Mitch Olson
Really disappointing. I was looking forward to some robust complexity science but ended up with a guy that quotes Deepak Chopra. Surely the quintessential sign that this is poetry dressed up as science. He has written much better pieces elsewhere.
A radical and compelling epistemological and ontological theory. Could have probably got across the guts of it in a third of the space. I look forward to other people building on his work.
I find Steiner quite hard to read and this book no exception. I was attracted by his conception of intuition as something beyond what is currently understood by that label. But ultimately I was left unsatisfied by his conception of thinking itself which seemed not well developed.
Too hard going. If there is a more obtuse way of saying something then the author has sought it out.
The best thing about this “book” is that it has introduced me to a man whose ideas I want to explore further in his writings. The worst part is that it's just an interview of the man that left me interested but not wowed in any way. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone
It's taken me so long to finish this book that I can't remember all of the value I have got from it. Bennett is my favourite student of Gurdjieff and I suspect this is one of the better introductions to Gurdjieff's ideas.
This is a promotional introduction to The Forum. Erhard's insights and distinctions around the reflexivity of experience and Being are very powerful. It takes a little bit of patience to stick with him as his languaging, without the benefit of a more overt description of the architecture of perception and cognition, is somewhat obscure. But the profundity is hugely consequential. I think Werner Erhard has done more to expose the nature and consequences of the self referential nature of beliefs and how our “unconscious believing” creates boundaries on our possibility for a better life.
Pretty heavy going at times but so many original and profound perspectives on the nature of perception and language and the structure of knowledge.
The audience for this book is post grad philosophy students. That wasn't clear to me before I bought it. I was hoping for some exposition of Heidegger's ideas but the experience was incredibly frustrating and disappointing from beginning to end; I am none the wiser. This is the sort of wanky bullshit that gives philosophologists (ref Pirsig's distinction between philosophy and philosophology) a bad name. If philosophy doesn't give the average man a tool or perspective with which to more powerfully meet the challenges and opportunities of the world then it fails. This book failed me.
My second read of this book and probably my favourite autobiography. My favourite of Gurdjieff's students and father of Systematics which in time I am sure will become to be recognised for the hugely significant contribution it is to the underlying architecture of the universe.
All book reviews say as much if not more about the reviewer than they say about the book. And this reviewer didn't get what he hoped for from this book. I hoped for greater insight into Whitehead's process philosophy but what the author delivered was targeted was not targeted at me. Philosophy seems to attract a very pedantic and other-philosophies-referent crowd. This book was a play by play defence against critics and would-be critics of Process philosophy which I found very boring.
Hazard is the intersection of significance with uncertainty; in other words the possibility that what you want might not happen. Bennett says it's a core feature of life and it's implications are much broader and deeper than you might imagine.
Every time I read a book by Bennett I wonder why he is not much much better known. He is to my mind one of the greatest philosophers ever but unlike almost every other philosopher his thinking and ideas are practical and relevant to our daily lives.
I bought this book cos I was curious about the author's “Capability approach” to welfare economics. And it wasn't mentioned once :-).
The book itself maybe a 3.5 but the author's life is a 4 or 5. Feel quite jealous of the intellectual company Sen participated in.
A great complement to Peter Block's book on community. Where Block's book is more mental and process, Eastwood's book is more heart and soul. Recommend them both.
This would have been a much better book if Rupert had started the book with the last chapter and gone from there. As such I thought that every chapter other than the last was pretty meh.
I really tried to read this book. It took every ounce of detachment and holding back my judgement and I persevered & persevered. But eventually I couldn't take it any longer & gave up.
What a load of hogwash.
As a compendium of Wilson's writing this is a great way to get an overview of his thinking. It might have been a little better edited cos the exact same examples and ideas get repeated too frequently. Could have been half the length with no loss of information.
I first came across Wilson 25 - 30 years ago & I loved his articulation of some of Gurdlieff's ideas around habitually via his concept of the Robot. I think CW actually does a better job of articulating this notion of humans as living on a kind of autopilot.
But he was a slightly sloppy thinker & for example didn't seem to recognise that Maslow's idea of “Peak Experiences” & the Gurdjieffs idea of human's as living in a kind of sleep were both connected by the notion of habitually. It is habituality that dilutes the vividness of experience. I won't bother reading any more Colin Wilson after reading this but glad for this book to have discovered that.
It's not really appropriate to rate this book as it as summary of Bennett's massive 4 volume Magnum opus. There is so much in his writings that is beyond my comprehension. But I doubt there is anyone who has made a more comprehensive and analytical approach to trying to understand and document the deepest mysteries of life.
One of the most important but unappreciated philosophers of all time. This book is about the limits of science and scientific-rational thinking. On the need for our openness to “speculative reason” to always be able to overcome the dogma of the day. In the same way that the “speculative reason” of science overcame some the dogma of institutionalised religion, we must open ourselves for new “speculative reason” to overcome the dogma of scientific materialism.
The reductionalism and materialism of science and how this has infected and limited the invisible and unquestioned beliefs of our day (eg. liberalism without responsibility or Darwinian evolution) places real and significant impediments to the future of humanity.
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Add notes from my third reading:
The more I read this book the more I appreciate what an awesome thinker Whitehead was. Such a big thinker but also logical but open-minded. Poetic but based in logic and reason. Love this guy.