Customer Reviews

Beyond Supernature: A New Natural History of the Supernatural

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This book is a well-researched and detailed attempt to explain the science behind psychic and other "supernatural" phenomena. Watson cleverly takes the reader on a journey from the microscopic to the universal, offering fantastic examples of how the world of nature communicates and survives via an essential, unquantifiable link. This book is rarely dry, due in large part to the scores of reserch Watson has gathered (plants warning of imminent attack by foragers over vast spaces, sea sponges whipped in a blender then regathering into original form, the life and death of a riot crowd) and uses to illustrate our innate bond to each other and the supernatural world.

I have read Supernature and Beyond Supernature a number of times over the span of some twenty years. Hard science well.....hardly. Watson is the layman's science working from the small to the totality.
There are points in the book where you will agree , disagree, wonder at and dismiss. But the book is thought provoking it challenges our beliefs in the sciences, pokes holes in some long standing pillars for instance Neo - Darwinism.
It has a particular world view which some will embrace and others deride without self reflection.

Once again (first in his "Supernature" book), the author provides some compelling evidence that something ELSE (other than modern science) is a force that we cannot control nor harness, but it's out there. Presenting example after example of "super natural" happenings, he then postulates of what kind of force may be active - which is even more compelling, as several types of unexplainable events could be explained with very few reasons - reasons that our modern science (80's when this book was written, or even today's science) dismisses, yet cannot explain within the confines of our current knowledge of why certain things happen.

Given the examples, the reader can believe or not believe the authors ideas of what-might-be. Sure, there may be alternate explanations for a few of the examples, but until each unexplainable event can be explained with our modern sciences, it is jejune to dismiss alternative sciences themselves.

Lyall Watson has made quite a living for himself by turning out books that mix sense and nonsense in an appealing way. This book, like "Supernature" before it, glibly asserts that there is indeed a scientific basis for all sorts of unsubstantiated claims made about the supernatural world.

Watson is often described as a naturist or a biologist in publicity blurbs. His PhD is actually in ethology, and was obtained under the direction of Desmond Morris, another academic given to flights of fancy in a scientific context. Like Morris, Watson has long abandoned his scientific studies, relying instead on intuition and speculation. Enjoy his books if you like, but keep in mind that you're not necessarily reading science.