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THE END OF MATERIALISM: HOW EVIDENCE OF THE PARANORMAL IS BRINGING SCIENCE AND SPIRIT TOGETHER by Charles T. Tart. Oakland, CA: Noetic Books, Institute of Noetic Sciences; New Harbinger Publications, 2009. Pp. xi + 397. $29.95 (hardback). ISBN 978-1-57224-645-4.
Since the 17th-century scientific revolution, scholars have struggled with the issue of how to reconcile the physicalism and determinism of modern science with human freedom and dignity. René Descartes dealt with the problem by bifurcating the world between extended, dead matter and unextended, living consciousness. According to his version of substance dualism, human beings are "thinking things," with freedom, dignity, and immortality.
After Darwin's theory of evolution placed the development of mind into the context of evolutionary biology, some scholars, such as Henry Sidgwick, Frederick Myers, Edmund Gurney, and William James, founded psychical research, the ancestor of contemporary parapsychology. Although not all of these thinkers were dualists, the brunt of psychical research focused on the possibility of the proving via experience the existence of a nonphysical component of the human being, a component that could survive death. Even J. B. Rhine (1947), who revolutionized parapsychology with an experimental approach, tended toward a substance dualistic interpretation of psi evidence. Charles Tart's book The End of Materialism lies squarely within this dualistic tradition.
Like the founders of psychical research, Tart is disturbed by what he considers to be the materialism (or physicalism) and determinism of contemporary science. He makes a sharp contrast between the 19th century Canadian psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke's experience of "cosmic consciousness," of the universe as alive, and the worldview of modern science, which accepts a universe of "dead matter." The latter view is exemplified by the near-nihilistic pessimism of Bertrand Russell's "firm foundation of unyielding despair." Tart believes that a recovery of spirituality (as opposed to "organized religion") can halt the slide into the anomie of materialism.
Ironically, it is through science that Tart believes such a recovery can take place. He defends the position that the findings of parapsychology are consistent with the existence of a nonmaterial aspect to human existence, opening the door to a new spirituality informed by the best findings of science. As a prelude to his exploration of parapsychology, Tart discusses an exercise he gives to his students called...