Publication Reviews
We invite you to read the reviews and learn more about our sponsored publications and videos. A book, The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology by Wolfgang Smith and a video, Shakespeare's Spirituality: A Perspective. An Interview with Dr. Martin Lings.
The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology
Contemporary Science in Light of Tradition
by Wolfgang Smith
Reviewed by Marilyn Prever
Is boredom and meaninglessness the price we have to pay for the blessings of scientific progress? Yes, says Wolfgang Smith, unless we can effect the regeneration of science itself from subatomic physics all the way up to the Big Picture, cosmology by putting it back on the right metaphysical foundation. Nobody does scientific research in a vacuum it is shaped by, and shapes, the culture around it. The picture of reality that we think has been "discovered by science" owes more than we know to the philosophy it was built on.
There is nobody quite like Dr. Smith. Some scientists tinker with philosophy, and some philosophers specialize in the philosophy of science, but here is a man of high achievement in both fields: a physicist and research mathematician whose work in aerodynamics laid the groundwork for the solution of the re-entry problem, and also a philosopher rooted in the classical realism of the Aristotelian/Thomist synthesis as well as Buddhist and Vedantic thought.
This, his fourth full-length book, builds on the work of two of his others, Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief (1984), and The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key (1995).
In the former, he liberates us from some dangerous philosophical dogmas disguised as science, tracing them back to their roots in Descartes "bifurcationism," which leaves us in a position where "the soul has no windows." (In my opinion, two of the chapters, "Lost Horizons" and "Progress' in Retrospect" ought to be made up into leaflets and airdropped like CARE packages over our Ivy League universities.)
The Quantum Enigma is a ground breaking solution to the "quantum reality problem" which eliminates the paradoxes (though not the mystery!) of the bewildering world of quantum physics without any ad hoc hypotheses. He accomplishes this feat by integrating the latest observations of modern physics into the ancient Perennial Philosophy the traditional metaphysical wisdom of mankind. (If you can read a description of the famed "double slit experiment" and go on with your life without being bothered by it, don't read Wolfgang Smith; just go back to sleep.)
The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology continues from where The Quantum Enigma leaves off. It's a collection of articles published between 1997 and 2002, revised and unified, explaining this new approach and then expanding it into the realm of modern cosmology insofar as such a thing exists! (The trouble is, we hardly have a cosmology anymore, only a cosmography. Our universe is too small.) His main thesis is that we moderns, in rejecting the traditional understanding of the cosmos in favor of some form of reductionism, and turning science (really, an ideology called scientism) into a religion, have not only lost a priceless heritage of truth, but even prevented ourselves from understanding science, especially the new discoveries whose meaning is so puzzling as long as our hidden philosophical premises remain unexamined and yet this very fact indicates that science itself may be pointing the way to the correction of scientism. Read the rest of the review...
Shakespeare's Spirituality: A Perspective. An Interview with Dr. Martin Lings
Produced and Directed by Ira B. Zinman
Reviewed by Abigail Tardiff
When Martin Lings saw a Shakespeare play performed for the first time, for several days afterwards he found himself "plunged into an extraordinary state of happiness" such as he had never experienced before. Which play was it that caused him such euphoria? It was Othello–not only a tragedy, but arguably the most heart-rending of all of Shakespeare's tragedies.
How could such a sad play produce such joy? Dr. Lings, in this interview by Ira Zinman, illuminates his experience–which is surely shared by many who appreciate the works of Shakespeare–by explaining the nature of sacred art, in the context of an account of his own life's spiritual journey. The resulting film will be appreciated both by admirers of Lings, who will treasure this last footage of Dr. Lings before his death, and anyone who has experienced the sacred in a work of fiction and wondered how it can reside there.
The function of literature, like that of all art, explains Dr. Lings, is not to preach, but to reveal. A play reveals spiritual wisdom by drawing us into it, "from cold objectivity to the warmth of subjectivity." The audience is not being offered spiritual laws and principles, but individual characters–and so, in the words of Titus Burckhardt, whom Dr. Lings quotes, by watching the play we are able to "participate naturally, and almost involuntarily, in the world of holiness."
Dr. Lings is specific. He uses examples from many of Shakespeare's plays not only to make his case that Shakespeare's plays are indeed sacred (though non-liturgical) art, but also that they are concerned with the esoteric theme of the purification of the human soul, and the restoration of our primordial state of beatific union with God. If a play is about the soul's journey toward perfection, which it reaches at the end, and if the play draws us into it–then watching the play becomes a spiritual experience for the audience. Read the rest of the review...