Whispering Pond: A Personal Guide to the Emerging Vision of Science (Paperback)

by Ervin Laszlo (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The enthusiastic blurbs accompanying the galley of Laszlo's (The Inner Limits of Mankind) new book carry some high-profile signatures from the New Age crowd, Larry Dossey, Edgar Mitchell, Thomas Berry and Yehudi Menuhin among them. The praise is justified; among the many new science titles available today?books that synthesize cutting-edge thought in various scientific disciplines while adding their own interpretations of a holistic, creative universe?Laszlo's stands out. In it, the author, focusing on physics, not only reviews the work of farsighted thinkers including Bohm and Heisenberg, but makes his own contribution. Laszlo postulates a fifth universal field to unify the accepted four universal fields in physics: gravitation, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Laszlo speculates that a fifth field, which he calls the psi field, would explain diverse anomalies from the conundrums of quantum physics and sudden leaps in complexity during biological evolution to human consciousness and even ESP. He likens the psi field to the Vedic Brahman, "the unchanging mind and essence of the universe," and describes it as a "subtly interconnected world, a 'whispering pond' in which we are intimately linked to each other and to nature, assimilated by our intellect and embraced by our heart." Readers of Fritjof Capra and Rupert Sheldrake, among others, will relish Laszlo's erudite analysis of current advances in science as well as his bold and inspiring vision of a possible future science. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
A brilliant new unifying vision leads us into the 21st century--by Ervin Laszlo, foremost futurist and philospher of science. "Confronts head-on the great questions of humankind--our origins, our destiny, and our role in the universe. . . . This book could be written only by someone possessing great courage and wisdom. Laszlo has both . . . a fitting book for the new millennium.--Larry Dossey, M.D. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Element Books Ltd (January 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1862043620
• ISBN-13: 978-1862043626
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,685,858 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The right question and a fascinating answer, October 17, 2000

By	Ilmar Waldner (Oceanside, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

One of the core questions our culture faces these days is how to understand ourselves within the context of the universe in which we live. The need is for a model which integrates our growing knowledge of our potentials as conscious subjects with what we are coming to know of the objective world. In both areas, the subjective and the objective, there is growing evidence of subtle interconnections among what we have long taken to be separate.

Laszlo provides an excelent and very readable, non technical, survey of the state of our research knowledge in the areas of the cosmos, of matter, of life and of the mind. He clearly guides us through the paradoxes which appear in this research and shows that many of them may be resolvable if we have some subtle connection among items by which information can be transmitted which is not limited by the currently accepted constraints of time and space.

He shows how a fifth fundamental energy field, the zero energy field of the quantum vacuum, now being studied by some physicists can provide the means for establishing such subtle connections and reviews some of the leading edge research in this area.

What especially recommends this book is the combination of thorough understanding of the science involved with a basically humanistic viewpoint that Laszlo (himself a leading philosopher of science and major contributor to systems theory) brings to this account.

6 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Some Interesting Thoughts, Mostly Psuedoscientific Nonsense, August 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Whispering Pond: A Personal Guide to the Emerging Vision of Science (Hardcover)

I had high hopes for this text after reading the dust jacket while browsing at a local book givaway. I was drawn to the promises of original thought and the revealing of new ways of thinking about paradoxes which are present in our current scientific understanding. My interest of general sciences was piqued by references to evolution, the rise of the Big Bang cosmology, and the search for the Grand Unified Theories. Despite some attempt at delving into these complex subjects, Laszlo fails in delivering on his promise of a "fascinating journey."

Perhaps the first hint that this book wouldn't be the scholarly text I had mistaken it for was its slim size - at a little over 200 pages, the material can hardly do more than brush the surface of the topics it claims to illuminate. Part I, the survey of existing knowledge, is nothing more than a skewed and incomplete history lesson of scientific advances. Part II, wherein Laszlo claims to point out the paradoxes of modern science, merely describes our current point of scientific advance. To Laszlo, a "scientific paradox" is simply an event of phenomena that isn't clearly defined yet. If this is the case, then there will always be these paradoxes. Science, while advancing, will always have a frontier. Parts III and IV are short and underdeveloped.

If you're looking for a very quick review of some topics of science, then the first section of the book has some merit. The rest of the book seems hastily written and incompletely reasoned. The sole saving grace is the fact that Laszlo, an experienced writer, manages to pull off several life metaphors worth nothing and does leave the reader with a handful of questions to ponder. Overall though, this book was a disappointment, and I would not recommend it to any reader who has a serious interest in (or understanding of) science.

4 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Weakest Link, April 4, 2002

By A Customer

Pseudo-scientific nonsense. That anyone could believe that
this book had any scholarly merit is beyond my comprehension.
Highly speculative, kooky. This cannot be on the up and up.
Are there such legitimate organizations as the General Evolution
Research Group, the Club of Budapest and the International
Society for Modern Systems all of which the author founded and directs or has directed? The book is suitable for a cult of crystal ball fortune tellers.