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Review:Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, + Mysticism
Erik Davis, a journalist in his own right, and a self-admitted geek is the author of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, + Mysticism in the Age of Information, a book which purports to attempt to understand and explain how technology, magic and mysticism aren't really all that far apart. Davis makes an interesting arguement, and this is an issue that I've given some thought about to before. The perception of engineers, scientists and technical people is not one of fuzzy, soft images; it's a hard, straight edge image. But if you spend much time talking with anyone of that ilk, you soon realize that this group, like any other one, is one that has it's idosyncratic tendencies.
This image is one that hasn't come up accidentally - in many ways, the image of the technical person as a pure-logic person is one that has been built up and developed by the community of technical persons itself. This image of science as unquestionable and infalliable is one that quickly corrodes if you spend much time inside of graduate and scientific communities, watching the politics run rampant. But on a broader level, this image of science as a monolith began to fall apart with Schrodinger and Einstein and the notion of relativity. Kurt Godel also contributed to this notion in discrediting the Principa Mathematica
So, the issue of exploring this in literature, and exploring what in some ways is the unacknowledged side of the technological community. Recent issues like Joe Firmage's The Word is Truth, geeks fascination with shows like X-Files, and movies like Star Wars belies the notion of the one-sided, all logical personality.
Davis does an excellent job exploring the roots of our present technological society in the alchemical secret societes of the Middle Ages, and the present day raise in paganism amongst technologists. This is perhaps the strongest segement of the book, dealing with the religion issues, and why people like us choose alternatives or non-conformity.
The book has several drawbacks, the most glaring of which is the book's seemingly dual personality. While its research and tone are that of a book that wants to be an academic book, there are numerous points in which the facts cited, or a point is made that seems more soft-cover, and less hard-cover, if you can forgive my analogy. My other complaint, and one that shows my true colors as a history major - the book rests on itself on too few references. While I appreciate and understand Davis' points, and would recommend it to my fellow geeks, I wouldn't recommend this book to a non-technical person. The feel of the book in many ways is one of a book written for the commuity, and one that will work within the community, but not something that those outside the community would appreciate.
In the end though, for this audience, I recommend it. It's an academic read, but if you need a break from learning Perl, then this book is worth picking up. It can be slow at times, but ultimately is worth the time spent.
Buy this book at Amazon.
There is a big, wide gulf between (proper) science and mysticism, new-age, and all that. The recent (last few decades) drift away from science and onto "alternatives" is a cause for worry not only for scientists, but also for all who care for the future of humanity.
Among the scientists who cared was the late Carl Sagan. His last book, and IMHO his most important one, was " The Demon-Haunted World ". This is a must read both for those who care about our future on one hand, and for those who think that there might be something in mysticism on the other hand.
- Tal Cohen
While I haven't read this book yet, I suspect that its subject matter runs in close parallel with Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics which attempts to demonstrate the alarming similarities between the conclusions of modern theoretical physics, and Eastern (and other) mysticism. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an interesting read.
;) The point being that we shouldn't be looking to pick sides on the issue, but to back up and see that they're both sides of the same coin.
From the brief skimming I have done of the other comments posted so far in this discussion, I can see that most of them embody the same knee-jerk reaction that die hard science-types (such as myself) tend to have when non-scientific possibilities are even mentioned.
Anyone who believes that science and mathematics are the answer to everything, and can possibly describe the totality of existance should do some reading on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Alfred Korzybski's (sp?) General Semantics, and contemplate the implications of a set containing itself (a theory [a member of the set of "real" things, "Reality"] describing the "reality" [set] that contains it, FNORD).
The important thing to stress is that science, mysticism, philosophy, etc. are only models of the "reality" we observe. We too often mistake our models of reality for that which they describe. This misperception has been described as "The map is not the territory," or "The menu is not the meal."
The similarities between the conclusions of modern physics and those of ancient mysticism (and those of acid-heads) are too numerous and large to ignore. Two seemingly diametrically opposite methods of modeling reality have come to extremely similar conclusions. These include observer created reality, the illusion of indivisible particles, the interconnectedness of all existance, etc. etc. etc. I'll let you do the reading so as not to come off sounding like some new-age lunatic
R. Buckminster Fuller (imho, one of the greatest thinking minds of the century) once decided to test one of the theories of General Semantics, that we continually 'hypnotize' ourselves with our speech, by not talking for a full year. When he started talking again, he had a completely new way of modelling reality (and created some very interesting geometric shapes that seem to be 3 dimensional projections of 4th dimensional gemoetries). His patterns of speech also changed radically, for example he refused to say "the universe" and instead insisted on saying simply "universe" to emphasize that what he was referring to was a process, not a thing, as the language leads us to think of it. He also said "I seem to be a verb," and "God is a verb," which have thoroughly confused and enlightened many people since.
I'll conclude before I get too far off on a tangent, and encourage you to at least do some reasearch on the similarities here. There's a wealth of information out there on the 'net, and in print. I would highly recommend The Tao of Physics, Godel, Escher, Bach, and Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising.
-Anthony DiMarco
"If you don't see the FNORD it can't eat you. Dont' see the FNORD. Don't see the FNORD."
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
And so the fascination with non-scientific viewpoints will only increase as it becomes more and more apparent how very weak and fragile Science really is. There are, of course, more ignorant ways of reaching the same fascination with non-Science, but I'm not sure it makes a difference in the end how you arrive. In some ways, a non-naive understanding is more tainted than the simple understanding because the sense of wonder is still completely intact. The most ignorant and ultimately irrational) thing I can think of is a closed mind. Unfortunately, many scientists choose to dogmatically follow Science as if it were a religion, when in fact it is scarcely more than a tool for developing technology at this point.
Ultimately, the question that always bothers us in our private moments and which Science is powerless to explain is "WHY *anything* at all?" It really makes one wonder. And in the end, I think that a sense of wonder at the universe is more worthwhile and useful than any scientific knowledge. Sadly, the West has yet to learn much about wisdom. This is the problem with the Cult of Science and the Cult of Youth.