Overview

A book to share an inspired vision by restoring 'beautiful, aesthetic poetry into the history of science'. This unorthodox work has been called ' - an heroic intellectual tour de force - reflecting the act of genius' but hyperbole probably does duty for description which the work defies. It breaks all the rules and is unlike any other. It is so comprehensive in its sweep, original in its writing, ground-breaking in its synthesis, that to isolate any aspect is to misrepresent its nature. That science has reached the end of its habitual road, and must apply itself to the 'hard problem' of consciousness, and a synthesis with spirituality has now become commonplace and the subject of innumerable hand-wringing books. This book differs from these others by retracing the scientific journey to reveal how and why science has reached the current impasse. Instead of lamenting the consequences of the road less travelled by science, the road of inner, spiritual understanding, it reveals the presence of quiet inspiration all along.The torch bearers that lit the scientific journey: the Keplers and Faradays that apprehended new relationships were the scientific mystics, the counterparts of spiritually revealed truth. This work exposes the similarity between religious and scientific genius, by taking the journey afresh. In the good-natured and sometimes teasing company of Reason and Soul the reader is invited on a journey through the landscape of Western thought. From the emergence of early man on the Serengeti plains, through Mesopotamia, the pre-Socratic Aegean, the Dark and Middle ages to the Renaissance and Enlightenment what the epic journey reveals is the process of Involution, the recovery of evolutionary memory. The inspirations of genius are the knots in the scientific rosary, and other languages - painting and music - keep pace, all equally reflective of that recovery towards all embracing holism. Science, it is proposed, is the incremental transfer of the memory of evolution encoded in DNA to the collective intellect which has built the scientific paradigm, a model of memory.The entire chronology of scientific recovery is needed to reveal the mirror that involution provides of evolution; from the 'at-one-ment' of primitive man for whom the gods lay in the manifested natural world, through the increasing separation of intellect that came to perceive the natural world as separate, 'outside' the mind of man. The incremental penetration of collective memory to the dawn of creation has recovered everything in intellectual theory, but at the price of a false separation between mind and matter, Man and God. If this sounds formidable as a proposition, it is because it is. By increments, it returns oblivious science to the perennial philosophy, familiar to the ancients. The book traverses the human adventure with swift ease, delivering the history of Western thought with light-hearted poetic economy. Comprehensive footnotes demonstrating 'a rare depth of perceptive scholarship' (Lorimer) are there for those who like their facts; (they take no scientific knowledge for granted) but it is the high poetic vision of the wood and not the trees that is central.Poetry has always been the language of mysticism and this is mystical science, amused, self-mocking and a lot of fun In the words of Philip Franses (Editor, The Holistic Science Journal) -- The genius of involution is not just a mechanism of science relating to the whole but a completely different realisation of the beautiful within living process -- ' Thus the reader is invited to share an experience - and not just another theory. 'A poetic narrative of extraordinary subtlety' touches more deeply than that.

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Reviews

I am delighted to have your book. It's beautiful, timely, and very important. I hope millions will be reading it and enjoying it in the course of time! - Ervin Laszlo Frost Magazine - A Thinker's Lifestyle Magazine - published an insightful interview with the author, who explains more about her book and herself. Fascinating. 'We Love This Book' featured a lengthy extract from Involution on its front page, on July 2nd 2013.

I am delighted to have your book. It's beautiful, timely, and very important. I hope millions will be reading it and enjoying it in the course of time! - Ervin Laszlo Frost Magazine - A Thinker's Lifestyle Magazine - published an insightful interview with the author, who explains more about her book and herself. Fascinating. 'We Love This Book' featured a lengthy extract from Involution on its front page, on July 2nd 2013. SkyBlue Symposia philosophical website conducted two interviews with Philippa Rees, referring to her as a 'Living Mystic'. In the first, she shares her profound spiritual experiences and speaks about her book. The conversation flows into a variety of topics including: action and experience change DNA; that any individual change is a change in the biosphere as well as the collective consciousness; the division between mind/matter, inside/outside, reason/soul. In the second part, Philippa explores moving, letting go, trusting, voice, frequency, fibonacchi numbers and DNA. Phillippa then talks about women, how they embody the process of birth, death and rebirth, a natural and physical mysticism and bring life into the world. In another free flow the conversation touches on topics such as: our searchings, even misdirected in ways such as drugs and sex are glimpses of reunion with the Divine; voice as the original music; altering DNA with sound waves. Phillippa then speaks of what science has given us and also the consequences, and also her vision for the future when science embraces consciousness and what this can bring into the world. When Philippa Rees offered Involution as a scientific thesis at Cambridge forty years ago, it received open scorn from scientists for its revolutionary hypothesis. It proposed that the language and methods of science precluded perception of what underpins science and creation itself. That was before science caught up; it might be ready now. - from the heading of a two-page article in Watkins magazine. See the full article via the link. Philippa Rees is a polymath brought up in South Africa who studied literature, science and theology and who has brought these strands together with her own experience in this brilliant epic poem telling the story of the Western Odyssey of the mind with parallel explanations in 150 pages of notes. She has been working on this theory of involution for many years and was in correspondence with Arthur Koestler, Konrad Lorenz and EF Schumacher in the 1970s I know of no comparable work covering the Western Odyssey in its many thematic variations and using an interplay of poetry and prose to convey the adventure of the journey and arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of reality as a whole. The authors grasp of the principal elements of Western culture is masterly and her poetic narrative is woven together with extraordinary subtlety and eloquence. The result is a heroic tour de force that deserves the widest readership. David Lorimer, Scientific and Medical Network 'This 'remarkable' book was nominated as a 'close runner-up' in the Scientific and Medical Network's 'Book of the Year (2013)' That is this poetic works intention, not to offer another theory but to afford the vision of a deeper science; the Odyssey of Mankind whose visionaries are neglected by the scientific mythology. 'Beethoven, Einstein, Faraday, GaussWho found colours in music, numbers in space' What the mystics have perennially known, science has now re-approached, but inspiration has been sciences quiet companion all along. This continuous artesian stream is what this work identifies and traces. - Passionforfreshideas.com March 2014 At a quick glance, Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God seems like a scientific or spiritual read, and possibly a dry one, at that. But those too ready to judge a book by its title may be in for a surprise, here: for Involution is in actuality a poetic-based exploration of the Western thinking process, and is more focused on the process of Mankind's incremental rediscovery than scientific or spiritual analysis. It's neither poetry nor science, spiritual reader nor philosophical investigation - but it incorporates elements of each. Nor is it 'fish nor fowl' - which makes its intended audience and placement a bit ambiguous. How do you tell an audience mired in one discipline that there's value to be had (and elements of that discipline) in a book that crosses genres? Therein lies the presentation challenge; for it'd be a shame for the reader of science, spirituality, philosophy or history to miss the unexpected treats embedded in Involution. Incidentally, Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God has been nominated runner-up Book of the Year (2013) by the Scientific and Medical Network. It's easy to see why it deserves this accolade. - Midwest Book Review June 2014. Diane Donovan (Senior Reviews Editor)

Author Information

Philippa Rees. The author is not a conventional academic which this book might suggest; instead this work is reflective of a lifetime's experiences, and accumulated languages which contribute to this integration of unsought spiritual insights. It is about all of life but, force majeur, drawn from one life that in many ways has elements of fantasy fiction. Born in South Africa, fatherless before the age of two, Philippa's early years were spent in the wildest parts of rural Africa in the care of her grandfather, on safari for weeks inspecting rural African schools with a cook, a tracker and a folding table. The other extreme was imprisonment in boarding schools studying the Metaphysical poets, Theology and the English Monarchy, and always hungry. These solitary extremes perhaps contributed to the need to reconcile the influences of two worlds, African liberty and European culture. Related to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, it is perhaps not surprising that she should arrive at a poetic narrative to achieve her reconciliation between science and religion, matter and mind. The 'leitmotif' of her writing is characterized by a celebration of the individual, often eccentric, always out of the mainstream. After sampling medicine, architecture, classics and fine art she ultimately achieved degrees in Zoology and Psychology. She has lived on deserted islands in the Indian Ocean, fishing for supper; at the Max Planck Institute in Bavaria observing the work of Konrad Lorenz and the esteemed animal behaviourists who visited; lectured to mature University students in Britain; designed buildings; single handedly built her home, an arts centre and concert hall; raised four daughters, and failed to master the cello. Always reading and writing first. This particular work has underpinned an almost obsessive observation of synchronicities and the penetration of spirit into the apparently mundane. She lives in Somerset in her converted barns with an old collie and a long-suffering husband.

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