Latour, Laruelle, Lovecraft, and Sri Aurobindo

Beyond the human Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi 20-23 February 2014

This trajectory is found in the overman of Friedrich Nietzsche, the supramental being of the Indian yogi-philosopher Sri Aurobindo, or as more recently contextualized by Gilles Deleuze through the“superfold,” the result of the folding into the human subject of the rhizomatic triplicity of genetic code, information technology, and a language at the borders of signification… The conference is organized by

• Makarand Paranjape, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
• Debashish Banerji, University of Philosophical Research, Los Angeles
• Richard Carlson, Pacific Weather, Port Angeles, WA.

Call for papers: If you have thoughts on any of these areas and would like to participate in the conference, please send us a resume and an abstract of your talk. Our email address is beyondthehuman2014@gmail.com. The submission deadline is August 15, 2013. Those whose abstracts are selected will be notified.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (in India) from Centre Right India by Ibn-al-Dunya

Use those GRE words you memorised – they were made for such occasions! Everything is a discourse and a narrative; do not be afraid to embed yourself in the dasein of the moment. See what I did back there? Use words from foreign languages strategically when explaining key points and your logic fails. It is unlikely that anyone in your audience speaks that language, and if they do, words like dasein, ding-an-sich, or eudaimonia. Not only will you appear scholarly, but you will be aided by two things: 1. even if someone does know these terms, they are ambiguous enough to merit an entirely different debate, allowing you to skirt the original issue, and 2. actual scholars also use such terms when talking to each other, lending legitimacy to the practice… Assuming you speak two or three Indian languages and the Queen’s English, Western organisations will be grateful for your expertise on that blasted subcontinent. 

Bruno Latour’s Gifford Lectures from Ediburgh are now all online from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)

Latour is not only one of the world’s most important living intellectuals. He is also perhaps the most polarizing author within Speculative Realist circles (maybe only Laruelle is equally polarizing). Some of us are in awe of Latour’s breakthroughs, while others in SR circles treat him (with what I myself regard as an almost grotesque lack of intellectual taste and foresight) as a sophist and a relativist hack. I’m as confident in my bet on Latour’s long-term importance as I am on just about anything, and this despite serious disagreements with some of his ontology, as I outlined in Prince of Networks.

the difference between my Lovecraft book and my earlier Lovecraftarticle from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)

In the article, I was very hard on the “Kantian” or noumenal reading of Lovecraft and defended a Husserlian reading of Lovecraft that I also linked with cubism in the arts. The difference is that while writing the book, I decided that both strands are operative in Lovecraft. There are two completely different major stylistic devices at work in Lovecraft. One of them is the allusion to the unutterable, and I no longer have any objection to relating that to Kant. The other is the one I was championing exclusively in my article, in which Lovecraft claims to be describing something literally but piles up such a ridiculous number of incompatible descriptions that the bond between the objects and its qualities, while not withdrawn into a noumenal realm, explicitly becomes an operative principle over and above its list of qualities. This is what is most typical of Husserl, who’s as anti-noumenal as it gets but is still a philosopher of objects over and above their qualities. It’ll all be clear when you finally see the book.

There’s an introductory section, then I analyze 100 individual passages (not plot summaries, but short passages) from eight of the key stories, then conclude with some further thoughts. Work on the book only increased my sense of Lovecraft’s greatness as a stylist. I’m well aware of the objections that he overwrites his prose and overloads it with adjectives, but rules like this are always beside the point. You can do just about anything as a writer as long as you know how to handle it. At most there is some unevenness in Lovecraft as a stylist, as often happens with amateurs in any field who are isolated from mainstream critical feedback.

Comment on Sri Aurobindo’s prose style – by Goutam Ghosal by RJ from Comments for IYSATM by RJ - Mar 4, 2013

I recently read a quote about writer HP Lovecraft that seemed applicable to Sri Aurobindo’s prose style as well… (Lovecraft was, IMO, a brilliant writer from a purely literary perspective, though obviously nowhere near Sri Aurobindo in any sense. I don’t mean to compare them in any other way than to point out that that comment is insightful.) Of course, even if one is able to get “past” his style and understand him “intellectually” (like a student of English literature might), one will not understand anything if the consciousness is not ready. kkk

Love, Death, and the Sub-Creative Imagination in J. R. R. Tolkien from Footnotes to Plato by Matthew David Segall

The chief import of Tolkien’s Art, as I understand it, is that its example invites us to step into our own roles as cosmic artisans, just at that moment in world history when so much seems headed for disaster… There is also a spiritual side to the strange logic underlying Tolkien’s sub-creative vocation. He says of all his “stuff” that it is “fundamentally concerned with the problem of the relation of Art (and Sub-creation) and Primary Reality” (xiii). Primary Reality is the world of daily life, of biological struggle, and, eventually, of death. The sub-creator, in bringing forth a Secondary Reality (made not of solid matter, but of story and myth), expresses a desire which not only has no ordinary biological function, but which indeed usually finds itself at strife with these functions (xiii). Despite its spiritual motives, the sub-creative desire “is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it” (xiii). Death, even ifimaginary, is no less real for all that. We human sub-creators have, again, two paths open to us upon encountering it.

Creating a Cohesive Worldview (Part One: Either/Or) By Joran Slane Oppelt

Haridas Chaudhuri writes in The Evolution of Integral Consciousness, “One devious root of war-mindedness is the dualistic logic of the arrogant intellect – the logic of either/or. Dualistic logic says: Either communism or democracy, either socialism or capitalism, is the ultimate truth, and thus creates an irreconcilable opposition between them, diving the world into two warring camps sworn to destroy each other.” Integral Church ~ Religion 2.0: The Formation of the Integral Church By Joran Slane Oppelt

It is a seed that was planted when I discovered the work of Arthur Koestler and Ken Wilber and that sprouted when I realized that their life’s work was a continuation of those who came before them — Socrates, Sri Aurobindo, William James, Aldous Huxley. Continue reading

Tusar N. Mohapatra March 4, 2013 at 1:35 pm

Sri Aurobindo’s notion of human unity doesn’t envisage any antagonistic prospect between India and Europe. Relying upon some stray quote to build a sound economic scenario is therefore anomalous. [TNM55] Reply ~ As Europe goes down, we need to be prepared for consequences 

Braudel, Broadie, Bede Griffiths and the transformation of the body

Review of an "Agreeable Connexion" from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Alexander Brodie. 2012. “Agreeable Connexions: Scottish Enlightenment links with France”. Edinburgh: John Donald, Birlinn Ltd.

This is a most agreeable book for scholars and those interested in the Scottish Enlightenment from which so much of the modern world evolved… Broadie’s thesis is that what became known as the Scottish Enlightenment has its roots in a long history of connections between Scottish intellectuals from the medieval period onwards, primarily with their French opposite numbers, despite their different theological traditions, particularly after the Reformation (largely inspired from Luther’s Germany).  Enlightened thinkers thought for themselves; unenlightened thinkers were tied to the unchanging thoughts of past, mainly theological, authorities. Where there is argument and debate without political repression, or at least passivity, Enlightenment may follow.  Brodie’s account of this background is enlightening itself…

In summary, I consider Alexander Broadie has established his thesis that the centuries long links between France and Scotland were foundational in what became the Scottish Enlightenment in the unpromising circumstances of each country, one dominated by an all embracing rigid Calvinism and the other by a monolithic Catholic Church, yet feeding each other intellectually in the prelude of the transformation of one world to another.  

Why OOO? from Larval Subjects Nov 13, 2012

First there was my encounter with DeLanda’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy and A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, both of which brought non-signifying differences and material processes to the fore and led me to read Deleuze in a very different way.  I was spitting mad and simultaneously fascinated when I encountered these books.  Was he really arguing that ocean currents and wind patterns (non-diacritical, a-signifying differences) played a key role in where European and American cities developed?  Preposterous!  But he got me reading the historian Braudel and his dry as dirt yet magnificent Capitalism and Civilization. 

Most Valuable Books of 2009 from Larval Subjects Dec 2, 2009

And in the background of all this was the material history of Ferdinand Braudel in the three volumes of Capitalism and Civilization. Braudel’s three volumes have been my nightly bedtime reading for the last few months. Let Harman have his Gibbon, I’ll take my Braudel. If reading Braudel has been such a transformative experience, then this is because he draws attention away from familiar territory revolving around signs, ideologies, texts, norms, and concepts, investigating instead infrastructures throughout history such as the presence or absence of roads, the epidemiology of diseases, diets, trade routes, clothing, forms of energy, etc., etc., etc.. You leave these works with an entirely new set of glasses, seeing the world and why the world is the way it is in an entirely different light. Suddenly things you were focused on in your social and political thought seem to become less important as a consequence of the rather minor role they play in social organization, while a whole host of other urgent questions come to the fore. 

A Higher Soul Nature and Law of Karma « Sri Aurobindo Studies

While it is the first formulation of human motivation, the force of desire, attraction towards what is pleasant and avoidance of what is unpleasant, is not the sole...

At the Feet of The Mother: The Integral Yoga and Traditional Paths

at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India. ... So Sri Aurobindo says that perhaps they will find God outside life but will not find the Divine in ...

Inspirational & Religious 2013: Savitri and The Yoga of the Cells Sri Aurobindo (Author), The Mother (Author), RY Deshpande (Editor)

The body was not ready to hold the charge of luminous immortality in it. It had remained an unbaked vessel, atapta tanu. The cells of the body had not awakened yet to the reality that is seated deep within them. The problem of the inconscient nature had yet to be tackled.

Sri Aurobindo’s concern was chiefly this. It was a twofold effort, of invoking and bringing down the dynamism of the supreme Truth on the earthly plane, and preparing the unregenerate inconscient material nature to receive it for its unhampered action. The spiritual and occult-yogic tapasya carried out together by him and the Mother saw that this was done. That opened up new doors, bright doors of the physical, for the entry of the Infinite's dimensions in the earth-possibilities. Presently it has made its manifestation an accomplished fact, here in the physical’s subtle. 

SABDA - A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo — Dr. Anand Reddy

A FOLLOWER OF CHRIST AND A DISCIPLE OF SRI AUROBINDO — CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN BEDE GRIFFITHS AND K. D. SETHNA (AMAL KIRAN)

So too, Griffiths tries to subsume Sri Aurobindo in Christianity:

      ‘To me it is important because I think that the transformation of the body is an essential element in Christian doctrine. The physical transformation which took place in Mary was seen as related to the physical transformation of the body of Christ in the resurrection, and this again as foreshadowing the physical transformation of man and the universe. This is where I find Aurobindo’s insistence on the transformation of matter and the body so significant’. (p.44)

      ‘I cannot resist the conviction that Jesus did exactly what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were attempting to do’. (p.72)

      ‘The resurrection of Christ is a physical event, which has effected all humanity and the whole creation. If this is not the same as the belief of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother it is extraordinarily close to their idea of the Supramental manifestation’. (p.86)

     Amal Kiran, in a note of tender mercies, replies: ‘What a diminution of his (Sri Aurobindo’s) colossal stature, his Herculean labour, to understand him as having come just to confirm Christianity and to establish a person more firmly in it! If he and the Mother have nothing really momentously new to give us, since everything was there in the Christian vision, all of us who are striving to live up to their teaching and example are misguided fools who could do much better to get baptized and join hands with the priests and nuns of Pondicherry’. (p.93)

     And in a stronger vein he argues: ‘Lastly, after postulating an evolution over millions of years following in man’s progressive spiritual history through the aspiring mind towards a Supramental which is still in the future, is it logical or reasonable or consistent to affirm that all evolution was summed up to thousand years ago in one man who did not exemplify an evolutionary transformation in his life-time but is alleged to have acquired a divinized body after his death?’ (p.61)

Rooting for the revival of a grand tree - The Hindu

The tree is an 82-year-old Peltophorum pterocarpum that stands next to Sri Aurobindo's Samadi, which was named 'Service Tree' by the Mother. Through the ..

Savitri, Occult, OOO, and the Invisible Hand

6.2. The World Does Not Exist - MLibrary Digital Collections The Democracy of Objects by Levi R. Bryant - 2011

Here we might think of monumental intellects such as Donna Haraway and Katherine Hayles, the work of McLuhan, Kittler, Ong, and Stiegler, the later work of Deleuze and Guattari, the thought of Latour and Stengers, …  that ranges freely over the “experience” of nonhuman entities, plumbing the worlds of other entities without being obliged to relate everything back to the human. Graham Harman's universe is a universe populated by circuses and clowns, vampires, unnamed monsters, fire and cotton, and a host of other frightening and delightful carnivalesque entities that erupt across his pages like so many apparitions that simultaneously withdraw and capture us with their inherent fascination and allure.

Jane Bennett's universe is inhabited by the vital forces of abandoned bottle caps, dead rats, trash heaps undergoing various forms of bio-chemical decomposition, and a host of other objects. Ian Bogost is currently writing his Alien Phenomenology, which promises to bring us into the subterranean experience of all sorts of other entities such as computer software we scarcely notice in our day to day existence. Donna Haraway's universe is pervaded with wolves, microbes, lab reports and articles, various types of primates, plants, and all sorts of laboratory equipment. Karen Barad's universe is populated by all sorts of particles, instruments and waves.

Can act in his acts, infest his thought and life: Savitri: the Light of the Supreme Nov 19, 2012 – The Titan and the Fury and the Djinn

Lie bound in the subconscient's cavern pit

And the Beast grovels in his antre den:

Dire mutterings rise and murmur in their drowse.

While man works out the dreams of God in the life of the world, he is himself just a small creature in the works of Nature, a thinking caricature of a mysterious puzzling Force. It is she who reveals in him what is present in her, her glories and her deep puzzling darknesses. It is not only the gods who live in his house; there also dwell occult shadows and tenebrous powers. He harbours dangerous powers in his house, the Titan and the Fury and the Djinn. These are dreadful beings, the ancient immortal giants of incredible strength. The first generation of the Titans existed long before the younger gods arrived on the scene,—the Olympians came later.

This could perhaps correspond to the beings who were present before the Gods awoke with which Savitri opens. There are in us also Furies, distorted goddesses of vengeance, of murder, who would punish every crime this little creature might commit unknowingly, punish with no excuse of ignorance; such are the powers that inhabit the subconscious. The three Furies or Infernal Goddesses described in Greek mythology are: goddesses of vengeance: Tisiphone (Avenger of Murder), Megaera (the Jealous) and Alecto (constant Anger). They are also called the Daughters of the Night. Another name for them is the Erinyes. Without mercy, the Furies would penalize all crimes, including the breaking of the rules, penalize considering all the aspects of the society. They would strike the offenders with madness and never stop following the criminals. The Erinyes are similar to if not the same as the Poinai (Retaliations), Arai (Curses), Praxidikai (Exacters of Justice) and Maniai (Madnesses). They are depicted as ugly, winged women with hair, arms and waists entwined with poisonous serpents. They wield whips and are clothed either in the long black robes of mourners, or the short-length skirts and boots of huntress maidens. [From the Internet]

There are five different types of Djinn who are responsible for illness and mishaps, of man and the cosmos. Genie is made famous in the insightful tales of the Arabian Nights. When a brass lamp is rubbed three times a genie will appear and he will grant three wishes for having freed him from the lamp. Solomon the Wise shut them in a lamp which he threw in the sea, that they would never come out. There is the monstrous vital being seated in us, hid in the subconscient den; he remains there groveling all the while, with face downward and the body prostrate, taking pleasure in mean and harsh things. There are powers rising in fierce opposition to the authorities. These act in the acts of man, these control his thought and his life.

D.A.M. , Mainly Red from Auroville Radio by contact@aurovilleradio.org (Clara, Andrea)

In today's news we are featuring short interview with Professor Kostel talking on D.A.M., which is India's first Design, Arts, Music carnival. The festival revolves around the concept of nourishing creativity and it will be held at Ganesh Thottam near Auroville, at the end of the canyon road in green belt. 

Comment on Reading and writing books in a dream by donsalmon Jan 19, 2013

I don’t understand. When Sri Aurobindo spends more than 100 pages of The Life Divine refuting Shankara’s view, I don’t see how that’s any different from what Sandeep is doing here.

Comment on Reading and writing books in a dream by Sandeep Jan 20, 2013

Many people may attain Self-realization but their experiences may diverge after that. In this vast universe, you might penetrate into zones of consciousness that no one has reached before. Take for instance the ascent-descent of consciousness: Ramana Maharshi consistently denied Sri Aurobindo’s claims on the topic, and yet other people do have such experiences indicating that they are possible. I think Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had richer experiences which enabled them to decipher the interconnection between the different worlds.

Shankara probably only had previsions of the future (mental dreams) which made him conclude that the occult worlds are illusory. He may also have been influenced by the nihilistic Buddhist sects which were popular in his time. Had Shankara walked about in his dreams, he might have reconsidered his views on their illusory nature. The “real” nature of the occult worlds can be derived from several (subjective but repeatable) experiences: We are not debating an assumption here but the differences which arise because people do not have the same spiritual experiences. Comment by Sandeep Jan 21, 2013 The study of mystical experiences yields insights which need to be discussed.

Moral Acts Create Primarily Moral Karma from Sri Aurobindo Studies Jan 20, 2013

One of the confusions that tends to permeate the discussion about the law of Karma is the implication that because one is morally or ethically good, that one should therefore have physical pleasure or well-being. Sri Aurobindo exposes this confusion and points out that each type of action has its result primarily within its own sphere, and only secondarily will have effects of a different nature.

The direct impact of moral or ethical action is thus primarily in the field of moral and ethical result, with tangential and secondary effects in other forms of energy possible, but not necessarily supremely powerful in those other fields. Modern research shows, for instance, that strong emotions, such as love or hatred, release various biochemical reactions, such as stimulating hormones, which can indeed impact the physical body and its ultimate health, positively or negatively as the case may be, but such effects may be offset or overcome by specific direct actions taken to support physical health and well-being or not.

Manifesto for a human economy from The Memory Bank by Keith Hart Jan 20, 2013

Ronald Coase won a Nobel prize in economics for inventing the idea of transaction costs in his famous paper “The nature of the firm” (1937). He has just announced his desire, with Ning Wang, to found a new journal called “Man and the economy”. Their manifesto, “Saving economics from the economists”, was published in the Harvard Business Review for December 2012…

We can’t arrive instantly at a view of the whole, but we can engage more concretely with the world that lies beyond the familiar institutions that immediately secure our rights and interests. According to Mauss and Polanyi (especially, but all the founders of modern social theory too), the chief way of achieving social extension has always been through markets and money in a variety of forms.

Training In Smith's Theory of Bargaining from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy Jan 19, 2013

Those who learn that bargaining, for instance, is about mediating their self-interest with the self-interests of others to achieve some degree of their own self-interests.

In practise, as the Red-Blue game illustrates, the “propensity to exchange” identified by Smith in Wealth Of Nations is not a well understood process across the population, which Smith clearly identified as the ‘If-Then’ conditional proposition (WN I.ii: 25-6). By recognising Smith’s ‘If-Then’ proposition it is easily understood and practised in the real world.

Once again, neoclassical Max U economics approaches bargaining by wrongly formulating it as confrontational problem (see modern economics on bargaining since the 1930s around themes like Zeuthen’s ‘economic warfare’, Hicks on ‘strikes’, Cross and others on ‘conflict’, even actual warfare, through to the 1980s.

Yet Adam Smith set it out in both Moral Sentiments and Wealth Of Nations in the 18th century in his two great, but mostly unread, books.  Hence, my particular sadness, at people libelling Smith with a self-interest theory that he never held.

'Anonymous' is Wrong; Try Again? from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy Jan 19, 2013

Smith’s writing on self-interest does not conform to the Maximum Utility models of neoclassical economics.  Smith notes scores of cases where individuals pursuing their self-interests undermine the self-interests of others. In fact, Smith’s ideas on the “pursuit” of self-interests are quite the opposite of the views asserted in “Raising the Invisible Hand” at the head of the above statement. [I have no views on the politics expressed by "anonymous", as I only comment on political views expressed in the country or about the country where I vote, i.e., Scotland.]

Darwin, Alfred Wallace, Gabriel Tarde, and Sri Aurobindo

Women On the path - bookmyevent.com - a series of talk in collaboration with the India Habitat Centre - Insights into Contemporary Feminine Spirituality with Ameeta Mehra 16th January, 2013 7:00 pm Casuarina Hall, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi - 110003

A researcher and practitioner of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Ameeta Mehra will speak about her spiritual practice and work that are based on the dictum, ‘All Life is Yoga’.  She is chairperson of the Gnostic Centre, Delhi, and is on the governing board of Auroville, an international township for human unity. She has written about and facilitated courses on integral yoga philosophy, integral education, and management.

Re: A Question of Hagiography and Biography

Posted by RY Deshpande on Fri 20 Feb 2009 04:12 AM Permanent Link But the focus on facts could have its own relevance and value, I suppose. ~ RYD

Posted by RY Deshpande on Tue 17 Feb 2009 07:52 PM Permanent Link But there are moments when one has to be, out of good necessity, verbose also. Perhaps I fall too often into that kind of trap. But finally one cannot make a fetish of either. They each have functional roles and if they serve the respective purpose well, they must be acceptable in their own right. In any case, follow your inclination and please get going; your contribution to this important topic will be valuable—and there’s no doubt about it. ~RYD 

Posted by Kepler on Tue 17 Feb 2009 02:58 AM IST |  Profile |  Permanent Link

Here’s a question: what if one did want to know, as objectively as possible, all that could be documented about Sri Aurobindo’s external life, not in order to critique, reduce, or explain his spiritual greatness by mundane details, but rather because one has a deep love for Sri Aurobindo, and finds everything one learns about the actual external life he led is filled with sweetness and brings an increasing sense of closeness.

Posted by Kepler on Thu 19 Feb 2009 09:51 PM IST |  Profile |  Permanent Link

But consider the much less important, but still interesting (to some of us), attempt to get at all the available external documentation of, for example, Sri Aurobindo’s outer life in Baroda, i.e. what he did, where he went and when, whom he associated with, what they recorded as their impressions of him, etc. Would the empirical, critical, “scientific” historian’s approach to this specific task produce more reliable results than a hagiographic one? I personally do appreciate the results of the rationalistic approach to this “documentation of external facts” about the saint’s life, meaning just those facts that actually were “on the surface for others to see”. I think the raw tasks of collecting, evaluating and presenting the available physical data, do lend themselves to the empirical, rationalistic approach.

Comment on ‘The Mother: The Birth and Growth of a Flame’: A Review by Surendra Singh Chouhan. by Tusar N. Mohapatra [The author seems to get lost in the quagmire of facts and figures]

The way Peter Heehs wove falsehood so magisterially while latching on to the objective label must make us realize how sacrosanct the bare facts are at this juncture. Even Vivekananda presented a doctored picture of Ramakrishna, says a fresh book by Jyotirmaya Sharma. [TNM55]

Introduction To the Lines of Karma from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

Perhaps the most intriguing questions for most of us are those that relate to the operation of the law of Karma. We want Karma to conform to our mental notions of right and wrong, or to fit within a pattern that satisfies our desires. We expect to find some kind of “legal system” that operates the law of Karma and to find thereby that our moral, ethical, religious or mental notions are supported and justified by the action of Karma. The law of Karma however is not a law framed by the mind of man, but a law of the Spirit that has manifested the complexity and subtlety of the entire creation. 

Unknown God - The Times of India 20 Jan 2012 – Book Review: Title: Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God Author: Georges Van Vrekhem Publisher: Amaryllis Pages: 292. Price: Rs 595

For those keen on Darwin, the book is a treat. In the latter half of the book, Von Vrekhem brings in various other arguments and strands: the human genome project, attacks on the ignorance of scientists in religious matters, the anthropic principle, the debate of science and religion, the intelligent design theory, and huge dollops of Sri Aurobindo -- whom alone he seems to unquestioningly accept. Although it shifts the focus away from Darwin and the evolution debate, it is just as penetrating and as interesting as the scientific theories and arguments — and indeed, as the rest of this book.

Evolution, Religion And The Unknown God: Georges ... - Amazon.com

This book is in fact a spell-binding history of the search for the ways evolution, even before or at the time Darwin. The chapter on Alfred Wallace is outstanding…  - Jyotsna Mohanty, in The Advent 

The book narrates the relevant events in the history of 'Darwinism', the most popular of the several theories of evolution. What is nowadays generally labelled as Darwinism hardly resembles what Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, but is the result of scientific developments that are at times considered anti-Darwinian. The book analyses and clearly discerns between the theories of creationism and intelligent design. The author highlights how much of the Darwinist view and the present controversies over evolution results from the exclusively Judeo-Christian background of Western thought. He makes the necessary difference between religion and spirituality. Finally, he expounds the still little known evolutionary vision of Sri Aurobindo, Eastern in origin, but synthetic in its application.

On the supposed societies of chemicals, atoms and stars in Gabriel Tarde Harman, Graham: 2012-12-13 Abstract:

It is commonly believed that the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde allows even for inanimate objects such as chemicals, atoms, and stars to be topics of sociology. This article claims otherwise. Tarde is an arch-reductionist for whom nothing exists below the tiniest micro-level of the cosmos. His theory of monads is by no means an adequate sociology of medium- or large-sized things. Show full item record Related Items By Author:

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• Naive idealism: a response to Tim Hyde Harman, Graham (2012-01-22)
• Prince of networks: Bruno Latour and metaphysics Harman, Graham (re.press Melbourne, 2010-06-24)