Science and Natural History discussion

Post your questions, comments and outrages here to share and discuss with other members. Happy reading!

For me, Wells’ book stalled in chapters 5 & 6, but his final chapter 7, “Toward A New Mythos” grabbed my brain with such ferocity, my eyes scorched the page in at least a half-dozen places. (Because so much of my own creation – albeit a fiction – deals with these same issues, thus why I fell out of my chair during this last chapter). Out of necessity for survival, Wells claims, we humans have created benefits and one hell of a mess. What we made has folded back on us, making some of us unstable in response to modernity – including, he notes, fundamentalists (religious, and I would add, political). It’s not that “natural man” is good or evil (per Wells’ Plato vs. Socrates, Hobbs vs. Locke arguments), but humanity makes itself one or the other by the system we built to live in – one that fosters harmony or greed. Sections reminded me of Marcel Gauchet’s spellbinding “A Political History Of Religion,” Richard Gregg’s “Voluntary Simplicity,” Joseph Campbell’s “The Power Of Myth.”

Great expectations after reading 1st chapter, but things deteriorated progressively thereafter and ended just rehashing current politicized science issues.