The Reenchantment of the World

I first read this book while on a teaching assignment in Taiwan and I have since re-read the work more than once. As a student of philosophy I find it a brilliant study of the history of science and epistemology. Berman backs his work with hundreds of references to ancient texts and modern works on psychology from some of the foremost thinkers in their fields and ties his narrative together with interesting historical anecdotes that you hardly believe (For instance, that Isaac Newton started his career as an alchemist). In "The Reenchantment of the World" Morris lays out his theories of how our understanding of the world in Western Civilization has changed from one of a participating consciousness to hollow detachment and some of the undesirable consequences that have come about as a result. The Reenchantment is the first book in a marvelous trilogy I would recommend to anyone interested in the cutting edges of philosophy, psychology and ethics today. Never before or since have I read such a compelling call to change in the way civilization is evolving and the only criticism I may make of this work is that it doesn't lay out clearly enough in practical terms the steps that we can take to correct our course and avert a disater for humanity, perhaps because this may not be possible given our current state of affairs.

This is the first "New Age" book I read - in 1990 or so - so alot of the concepts were new to me then. I would recommend this book if you are interested in the history of ideas, since Berman paints a pretty stark picture of the world as a machine versus the world as an organism, or something alive. I particularly enjoyed reading about Newton's role as an alchemist. There are some streches here, but even if you don't "buy into" those stretches it still makes compelling reading. The book is well illustrated. The cover of the first edition paperback, by the way, is much more interesting than the new cover.

Far from being antiscientific, with definitive precision Berman demonstrates the neurotic distortions that the Cartesian paradigm has set in motion, revealing his visionary comprehension of the human experience and his insight into the entire Man, mind, body and soul. He treats Newton with all fairness, unmoved by the applause of the sterile masses of University elite which have elevated the man to Godhood throughout the centuries. As the psalmist says, "What is Man but a breath that passes?...Where were you when I laid the foundations of the deep?"Any world veiw that forgets this human composition must necessarily lead to severe disruption of the human family. Science, divorced from reason, wisdom tradition, and high theology, and the objective methods upon which it was founded, will lead to an impoverishing rationalism that starves the soul. It will become a sort of false magic entrancing men with debasing theories, desecting Man into a mere biologic product. Hence the rise of mass genocides in the 20th century.This was an excellent read which deeply effected the course of my studies for years.

This book is a criticism of the Cartesian scientific worldview, which during the past 400 years has reduced the world (including ourselves) to a mere collection of alienated objects, with disastrous social, psychological and ecological consequences. The Re-enchantment of the World is the beginnings of an attempt to create an epistemology of participating consciousness, i.e., experiencing the world sensuously and viscerally as well as rationally. Such an experience (largely now foreign to our scientific, industrial culture) infuses life with meaning and a deep sense of belonging.Drawing on quantum mechanics and the work of Gregory Bateson, Berman argues that Cartesianism is inaccurate as well as outdated. With a PhD in the History of Science from Johns Hopkins, he demonstrates that modern science, far from being a beacon of emerging ultimate truth, is part of a cultural gestalt that evolved together with the rise of capitalism. In a particularly fascinating part of the book, Berman makes the case that Isaac Newton's repressions, neuroses and inner conflicts became those of the world he influenced so profoundly.This book is not an argument for mysticism or "naive animism", but for a more mature, holistic, benign science. Berman's scholarship is rigorous, and I am in awe of his research ability. A challenging, rewarding, important book that charts a pathway to a better future.

[email protected] from Bendigo Australia, 03/19/98, rating=8: Towards a New Metaphysic by Ian Irvine, for 'The Animist' Electronic Journal, [email protected] This ambitious and thought provoking work redefines two concepts few modern Westerners would recognise to be central to both the past and the future of the human species. The two concepts are 'enchantment' and 'disenchantment'. In Berman's text, these concepts carry much more weight than they do to the average person on the street. In the text they are defined and juxtaposed in relation to an overview of human psycho-history from primitivity to the present. In this sense, 'enchantment' relates to the inner perception of self, community and cosmos as 'animated', 'alive', replete with 'soul' and 'meaning'. In an less positive sense, 'disenchantment', according to Berman, is the condition of percieving those same things from a narrow 'materialistic' perspective alone. The disenchanted mind reduces/explains away people, animals, plants, community, nature etc. as mere chance events, chemical reactions, in short, as 'matter without soul or mind'. As you can see, Berman is hard indeed on the Cartesian worlview, critiquing it for the psycho-spiritual poverty and soul instability it fosters. To rectify the problem, Berman calls for a 'new animism' or 'pantheism'. To this end, he reworks Reichian, Batesonian/Cybernetic and, to a lesser extent, Jungian, insights, in an attempt to give birth to a less alienated worldview which might better serve our species into the new millenium. His own contributions to that outlook he labels 'A Prolegomena to a new Metaphysic.' Berman's critique is excellent and his aim is commendable and timely, however, one ends up feeling that the new 'animism without god' he outlines remains trapped, if not in materialistic paradigms, certainly in other paradigms arising out of the Western Enlightenment. The mind side of the Descartean dualism seems to dominate (as a corrective to the 'matter' obsessions of the scientist), however, the mind described strikes me as itself disenchanted. A paradoxical outcome given Berman's laudable intentions. The problem arises from his over-reliance on Reich and Bateson; two wonderful thinkers, certainly, but thinkers who themselves never quite addressed the full limitations of the scientific method. Despite these minor critiques, the book is clearly a classic critique of the 'philosophy of modernity', and as such will gain more publicity as the crisis of the postmodern deepens into the new millennium. The text deals with some of the great philosophical and psychological issues of the age, and one gets the impression that behind every sentence is a thinker fully conscious of the gravity of the times. Berman is an adventurous writer and is fully prepared to risk all for the sake of blazing new trails of thought that might shock us out of outdated, even noxious, worldviews. A must to read.