Table of Contents | If you have read a book recently that engaged your thinking and stirred your heart then you may want to share your thoughts about the book in a review that can be posted on this web log. The topics can vary and anything that interests you will find someone who resonates with it. So the invitation goes out. Submit your review by sending it to me at my e-mail adddress (BobSueSand@aol.com). Here is a submission by Harry E. Moore. The book is by Brian Swimme and is entitled The Hidden heart of the Cosmos. The book is concerned with the "new cosmology." "Cosmology," says Moore, "is a wisdom tradition drawing upon not just science but religion and art and philosophy." The book gives the raw material for a new approach to spirituality. Noting that for 300,000 years humans have pondered and celebrated the mysteries of the universe, the author laments that modern humanity is the first generation to break this tradition. In the modern era, consumerism has become the dominant faith of every continent on the planet. This has unhappy consequences: "Nothing that happens in one hour on the weekend makes the slightest dent in the strategic bombing taking place by night fifty-two weeks of the year." "...To hand our children over to the consumer culture is to place them in the care of the planet's most sophisticated religious preachers." The break with the past by modern humankind means that although Copernicus showed that the earth rotates around the sun, very few moderns have actually experienced this fact. Swimme gives a simple method for entering this experience. He says that few moderns live in the solar system. Startling facts about the cosmos whet the reader's appetite for becoming cosmologically oriented. Here are some of them: (1) The birthplace of the universe is 15 billion light years from the earth; (2) The sun rotates in a tiny circle around its center of gravity; (3) Every second, the sun transforms 4 million tons of itself into light; (4) The temperature of the sun's surface has cooled 6,000 degrees; (5) Creation of the sun was 5 billion years ago and it began to pour out its energy. Now, some of that energy swims in the ocean, sings in the forest and enables humans to stand, yawn and think because in the blood are molecules energized by the sun; (6) Einstein discovered that we are living in a universe that is expanding in all directions. In an essay entitled The Theological Implications of the New Cosmology Harry E. Moore claims, "Modern science has produced an incredible coup d'etat! The mechanistic concept of the universe that ruled scientific investigation for centuries has given way to the realization by scientists that we inhabit a mysterious universe and not one that functions like a machine. It has given modern humans reason for the rebirth of wonder, reason for shedding their egotism and arrogance and reason for seeing their place in the universe in a more realistic and humble perspective. It has underscored humankind's needs to celebrate the awesome mysteries of the universe. This means that the four hundred year habit of scientists to 'torture nature until she reveals her last secrets to us' has reversed itself. In the light of the new cosmology a host of scholars from a variety of disciplines are calling for a new approach -- one that reinstates myth and calls on humankind to relate to the universe with respect and reverence." This "new story," according to Swimme, "...already captivates minds on every continent of our planet." That seems to be the rhetorical exaggeration of someone whose passion is cosmology! Nevertheless, if you want to explore this fascinating subject, this book is powerful! |