gesang reviewed The Evolutionary Mind by Rupert Sheldrake
Cranks, but good
4 stars
While these are cranks and fringe theorists, they're not stupid. Rupert Sheldrake is very much a crank who is devoted to developing a superficial theosophy-like (not that it is theosophy but it has some family resemblance to theosophy) cosmology that has no explanatory power over anything whatsoever but how his mind works is still an interesting thing to ponder upon. Terence McKenna got some strange ideas but is overall philosophical and (strangely) deep. Ralph Abraham is modest and not-that-Crankish. Reading conversations like this awakens people from the "dogmatic slumber" that they're embedded into, and from the rather filmsy reasoning it is still possible to observe a kind of possibility that they might be right in some regard. And, moreover, the conversation shows that these cranks are actually brilliant minds. One thing I don't like about New-Age stuff is, though, since they're American, their aesthetic choice is so poor that one …
While these are cranks and fringe theorists, they're not stupid. Rupert Sheldrake is very much a crank who is devoted to developing a superficial theosophy-like (not that it is theosophy but it has some family resemblance to theosophy) cosmology that has no explanatory power over anything whatsoever but how his mind works is still an interesting thing to ponder upon. Terence McKenna got some strange ideas but is overall philosophical and (strangely) deep. Ralph Abraham is modest and not-that-Crankish. Reading conversations like this awakens people from the "dogmatic slumber" that they're embedded into, and from the rather filmsy reasoning it is still possible to observe a kind of possibility that they might be right in some regard. And, moreover, the conversation shows that these cranks are actually brilliant minds. One thing I don't like about New-Age stuff is, though, since they're American, their aesthetic choice is so poor that one cannot really take them seriously without some actual effort.