Of the books I read while I was away on holidays, the one that got my brain moving the most was Absence of Mind by Marilynne Robinson. The chapters of this book were originally a series of lectures given as part of the wonderfully named Dwight Harrington Terry Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy . Her subject is what she calls "parascientific writing" - that is writings, generally by scientists, which attempt to apply scientific insights to subjects such as religion or human culture which are strictly beyond the bounds of those sciences. Obviously uppermost on her mind are those we think of as "scientifics atheists" - the Dawkins, Dennets and EO Wilsons of this world - but she also delves further back to the writers of the late 19th and early 20th century such as Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, not to mention a whole chapter on Sigmund Freud. One of the key aspects of this kind of thinking, she says, is that its authors see our s
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson