The flip Epiphanies of mind and the future of knowledge

Kripal (Secret Body), a professor of religion at Rice University, provocatively argues against the supremacy of science in this theoretical exploration of consciousness. He lays out several examples of what he calls "the flip": an experience so anomalous and moving that it radically affirms a cosmic consciousness. His examples come from scientists who have had near-death experiences or apparently telepathic or prophetic communication, and other seemingly paranormal events. For instance, Francis Bacon, the "father of modern empiricism," also experienced "natural divination." Kripal assails the scientific fixation on consciousness as a mechanical process and advances a theory of the brain as a filter of external information rather than the originator of thought. He questions the uncanny ability of mathematics to model reality and the dominance of physics by drawing from ancient and contemporary philosophies that offer alternate understandings of reality, such as the ancient Greek philosophers, the modern skeptic Michael Shermer, and even Albert Einstein. Then, taking a wider focus, he closes with the possible ethical implications of valuing the humanities, which he believes could be a counterforce to the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism. At times unsettling and always precise, this polemic will ignite conversations about the limits of science and the potential for dramatic shifts in perspective. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In which the material world dissolves into the immaterial and all that we know from traditional material science melts into air.What's a flip? By the account of Kripal (Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions, 2017, etc.), who holds a chair in religious thought and philosophy at Rice University and a research post at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, it's an intuitive leap that leads to a new understanding of a scientific problem or reality: "a radically new real can appear with the simplest of flips,' or reversals of perspective, roughly, from the outside' of things to the inside' of things." Some of these flips might be such things as Archimedes' bathtub-born insight into the displacement of volume and Friedrich August Kekul's dream about the snake eating its tail that led to his divination of how the benzene ring works. Kripal goes a little farther into the land of esoterica, noting, for instance, that Marie Curie was no stranger to sances, while Wolfgang Pauli "was a pioneering quantum physicist around whose presence poltergeist phenomena erupted regularly." Philosopher A.J. Ayer returned from a near-death experience rather confused about what he saw on the other side, except to announce to the medical staff who revived him, "you are all mad," while neuroscientist Marjorie Hines Woollacott drew scientific insight from an experience with a swami in the nature of consciousness, which is "most likely not an emergent property of brain matter, contrary to what everyone around her in her professional life seemed to assume." Some of the science seems squishy even as Kripal insists that quantum physics is a "flipped science"i.e., "one in which consciousness is no longer understood as an epiphenomenon, but as fundamental to the very nature of nature." More easily comprehensible is the author's idea that the humanities be reconceived as "the study of consciousness coded in culture," which has fruitful possibilities.Kripal's book won't quite silence the inner skeptic in those trained in such truths as the laws of thermodynamics, but it offers plenty of points to ponder. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.