Customer Reviews

The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It's all here. Everything we ever needed to know to begin to change our world and ourselves. Totally brilliant. Many years in the making, this book covers a very wide spectrum of knowledge and is fascinating all the way through. Like The Tao of Physics, this book looks toward a world view that encompasses a balance of science and spirit. Capra is also not shy about deconstructing or critisizing popular economic and political mythology, which may disturb some readers, but he has the benefit of input from some of the greatest minds of our time and his analysis is unassailable. Female readers will probably appreciate his sensitivity and balanced approach to feminist perspectives as he discusses what's wrong with our world and what we can do to change things.

My experience was that I read his other book "Uncommon Wisdom" first, which was in large part about Capra's experiences leading up to the writing of The Turning Point with the people and minds that inspired and enlightened him. Reading that first made all of The Turning Point flow even smoother. But Uncommon Wisdom is getting hard to find, so don't quibble. Read Turning Point no matter what! It is still 100% relevant to today and comes from a man who has been at the forefront of cutting edge thinking since the 1960s.

This book is filled with Capra's take on insights obtained over the years from people like Werner Heisenberg, E.F. Schumacher, J. Krishnamurti, Hazel Henderson, Gregory Bateson, Pitirim Sorokin, Stanislav Grof, Margaret Locke, R.D. Laing, David Bohm, Adrienne Rich, Lyn Margulis, and many others. With The Turning Point, you're getting into the thoughts of a whole lot of brilliant thinkers, both male and female, that Capra has known personally or studied thoroughly.

All of Capra's books are fascinating. Check out "The Web of Life" which is another 5 star book in my opinion.

The book has an extremely broad sweep and tries to get to the very root of our crisis as a civilisation. Building his case from a very logical historical perspective that covers the very essence of our academic and intellectual foundations, Capra argues for a paradigm shift in order to bring about sustainable development. The book is not a mere superficial recipe for survival but provides a blueprint for excellence in the new era of globalisation and economic change. Written in a lucid and fluent manner, the arguments flow systematically and call for a radical change in our approach to both seeing and solving problems. The book is both philosophical and practical in its approach and therein lies Capra's greatness. He has been able to weave the enormous research into a comprehensive tome that is as useful for the expert as it is fascinating for the layman. Highly recommended. Mohit Misra, Asian Institute Of Management, Manila.

I read this book after seeing the movie "MindWalk". That movie was so fascinating that I had to read the book that this movie is based on. This book really cover just about everything from religious/science/philosophy to politic/economy/social and then explain the relationship between all those. It did make me a better person by seeing the bigger picture of what we didn't recognize. It sure made me think more, question more, explore more, seek more..and so on... everybody seriously need to read this..

This is a critical book in my collection of research; artifacts which contain clues for redefining the way we interact with each other and do business. I find it curious that many physicists I talk to denounce Capra's work. So be it. His message is not for them.

While preparing an industry presentation to help a bunch of left-brained technologists think in right-brained terms, I relied heavily on Capra's work along with some of the research I had already followed for Margaret Wheatley, the minds of the Santa Fe Institute (esp. Steward Kauffman) and Michael D. McMaster. I was fascinated, but yet not much surprised to find that many of the analogies and issues I had already woven into my presentation were key components of Capra's thoughts (the "failure" of Western medicine models, finding a balance like riding a bicycle).

His work continued to support my conclusions that the optimization of all conditions is to focus on the "middle"...not the exact middle, but an ever fluctuating point that optimizes the "poles". It's not about focusing on success while hiding failures, but on celebrating both to capture the optimal between: creativity. In organizational structures, it's not about creating structures for order to avoid chaos. It's about celebrating and supporting mechanisms to optimize the in-between: complexity. In technology, it's not about the objects or the data; it's about the relationships between which define dynamic assemblies of possibilities. Individually they have limited worth; collectively the possibilities are exponential. This has already been confirmed by the lessons we've learned from the behaviors of Internet economies.

I think Fritjof Capra is making some very important observations in this book. Through his observations, the author states that Western Civilization is gradually approaching the climax of a major turning point in its evolution. He suggests that the cause of this is in our consciousness, a certain way we are seeing and understanding our experiences. This is leading to many of our present day environmental, social, political, and financial crises. We are all sitting on a treebranch that is gradually getting too heavy. Many modern theorists try to explain this phenomena but Capra articulates this in a way that many people can understand. This book as well as "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato do a very fine job in trying to open the public eye to these issues. Both of these books are highly recommended for people who want to understand things from a wider, larger, and deeper perspective.

The back page of Capra's book contains the following: "We have reached a time of dramatic and potentially dangerous change, a turning point for the planet as a whole. We need a new vision of reality, one that allows the forces transforming our world to flow together as a positive movement for social change." The book was written before the fall of the Soviet Union and European Communism, before the advent of the Internet Revolution, and before the rise of international stateless terror. Much of what seemed exotic at the time - alternative wellness treatment, alternative energy, and environmental concern - have since become mainstream. Other problems he presents as potentially catastrophic have become obsolete because of the productivity potential of the Internet and the knowledge economy.
Yet the above quote is still relevant as an apt description of our present world and the book can still be read with benefit by the inquisitive and concerned world citizen. The title served as a useful metaphor for me when writing "The Optimistic Jew" -- it seems to me that Jewish civilization itself is at a "turning point" within the general "Turning Point".

The text contains criticism on several commonly accepted concepts, from drugs advertising to public health to physics (almost a summary of The Tao of Physics) to agriculture to nuclear power, all extremely relevant topics to anyone.

As I graduated in Business Administration, one of chapters I liked most is about Economics - exposing the lack of proper concepts to start with, then the common weak and biased conclusions reached based on those weak and biased concepts. Ecology discussions are also great, though alarming - but I think few people can stay calm reading about that in any media today.

The title refers to a bigger idea, that of an overall crisis and upcoming transformation of our society. The "jump" from criticism of specific issues (above) to this conclusion is highly subjective, and so many will disagree to it. Even if you do disagree, read the specifics anyway; they are still interesting.

It's also wonderfully written; in almost every paragraph you can take out one or two thoughts. I ended up underlining most of the book.

I highly recommend it. The exercise of questioning our concepts helps understanding. Even if you reach other conclusions yourself, it's still worthy to question!

The intellectual applications of this fine book are astounding. Make it a definite point to see the movie based upon the book, MINDWALK. It is truly one of the best reflections of a book in the film genre.

The Reductionist model of the world holds sway today with incredible tenacity and effect. Capra's tracing of it's history, implications and role in present society is outstanding. His advocacy for system thinking is likewise terrific. In the second portion of the book Capra attempts a prescriptive dialog in several areas. This prescriptive section was interesting and contains some good ideas, yet lacks the power of the first part. My recommendation: Everyone should read the first portion while the second is very optional.

Like the current era, the United States of the mid-70's and early 80's were tinged with a new batch of thinkers making strong cases for the reorganization of society. Interestingly, this period corresponds to the time when the United States peaked in domestic oil production. Economic growth slowed to a crawl and people were considering social alternatives before the aggressive economic policies and financial deregulation of the 80's and 90's led to the creation of financial accumulation instead of growth in wealth, distracting those seriously considering alternatives to economic growth and the industrial production/consumer infrastructure that had defined modernism in the period after World War II. Fritjof Capra's The Turning Point falls into the aforementioned category of ideas that were ripe at the time they were published and then pushed by the wayside when rampant domestic economic growth supported by global tolerance of the US Dollar allowed massive trade deficits to accumulate, creating the illusion of prosperity.

Now that the economic illusion of the last three decades has started to fade, The Turning Point was an eerie read. Capra's commentary on a number of trends for a future where humanity adhered to the outdated paradigm of prosperity only from growth, a biomedical paradigm centered on eradicating microorganisms and a science based on specialization and determinism are revealing themselves in the headlines. Dr. Capra, a theoretical physicist by training and practice, was wise to integrate a holistic view of humanity and to offer an alternative for society that perhaps we've only now wizened enough to appreciate. Key to his thesis is the idea that our world, our governments and our scientists operate as if the deterministic paradigm of the Enlightenment period hasn't changed. Ignoring the reality of relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, biology and modern science has crippled society from the truth of the natural world. We've forgotten that nature does not guarantee our existence! In providing an all encompassing critique of society, Capra does not seek to denigrate the colleagues in other fields but merely to offer a well reasoned and referenced approach to modernizing the way we choose to organize our species.

Starting by providing the background of why we need to change, essentially the problem statement, Capra states the crises of society and defines the importance of the Chinese concept of wu wei, the idea that we must refrain from action contrary to nature. As Chuang Tzu says, "Nonaction does not mean doing nothing and keeping silent. Let everything be allowed to do what it naturally does, so that its nature will be satisfied."

"In all these fields the limitations of the classical, Cartesian world view are now becoming apparent. To transcend the classical models, scientists will have to go beyond the mechanistic and reductionist approach as we have done in physics, and develop holistic and ecological views. Although their theories will need to be consistent with those of modern physics, the concepts of physics will generally not be appropriate as a model for the other sciences... Scientists will not need to be reluctant to adopt a holistic framework for fear of being unscientific. Modern physics can show them that such a framework is not only scientific but is in agreement with the most advanced scientific theories of physical reality." (p. 49)

Capra continues by describing a history of the old world view, the mechanistic reductionist approach that has led to our current predicament. The history of our materialistic success and the limits to our knowledge of the world is retraced through Copernicus, Descartes, Bacon and Newton. This approach has led to a world where, in the words of R.D. Laing as quoted by Capra, "Out go sight, sound, taste, touch and smell and along with them has since gone aesthetics and ethical sensibility, values, quality, form; all feelings, motives, intentions, soul, consciousness, spirit. Experience as such is cast out of the realm of scientific discourse." (p.55)

The Turning Point then follows the development of the new physics that started in 1905 when Einstein published his papers on the photoelectric effect and the theory of General Relativity. The photoelectric effect winning the 1921 Nobel Prize and laying the groundwork for quantum mechanics, leading to Heisenberg's discovery of the Uncertainty Principle, an actual physical concept that there are limits to knowledge. Later, Schrodinger's work in demonstrating the electrons and protons that we visualize as balls on a pool table are actually probability clouds, that the foundation of reality is a probability. This work led to John Bell's discovery that our physical reality is subject to non-local phenomena... that the measurement of the spin of a particle in one location will change the spin of a particle in another location, the "spooky action at a distance" that is beginning to make our world look more like one envisioned by the alchemists (well... maybe alchemists like Isaac Newton). And now we've discovered that these non-local connections may be responsible for many basic actions in biology like memory and even consciousness.

While physicists were busy revolutionizing our outlook on the fundamentals of the universe, the mechanistic paradigm of the past had already taken hold on the methods of every other field. Our biologists had taken a mechanistic view of life. From a biology textbook quoted by Capra, "One of the acid tests of understanding an object is the ability to put it together from its component parts. " (Capra p. 102) An approach that ironically is quite opposed to the study of life. We've now realized that the mapping of the human genome has yielded many beautiful computer models but little else. The biomedical model which concentrates on the mechanisms of smaller and smaller fragments of the body has yielded an approach that views disease as, "the malfunctioning of biological organisms which are studied from the point of view of cellular and molecular biology; the doctor's role is to intervene, either physically or chemically, to correct the malfunctioning of a specific mechanism." (p.123) The ingestion of many chemicals and execution of complicated surgeries has resulted in ever rising health care costs, and while saving many lives has primarily served as an excuse for lifestyles that run counter to human nature. "We prefer to talk about our children's hyperactivity or learning disability rather than examine the inadequacy of our schools; we prefer to be told that we suffer from hypertension rather than change our over-competitive business world; we accept ever increasing rates of cancer rather than investigate how the chemical industry poisons our food to increase its profits." (p.163)

In psychology, Capra advocated that the rational approach of Freudian analysis would need to be transcended to explore the subtler aspects of the human psyche. The incorporation of altered states of consciousness into mainstream psychological studies could yield insights into our human predicament. I'd like to summarize more here but this is a dense critique of many psychologists.

Capra's exception to economics is that we've mechanistically reduced people into rational actors, using our education systems to produce a standardized robot class with predictable consumer society that ignores collective values and the psychological need for community. Key to this chapter is the point that the advantages won by the worker in the modern world is generally to the detriment of workers and citizens in the developing world... the great sleight of hand trick made possible by technology and economy. The automation of daily life through complex technologies reduces employment and centers on a capital based approach which is highly inflationary, an economic reality that can be seen by looking at charts of US Dollar inflation over the last hundred years. This section is the most important of the entire book and highly relevant to our current situation.

Capra then follows these critiques with answers for each field through a systems view of life that incorporates feedbacks and recognition of evolution through cooperation. A health model that acknowledges holistic principles and a psychology grown from Jung can provide a basis for this new society. Tackling energy, Capra explains the physics and the economics behind our immediate need for a solar economy.

I've tried to summarize all 419 pages but so much has slipped through the cracks. While it is easy to view the predicaments of the current global situation, Capra's writings aren't the least bit outdated and a specifically resonant with its solutions. If you are disheartened by the problems of overpopulation, energy crises, etc... (the list can go on forever) do yourself a favor and read the solutions Capra advocates in The Turning Point.