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Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred de Jeffrey J. Kripal

Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred

Autor Jeffrey J. Kripal
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 30 noi 2011

Nivelul de studiu: referință profesională și academică. Putem afirma că Authors of the Impossible reprezintă o reevaluare curajoasă a unui teritoriu adesea marginalizat de mediul universitar: paranormalul. Jeffrey J. Kripal nu caută să demonstreze realitatea empirică a acestor fenomene, ci să exploreze semnificația lor culturală și religioasă, poziționând „imposibilul” ca o categorie esențială a sacrului în modernitate. Notăm cu interes modul în care autorul recuperează o genealogie intelectuală frântă, analizând minuțios contribuțiile lui Frederic Myers în telepatie sau perspectivele lui Jacques Vallee asupra fenomenului OZN, transformând ceea ce mulți consideră pseudoștiință într-o sursă vitală de intuiție istorică.

Cartea este organizată tematic și cronologic, începând cu o introducere provocatoare despre „politica magică” și continuând cu analize profunde ale celor patru gânditori cheie. Această structură indică o progresie de la cercetarea psihică victoriană către sociologia franceză contemporană. Acoperă aceeași arie ca Parapsychology de David Groome, dar cu o abordare mult mai orientată spre științele umaniste și istoria ideilor, spre deosebire de accentul pus de Groome pe psihologia experimentală. În contextul operei sale, lucrarea fundamentează temele explorate ulterior în How to Think Impossibly sau The Flip, unde Kripal continuă să chestioneze limitele metodei științifice în fața conștiinței umane. Merită menționat că textul reușește să integreze natural elemente de literatură gotică, spionaj psihic din Războiul Rece și dimensiuni oculte ale ficțiunii, oferind o perspectivă interdisciplinară rară în studiul religiilor.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780226453873
ISBN-10: 0226453871
Pagini: 352
Ilustrații: 1 color plate, 4 halftones
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.48 kg
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această carte cercetătorilor din domeniul științelor umaniste și celor interesați de istoria ideilor. Cititorul câștigă o înțelegere profundă a modului în care fenomenele paranormale au modelat cultura occidentală modernă, dincolo de senzaționalism. Este un instrument esențial pentru a înțelege cum „imposibilul” devine un limbaj prin care umanitatea încearcă să descrie experiențe care sfidează categoriile științifice clasice.

Despre autor

Jeffrey J. Kripal este un distins profesor de filozofie și gândire religioasă, recunoscut pentru abordările sale provocatoare la intersecția dintre istoria religiilor, știință și experiențe transpersonale. În lucrări precum Machine Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm, el explorează relația dintre tehnologie și spirit, o temă care în Authors of the Impossible este ancorată în analiza riguroasă a figurilor care au îndrăznit să studieze fenomenele la limita cunoașterii. Opera sa este marcată de un efort constant de a reintegra experiențele subiective „imposibile” în discursul academic serios.

Descriere scurtă

Most scholars dismiss research into the paranormal as pseudoscience, a frivolous pursuit for the paranoid or gullible. Even historians of religion, whose work naturally attends to events beyond the realm of empirical science, have shown scant interest in the subject. But the history of psychical phenomena, Jeffrey J. Kripal contends, is an untapped source of insight into the sacred and by tracing that history through the last two centuries of Western thought we can see its potential centrality to the critical study of religion.

Kripal grounds his study in the work of four major figures in the history of paranormal research: psychical researcher Frederic Myers; writer and humorist Charles Fort; astronomer, computer scientist, and ufologist Jacques Vallee; and philosopher and sociologist Bertrand Méheust. Through incisive analyses of these thinkers, Kripal ushers the reader into a beguiling world somewhere between fact, fiction, and fraud. The cultural history of telepathy, teleportation, and UFOs; a ghostly love story; the occult dimensions of science fiction; cold war psychic espionage; galactic colonialism; and the intimate relationship between consciousness and culture all come together in Authors of the Impossible, a dazzling and profound look at how the paranormal bridges the sacred and the scientific.

Notă biografică

Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of several books, including Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion and The Serpent’s Gift:Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion.

Cuprins

Acknowledgments
An Impossible Opening: The Magical Politics of Bobby Kennedy

Introduction: Off the Page
Definitions and Broken Lineages
Restoring a Lineage
Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal as Meaning
The Fantastic Narrative of Western Occulture: The Paranormal as Story

1 The Book as Séance: Frederic Myers and the London Society for Psychical Research
After Life
Myers and the Founding of the S.P.R.
The Subliminal Gothic: The Human as Two
The Supernormal and Evolution: The World as Two
Telepathy: The Communications Technology of the Spirit
The Perfect Insect of the Imaginal
The Telepathic and the Erotic: Myers’s Platonic Speech
Dimensions
2 Scattering the Seeds of a Super-Story: Charles Fort and the Fantastic Narrative of Western Occulture
The Parable of the Peaches: Fort’s Mischievous Monistic Life
Collecting and Classifying the Data of the Damned: Fort’s Comparative Method
The Three Eras or Dominants: Fort’s Philosophy of History
The Philosophy of the Hyphen: Fort’s Dialectical Monism
Galactic Colonialism: Fort’s Science Mysticism and Dark Mythology
Evolution, Wild Talents, and the Poltergeist Girls: Fort’s Magical Anthropology

3 The Future Technology of Folklore: Jacques Vallee and the UFO Phenomenon
Forbidden Science (1957–69)
Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers (1969)
The Invisible College (1975)
The Present Technology of Folklore: Computer Technology and
Remote Viewing in the Psychic Underground
The Alien Contact Trilogy and the Mature Multiverse Gnosis
Sub Rosa: The Three Secrets
The Hermeneutics of Light: The Cave Become Window

4 Returning the Human Sciences to Consciousness: Bertrand Méheust and the Sociology of the Impossible
A Double Premise
Méheust and the Master
Science Fiction and Flying Saucers
The Challenge of the Magnetic and the Shock of the Psychical
“If Only One of These Facts . . .”: The Impossible Case of Alexis Didier
The Collective Mind: Bateson, De Martino, Vallee, and Jung
Agent X: Projection Theory Turned Back on Itself

Conclusion: Back on the Page
The Eclipse of the Sacred and the Psyche in Modern Oblivion
Consciousness, Culture, and Cognition: The Fantastic Structure of the Mind-Brain
From Realization to Authorization: Toward a Hermeneutics of the Impossible
Dimensions
Impossible (Dis)Closings: Two Youthful Encounters
Required Reading (That Is Never Read ): A Select Annotated Bibliography
Some More Damned Anecnotes
Index

Recenzii

“This is an excellent book. As well as being carefully researched and theoretically interesting, it is also engaging, witty, and thoughtful. Writing in an easy, contemplative style, Kripal is never less than rigorous and wide-ranging; he doesn't get mired in statistics or parapsychological analysis, but instead, drawing on religious studies and cultural analysis, he explores key ideas and thinkers in their respective contexts. In the process, the reader is introduced to the largely rejected knowledge of the psychical, the sacred is resurrected in the paranormal, and lazy skepticism is challenged. Authors of the Impossible will contribute significantly to the intelligent, open-minded study of the sacred, while Kripal will, I suspect, become a key figure in the development of new trajectories in the study of religion.”

“Jeffrey Kripal’s new book represents a serious intellectual challenge to the epistemological assumptions that govern the work of scientists and religion scholars alike. He demands nothing short of a paradigm shift in order to make sense of the odd, the anomalous, and the inexplicable. All of this he calls the impossible—the paranormal situations in which thought forms are said to become physical realities and the future to morph into the present and past. Kripal is no fluffy believer; he argues incisively and in detail in ways that seek to shake our materialist and rational foundations at their base, so that our defensive walls come tumbling down.”

“This is a quietly earth-shattering project that constitutes a logical next step in the development of Kripal’s thinking over the course of his career and grows directly out of Esalen. In Kripal we have a classic Romantic thinker/writer who is formulating—in a conscious meld of the subjective and objective that is the hallmark of Romantic writing—his own distinctive and highly original Biographia Spiritualis.”

"This is another in a series of outstanding and almost certainly controversial contributions to the academic study of religion by Kripal. . . .  Kripal has one of the most distinctive, interesting voices in the humanities today and has promise to revitalize and extend the reach of religious studies."

"There is much value to be gleaned from Kripal’s close reading of the four paranormal writers he examines. For scholars interested in giving paranormal belief its due, that reason alone is sufficient to ensure that Authors of the Impossible will remain an important yet controversial foray into the academic study of the so-called unexplained."

“Kripal’s erudite writing, interspersed with snippets of humour, moves along at an enthusiastic pace; it is evident that he finds this area of study exciting, both personally and academically. Rather than dismissing the paranormal as pseudo-science or belonging only to the rat-bag fringe, Kripal suggests instead that a more gainful approach is to investigate how the paranormal might bridge the sacred and the scientific. . . . This is an intriguing and daring book. . . . that greatly contributes to those discussions and suggests methodologies that can integrate the humanities and the sciences, the brain/mind distinctions, contemporary neuroscience, and psychical research.”