God and the Universe

Rating:
Summary: Basic Hope for unlimited scientific exploration
Review: God and the Universe by Arthur Gibson (Routledge) combines incisive interpretations of the latest scientific theories of the origins of the universe with an unparalleled understanding of their religious and philosophical implications. In tackling head-on the highly charged issue of God's relevance to contemporary cosmology, the breadth of Gibson's perspective on his subject matter is amazing: from virtual reality to the meaning of life and from Aristotle to Stephen Hawking. Books like this do not come along very often. I suggest one take a couple of mornings off and read through it. God and the Universe will provide some important novel perspectives about how things can mean from the smallest to the largest and how perhaps best to go about learning more. God and the Universe is a preliminary exploration to suggest strategies to discover ways out of this impasse, conceived as the first of a series of books. It displays many limitations: does the book cover too much ground and too many subjects? Gibson does not engage with Hegel, and is content only occasionally to treat Kant. The book addresses Aristotle's Poetics, rather than, as one might expect, his Metaphysics, and instead attempts to construct metaphysical problems out of our contemporary astrophysics, without introducing the significance of the reception of Aristotle's thinking into Christian theology. But, however one assesses, for example, Kant's contribution to `faith and reason' and `God's relation to the world' debates, the effect of systematically commenting upon Kant's great opus, or other seminal authors, is to be regulated by the controlling notions of relevance and commentary to which they subject us, and to which they have been subjected. This is not a whim by which one denounces or discards such authors, but to attempt, however imperfectly, to stand as far as is possible independently of these histories of influence and to think afresh. Yet to ignore them is both impossible and to delight in alienation. Gibson has tried to produce a different sort of use and this avoidance of authorities. The learning is staggering and can leave one wondering what are Gibson's premises. Still this read is pure adventure that many will find plenty to think about, even if the details eventually take us in different directions.It's an important read.

Rating:
Summary: Arthur goes to infinity and beyond
Review: I absolutely disagree with the previous reviewer who called this book "simply unintelligible". On the contrary, this is another masterpiece from Arthur. For me the real genius of Arthur's work is not what he says, but what he does not say. It's not what you learn from him, it's what you unlearn. To be honest, I never understand what Arthur is saying, but to me that is irrelevant. Arthur makes me ask WHY?

Arthur takes the very bedrock of a person's beliefs and with a few swift strokes of his keyboard, causes that person to question if those beliefs are actually constructed of marshmallow. Arthur Gibson is the only writer I know, that can cause his readers to question their own sanity before they reach the bottom of the first page and be suicidal at the end of the third chapter.

I can't tell you what this book is about, because I don't know. In fact I have not read it and I'd be no further forward if I did. I have written reviews of all of Arthur's books and I am widely recognised as the world's leading authority on Gibson; but the truth is, that apart from reading half a page of the original manuscript of his first work "Biblical Semantic Logic" I have not read any of them. But like I say, that is not what matters with Arthur's works. What matters with a Gibson book is not what he is saying, but rather what he is doing to your mind. The person who finishes reading a Gibson book is a different individual to the one that first picked it up. That reader will never be certain of anything again, he will always be challenging and refining his own belief system. He will have learned nothing from reading the book; in fact he will be highly confused for several months afterwards and may need counselling and anti-depressant medication, but he will emerge a better person for the experience.

I am told by someone who did read it that in this book Gibson takes his reader, in the immortal words of Buzz Light-year "to infinity and beyond." Other writers dare not even approach the great event horizon of immortality and infinity. But Arthur confidently strides back and forth between this world and the hereafter as if he were merely popping down to his local shops to pick up a bottle of milk or a loaf of bread. Whilst other writers speculate, or gape in awe at the concept of infinity, Arthur leaves you in no doubt that he knows the place well. Arthur cut his teeth there, Arthur knows where to park his bike and where to get a good curry there.

Let me tell Fraser Watts that he's not the only one to sink dumfounded to his knees when confronted by the overwhelming genius of Arthur Gibson. In fact I've never met anyone who had the slightest idea of what Gibson was saying and I gave up trying twenty five years ago, when I looked over his shoulder as he was first bashing out "Biblical Semantic Logic" on his old BBC Acorn computer in his lounge at Cambridge. I very much doubt that anyone on the planet will ever understand Arthur, but that only serves to underscore the overwhelming value of Arthur's contribution to science.

Any reader of one of Arthur's books is soon forced to the unavoidable conclusion that here is a mind that has broken free from the shackles of everyday academia. This is a brain that turns quicker than a pulsar. He is obviously powered by a quantum source of energy that comes from beyond our galaxy. Put you head into a Gibson book and you will witness a supernova explosion of polymath erudition that will leave you exuding gamma radiation from your body for several months afterwards.

What more can I say?

Rating:
Summary: Simply unintelligible.
Review: This is the first time that I have been asked to review a book that is simply unintelligible. The trouble lies with the author's allusive, non-linear style, where rigour and clarity are needed. His writing style is so jumbled that it is impossible to tell what, if anything, he is getting at. The range of material he refers to is unmanageably vast, but he is a long way from being in control of it. Surprising connections are made, but he seems unable to think clearly about them. The result is pretentious and bizarre.

I note that the "blurb" on the dust-jacket makes no attempt to summarize what the book is saying, neither do the prestigious people who have provided endorsements. I suspect that neither they nor the publishers could follow the book any better than I could. There may be short-term puzzlement about how Routledge came to publish such an unsatisfactory manuscript but, beyond that, it will surely sink without trace.

With such an incomprehensible book, it is hard for a reviewer to begin to indicate what it is about, but one central idea seems to be that of "live metaphor". There is no clear definition of the concept, but Gibson seems to be suggesting that much discourse in both cosmology and theology consists of "live metaphors". There are indeed interesting issues about how these two disciplines are radically metaphorical in similar but non-identical ways. That, I suspect, is the issue that the author was trying to write about, but it can't be clarified by a book of this kind. I certainly cannot recommend it. - Fraser Watts, University of Cambridge