If Einstein Had Been a Surfer: A Surfer, a Scientist, and a Philosopher Discuss a "Universal Wave Theory" or "Theory of Everything"

Kreeft, Peter

ISBN 10: 1587313782 / ISBN 13: 9781587313783

Edité par St. Augustines Press (edition 1), 2009

A propos de cet article

The item might be beaten up but readable. May contain markings or highlighting, as well as stains, bent corners, or any other major defect, but the text is not obscured in any way.

N° de réf. du vendeur 1587313782-7-1

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: If Einstein Had Been a Surfer: A Surfer, a Scientist, and a Philosopher Discuss a "Universal Wave Theory" or "Theory of Everything"
• Éditeur: St. Augustines Press (edition 1)
• Date de parution: 2009
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 1587313782
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9781587313783
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: 1.
• État de l'article: Fair

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

(1) Science, (2) philosophy, and (3) poetry, myth, and mysticism are three modes of consciousness that are radically different today. We are usually very good at carefully distinguishing them so as not to corrupt them, reduce them, or to confuse them with each other. But almost no one tries to connect them in a synthesis in which each maintains its own identity yet each contributes to a greater whole that no one of them could attain alone - like a happy marriage. If we bring them together at all, it is only to focus in three different ways on a specific issue (like health care, or children's literature, or gender roles). If Einstein Had Been a Surfer dares to do it for Everything, or rather for a "Theory of Everything" that only scientists today dare to talk about. But how can a "theory of the whole" be discovered by a brain that is less than a whole brain?
In this book all three dimensions of consciousness not only speak about a "theory of everything" but speak to each other in dialog. The three voices are incarnated in three characters from an upcoming novel, An Ocean Full of Angels: Evan Jellema is a theoretical physicist (and a clumsy Dutchman), 'Isa Ben Adam is a philosophical Muslim (and cantankerously clear), and Libby Rawls is a poet, mystic, and surfer (and a sassy, classy Black feminist).
Isn't "surfer" a bit of a stretch? Not at all. Actually, the papers reported last year that an amateur scientist has in fact finally discovered, or claimed to have discovered, the "theory of everything" that Einstein failed to find and that scientists have been searching for ever since - and he is a surfer! Perhaps this is no accident, but a natural connection: the mind of the "soul surfer," having become one with the sea, has awakened its "third eye" which alone gives the scientist the binocular vision, the synoptic perspective, that he lacks. And perhaps only a philosopher can mediate the two other modes of vision, as Aquinas mediated and synthesized the science of Albert the Great and Aristotle with the poetry and symbolism of mystics like Augustine.
This lively trialog, full of irony, intellectual surprise, and humor, is a serious call for a post-medieval synthesis. It does not claim to have arrived anywhere near the end of a journey to a "Theory of Everything," only to have begun it. Even that modest ambition will certainly be criticized a priori as impossibly ambitious. Does that tell you anything about the book, or does it tell you something about the critic?

À propos de l'auteur

Peter Kreeft is the author of over forty books, including the first two books in the trilogy of which Einstein is the third: The Sea Within: Waves and the Meaning of All Things and I Surf, Therefore I Am: A Philosophy of Surfing, both from St. Augustine's Press. Also available from St. Augustine's Press by Peter Kreeft: Socratic Logic: A Logic Text Using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelian Principles (3rd revised edition), and the first two parts of the Jesus trilogy: The Philosophy of Jesus and Jesus-Shock.