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Title: Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas ISBN: 0-345-36809-6 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 16 March, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (41 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: History and Philosophy Overview
Comment: Tarnas has produced in this book an accessible review of Western cultural developments. By condensing, sensing patterns, and editing as an author inevitably must, he omits some of what more specialized readers might want. However, his intention is less encyclopedic completeness than a hypothesis about the trajectory of Western cultural change. To this end he writes engagingly and informatively. His synthetic, pattern-sensing thought about history is interesting. He appears overly influenced by newer trends in theories about gender roles, psychology, and spirituality. Here he resembles Leonard Schlain of the "Goddess and the Alphabet" ramblings. By the last chapter he is fully immersed in speculation that many, myself included, find unjustified by the preceding survey and assembly of evidence. However, speculation is the stuff of philosophers and theoreticians, and I wouldn't necessarily dismiss the body of the book because of disagreements with Tarnas' prognostications. Alongside other surveys like Daniel Robinson's "Intellectual History of Psychology" and Robert Kegan's "In Over Our Heads," readers can derive fascinating insights about cultural development.
Rating: 3
Summary: This author, and I, live in different twentieth centuries
Comment: This book starts well. I found the introduction to Greek philosophy rewarding in the way it made clear various strands running through the work of Plato and Aristotle. Later he piqued my interest in medieval scholastic philosophy. His summaries of Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler seem sound. In fact as far as Kant it's hard to find fault with this book.
Unfortunately after Kant things become a little different. You see this is not what it purports to be - an introduction to the history of Western thought. It is the history of Western thought from the point of view of a member of a philosophy department in a Western university - and not just any philosophy department - a *Continental* philosophy department. To read this book you'd think that much of the intellectual life of the twentieth century had simply never happened. Tarnas chooses to completely ignore almost all Anglo-American empiricist philosophy in the last 100 years and clearly has little or no knowledge of sc! ! ientific developments. Almost his only mention of twentieth century scientists, besides the obvious Einstein, is a list of scientists who have prominence purely because of popular science literature - and even here Tarnas is unable to distinguish between genius and merely crackpot.
The book has a chapter called the 'Crisis in Science'. Besides the obvious and well known moral issues surrounding science this chapter bears no relation to anything that I experienced as someone who grew up within the scientific tradition. In fact I am at a complete loss to know what his crisis is - unless it be the general problem that academic work (in all fields) is now so specialised that philosophers, who like to make their field *everything*, can no longer hope to understand what takes place outside their field.
It's not just in the 'hard' sciences that Tarnas is out of his depth - I was astonished to find him citing the work of Sapir and Whorf in linguistics which has now been completely! ! discredited. Tarnas believes the feminist so-called critiq! ue of science to be one of the most significant advances in the philosophy of science - and yet a large number of intellectuals would find it laughable (though one might argue, of course, that this is a sign of genius).
Nonetheless I have still awarded this book a generous 3 out of 5 because the earlier parts of this book are so illuminating and because, for all I know, the later parts are a genuine reflection of the author's own particular strand of Western thought if not of a major part of it.
One last word: readers of this book would do well to review the epilogue first - that way they can find out just where the author is coming from.
Rating: 4
Summary: An engaging survey of Western thought
Comment: This engaging summary propels readers through the epic story of how Western thought has evolved through the centuries. If you are new to philosophy, you will find that this book gives a lucid overview of subjects ranging from the early Greeks through the evolution of Christian thought, and proceeding onward through the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution to current-day Postmodernism. This book gives many insights on the context underlying current-day views and assumptions about man's place in the universe. If you seek answers to existential questions or religious uncertainties, you may find the Epilogue wanting, but the book as a whole will intrigue you.
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Title: A History of Knowledge : Past, Present, and Future by Charles Van Doren ISBN: 0345373162 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 17 March, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Wounded Body: Remembering the Markings of Flesh by Dennis Patrick Slattery ISBN: 0791443825 Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman ISBN: 0060905638 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 28 January, 1978 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Primary Readings in Philosophy for Understanding Theology by Diogenes Allen, Eric O. Springsted ISBN: 0664252087 Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press Pub. Date: December, 1992 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time by Will Durant ISBN: 0743235533 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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