Richard Porter
Published: 2014-02-21
Total Pages: 326
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Power in the Blood (revised version) is an adventure in ideas that explores many interrelated aspects of philosophy, faith and science in order to highlight the true dimensions of human nature and of the Magnum Mysterium (thus called in mediaeval times) in which we are embodied and imbedded. Those dimensions of body and soul, of science and spirit, are revealed by a nonreductive philosophy of broader reach than what any gospel of godless oblivion as the ultimate arbiter of human fate would have us to believe. Power in the Blood is a metaphor referring in part to the transformative mysteries of Nature, especially shown in life science of whose strangest marvels, many gleaned from sources rare and obscure, plentiful examples are offered. These biological puzzlements tend to support rather than contradict a faith (as the book seeks to explain) that our full human nature has not only sprang from abyssal depths of evolutionary time, but also flowers in Eternity. There are many multi-associative ideas, such as the subjective/objective dichotomy, that Power in the Blood examines on a journey whose pursuit may encourage readers to entertain a deeper measure of existential meaning in all its aspects, real and ideal, objective and subjective. And that measure may also urge their concluding, for example, that consciousness is not simply a magic trick of blindly impersonal physics. To affirm such concepts, that surely favor better than their opposites the long-term continuance of our self endangered species, provided one motive to construct the most promising and least prejudicial world view, enlisting philosophy, faith and science in a trinity of mutual support, that for the author seemed humanly possible. An enriching, immersive experience for anyone interested in exploring the foundation of life. Kirkus Reviews.