Absence of mind The dispelling of inwardness from the modern myth of the self

In these Terry Foundation lectures on religion in the light of science and philosophy, a distinguished writer addresses the issue of mind as the creator and bearer of cultural and historical meanings that she insists are essential to the understanding of human nature. Robinson, the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, criticizes the theories of positivists, behaviorists, neo-Darwinists, and Freudians--whom she accuses of erecting monistic systems of thought that denigrate the ability of the mind to achieve self-understanding and that result in the exclusion of felt experience from accessible empirical data. Those things that most distinguish the human species are thereby excluded from the definition of the human person. Robinson faults claims of a threshold moment that radically separates the modern from the primitive world and that casts those aspects of human thought and achievement prior to the threshold moment into a state of error or irrelevance accorded the "primitive." Her critique is balanced, well informed, and supported by careful research. Fundamentalists, whether theistic or atheistic, will probably be irritated by this volume; however, readers interested in seriously thinking about science, culture, and religion, and their interrelationships, will find this book rewarding. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers. S. C. Pearson emeritus, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville

Robinson's new nonfiction work is drawn from her 2009 Terry lectures at Yale. More precisely, they are "lectures on religion in the light of science and philosophy." The charge is ambitious, and Robinson brings to the task a suitably wide-ranging perspective. She takes aim at the modern scholarly propensity to debunk, a practice she calls "flawed learnedness." It pitches out the babies of human insight with the bathwater of the past, preferring what she calls "parascience," a kind of pseudoscience that prizes certainty. This "parascience" is a latecomer in human thought, the product of only the last 150 years or so. Because it closes off questions, it's not even scientific. Nor does it allow space for the human mind and all the mind has produced in history and civilization. This is heady stuff that will particularly appeal to those familiar with the history of ideas and the many thinkers she cites, and to anyone willing to ponder broadly and humanistically about imponderable matters. Those who savor Robinson's clear prose will also be gratified; her mind, in thought, is elegant. (May) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.