight into the entire Man, mind, body and soul.

He treats Newton with all fairness, unmoved by the applause of the sterile masses of University elite which have elevated the man to Godhood throughout the centuries. As the psalmist says, "What is Man but a breath that passes?...Where were you when I laid the foundations of the deep?"

Any world veiw that forgets this human composition must necessarily lead to severe disruption of the human family. Science, divorced from reason, wisdom tradition, and high theology, and the objective methods upon which it was founded, will lead to an impoverishing rationalism that starves the soul. It will become a sort of false magic entrancing men with debasing theories, desecting Man into a mere biologic product. Hence the rise of mass genocides in the 20th century.

This was an excellent read which deeply effected the course of my studies for years.

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Summary: Reality denied
Review: This book purports to be an account of how the modern scientific world view achieved its current prominence. In reality, it is an unintentionally funny paean to irrationality.

An unjustified anti-scientism pervades nearly every page. Some examples: "The success of the mechanical world view cannot be attributed to any inherent validity it might possess..." Really? Does he mean that things *don't* fall on the earth with an acceleration of 32 feet/sec/sec ? It's all just an illusion?

Of alchemy: "The literature of alchemy records that gold was in fact produced, and the testimony is not so easily dismissed." Let's see, would the fact that (a) alchemists had a very powerful incentive to falsely *claim* they produced gold and (b) there is no known chemical process by which gold can be produced (short of nuclear bombardment) from other atoms, have *anything* at all to do with it? Berman ignores the possibility of fraud and essentially advocates disregarding all we know about modern physics.

Along the way, Berman approvingly cites many of the high priests of irrationality such as Wilhelm Reich (some of whose work is based on the fraudulent "orgone energy", an energy no reputable physicist has ever been able to detect), Carlos Castaneda (whose claimed experiences under teacher Don Juan have now been exposed as hoaxes) and Alfred Korzybski.

This is the work of an author desperately envious of the success of the scientific world-view, who wants to replace it by an anti-scientific creed where merely wishing something makes it true. Read it to understand the danger that shoddy thinking poses, and please, somebody buy Berman a subscription to the _Skeptical Inquirer_!

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Summary: Interesting from a Historical Perspective
Review: This is the first "New Age" book I read - in 1990 or so - so alot of the concepts were new to me then. I would recommend this book if you are interested in the history of ideas, since Berman paints a pretty stark picture of the world as a machine versus the world as an organism, or something alive. I particularly enjoyed reading about Newton's role as an alchemist. There are some streches here, but even if you don't "buy into" those stretches it still makes compelling reading. The book is well illustrated. The cover of the first edition paperback, by the way, is much more interesting than the new cover.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting from a Historical Perspective
Review: This is the first "New Age" book I read - in 1990 or so - so alot of the concepts were new to me then. I would recommend this book if you are interested in the history of ideas, since Berman paints a pretty stark picture of the world as a machine versus the world as a organisms, or something alive. I particularly enjoyed reading about Newton's role as an alchemist. There are some streches here, but even if you don't "buy into" those stretches it still makes compelling reading. The book is well illustrated. The cover of the first edition paperback, by the way, is much more interesting than the new cover.