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Very scrupulously set out. It is extremely well written and beautifully literate. - Dr. Diane Collinson, author of Plain English, Fifty Major Philosophers, Fifty Eastern Thinkers, coauthor of the Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers The unicycle provides a singular image of balance and impending peril, lifted by whimsy for the weighty subject of this book. All the evidence of experimental science reveals that nature is asymmetric. No pure symmetry has ever been found. What does it mean to live in an asymmetric environment? Unicycle introduces the logic of asymmetric change to interpret the evidence, while showing how our symmetry-based math has failed to grasp a vital ethical connection between humanity and the environment. The observation that nature is asymmetric confirms reasoning that is as organized as the current foundational symmetries of math by using symmetry as a foil in a proof by contradiction. One result is the discovery that nature, the universe, has a non-random sense of direction with vital ethical consequences, as matter and conscious behavior combine. Humans are drawn repetitively, even addictively, to pure symmetry in the simplicity of absolutes, like moths to the flame, gamblers to roulette, or - clowns to the unicycle. The more extreme the instability, the greater the need for balance. There is a Tao-like polarity - but one where absolute poles of chaos and order cannot exist. Where physical and social pressures cannot go, they must turn away, in the absence of absolutes, not into relativism, but into the natural, open-ended polarity of the River of Asymmetry. Self-defeating actions attract asymmetric counter-pressures. A self-centered monoculture needs to reach out for balance and learn to navigate the currents. A key finding is that symmetry and asymmetry are mutually exclusive. In the absence of absolutes, nature's asymmetry opens a creative continuum of opportunity that cannot be stopped with absolute finality. That which connects us is more profound than the differences that divide us. Nature's asymmetry is multifarious and fundamentally inclusive. This provides the ethical basis for a democratic society and a fresh, panpsychist understanding of economics and natural law. Economic value is nature-based and environmental. Markets depend on agreement, with or without competition. In the asymmetric economy, we are worth more than money. Business cycles can be rebalanced with cultural change. The reasoning is elucidated with an interdisciplinary narrative fiction, including mythological tales. The stories gain a realism of their own through the deductions. Nature comes to life, along with the characters, as they work on the book by a river in Maine - discovering Mother Nature's moral compass.

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9781882190478

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Reviews

Very scrupulously set out. It is extremely well written and beautifully literate. -Dr. Diane Collinson, author of Plain English, Fifty Major Philosophers, Fifty Eastern Thinkers, coauthor of the Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers A provocative book by a serious thinker, well worth the reader's time. - William A. Haviland, PhD, professor emeritus and founder of the Department of Anthropology, University of Vermont, coauthor of bestselling textbooks, including Cultural Anthropology and Evolution and Prehistory This book contains some serious mathematics - smart, thought-provoking, and engrossing. - William H. Barker, PhD, professor of mathematics, Bowdoin College, coauthor of the textbook Continuous Symmetry: From Euclid to Klein Looks fascinating. - Daniel C. Dennett, PhD, professor of philosophy, co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University, bestselling author of books including Darwin's Dangerous Idea and From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds Unicycle is an important book. I am very impressed. It covers a lot of territory, and it is very thoughtful and even charming. The math and logic are understandable to the interdisciplinary reader. I agreed with everything the book has to say. - Esther Pasztory, PhD, professor emerita, Columbia University, author of groundbreaking books, including Thinking With Things, Aztec Art, Teotihuacan: An Experiment in Living, Exile Space: Encountering Ancient and Modern America in Memoir with Essay and Fiction An eloquent explanation, with spare logic and excellent argument. In my critical thinking class, my students study the core ideals of the Enlightenment; this book's world view gives me a position from which to triangulate between absolutism and relativism and illuminates all three. - David S. Cook, author of Above the Gravel Bar: The Native Canoe Routes of Maine and Into the Civil War With the 3rd Maine Infantry Regiment

Author Information

Paul Cornell du Houx grew up among several Western countries. At Amherst College, he majored separately in economics and French. His honors thesis identified the aesthetic mysticism in the works of Gustave Flaubert. This led to his early attempts to bring cross-cultural insights to clarify a crisis some economists saw in the utilitarian way mainstream theory was moving. He decided to investigate the marketplace first-hand, rather than take the well-worn academic path that one day would lead the world economy into the Great Recession and largely unprepared into the 2020 pandemic. Clearly, capitalism has gone begging for something more than money. While looking for answers, Cornell du Houx wrote currency reports for the MSA consultancy newsletter in the London Square Mile, audited companies for PwC, studied law at the Inns of Court, sold computers, and with his patented improvements on an electrical connector got involved in a start-up. Attracted to the succinct form of the ancient sutra, the author began gathering ideas in the late seventies under the Yoganomics portmanteau, written as a conversation piece, in the spirit of his storytelling grandfather, a Kansas farmer with a talent for making up words and combining disparate ideas with comedy. Eventually, Cornell du Houx developed the math proposed in Unicycle that lets us read the ethics of natural law within the environment. In 2020, he rewrote Yoganomics accordingly. Somewhere along the line, he penned What the Farmer Told the Bard, a near-apocalyptic novel involving runes encoded in a Shakespeare monument and some pagan deities from the Bard's comedies. In 1991 Ramona and Paul settled with their children in Maine. Publishing books, art, and the news magazine Maine Insights led to founding the Solon Center for Research and Publishing, with the mission of helping to build community in Maine and beyond, through words and art, science and music. Gallery Fukurou at 20 Main St., Rockland, Maine, opened to the public in 2018. At the Solon Center, Elected Officials to Protect America (EOPA, ProtectingAmerica.net) works to combat climate change, often focusing on water security, with the help and leadership of military veterans. It is the author's hope that the sense of a deep democracy in nature, which inspired Native American communities and merged with our Founders' Enlightenment vision of natural law, will help bring hearts and minds together in time.

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