I first read this book as a graduate student in the mid-1970s. It is one of those books that kept whole groups of us staying up late on Saturday nights, caught up in intense discussion. Relativity and and quantum physics were three-quarters of a century old, and we were looking around for what everyone assumed would be the advent of a new paradigm in scientific thought.

A lot of people, then and now, were/are stopped cold by the limitations of Western religious thought in regard to the modern world; the limitations of Western scientific thought in regard to spirituality; and the limitations of applications of Eastern religious/spiritual modalities to the Western world. Fritjof Capra as a young physicist not only struggled with these issues, he found common ground between modern quantum physics/cosmology and various traditions of Eastern religion and spirituality.

You don't have to be terribly familiar with these subjects in order to understand his points. Capra is kind enough to step the reader through the fundamentals of quantum physics, Big Bang cosmology, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and other Eastern thought systems. He does it in a pretty painless fashion, unless these subjects simply bore you. He shows that that Taoist view of universal origin is remarkably close to the Big Bang theory. He shows that interpretation of the results of experiments in quantum physics is remarkably similar to Zen koans. These are typical but only two examples of the parallels he draws.

Given that this book was written before fractal mathematics, chaos theory, and the PC revolution, is still a surprisingly fresh and eye-opening read today, more than 20 years later. If you are interested in reading Capra's more recent work, The Web of Life, it would not hurt to read this one first. Most people interested in such subjects will find it a real eye-opener!



Recommended: Yes

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