The Enigma of Energy:  Where Science & Religion Converge

Abstract from the back cover:
"Disguised beneath the facade of a particulate, mechanistic universe in which energy is transferred, used, lost or gained when one thing acts on another, there has been, throughout history, a subtle idea that energy is more than just the ability to do work. Energy is a phenomenon.

Today there is scientific evidence to authenticate what the mystics and sages have known all along. We are but manifestations of a whole, a whole that by its very nature is both knowable and unknowable. All is essentially one. Every single thing is a manifestation of energy--one thing--that is continually transforming. It never stands still. Nothing is ever lost, just changed. And to know that is to know that it all couldn't possibly just happen to be here.

From Aristotle to Aquinas, Descartes to Teilhard de Chardin, Einstein to Hawking, Hippocrates to Dossey, Nightingale to Rogers--this history of ideas surrounding the concept of energy leads to the resounding conviction there must be a reason for it all."

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Excerpts:

"The more I worked on this project the more I became aware that somehow science and religion were converging. It was never my goal to merge these two seemingly disparate areas; in fact, when my search led me into religious realms of thought, I tried hard at first to stay clear of them. But it was impossible to do so. Anytime I came across literature that was related to an idea of energy there were implicit or explicit spiritual overtones. Most surprising was the abundance of spiritual ideas found in physics. It seems that you simply cannot talk of wholeness or oneness without getting into some kind of religion."


"One can't find fault with those such as Bohm, Sheldrake, Mitchell, or Woodhouse for hypothesizing that there are hidden variables underlying our existence. It does seem so. There is a purposiveness in all things, even the smallest and inanimate things. The ground of existence implied by Bohm's implicate order and the idea of the zero-point field, are they possibly, like morphogenic fields, a depiction of Aristotle's final cause, scientific terms employed to try to quantify the tendency for things to become what they eventually do? In Aristotelian terms, every actuality (energeia) is actualizing its potential in a self-organizing sort of way."

"Why is it that living things are so similar and yet so dissimilar?  We all have unique but nevertheless comparable hearts, lungs, and fingerprints. Why is it that without any seeming intent or effort on our part, most of us manage to be healthy?  In keeping with the becoming of it all, underlying all aspects of health and healing are signs of unity and purpose.  Just as we are connected to the stars above and the earth beneath our feet, just as every snowflake, although unique, has a discernible pattern, so too does every human being....  ...the nature of health and healing is a mystery because it is irrevocably linked to the enigma of energy.  Health and healing are yet other examples of the purposive nature of the one."

"We might ask ourselves why it is that people who have had a near death experience often go on to lead more spiritual lives?  Why is it they turn outward, rather than inward, and focus on helping others?  It does seem that there is a reason for it all; some kind of universal purpose. Then there are our subliminal abilities.  Dreams, intuition, and synchronicities. Being in the right place at the right time kind of thing.  How is it that a dream or a meaningful coincidence can change the direction our lives take? Why do these things occur? Unknowingly, it seems, we are participating in some universal purposive communal process.  It is a communal process rather than a causal one in the sense that it, the one, is changing, purposively actualizing inherent potentials.  So that not surprisingly we sometimes make choices that unknowingly, but still purposefully, contribute to the larger whole."

"...the fragmentation of human values has led to apparent disharmony among people.  It is not that we can't have different religions or different scientific viewpoints.  Rather, it seems to me that we can have different views and yet recognize there is some coherence among all of them.  If so, perhaps we can begin to regain the harmony of the whole. Perchance we can agree to say that no one way is right or wrong; rather every way is in some way right."

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Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter I    The Enigma
                    Energy:  The Word
                    The Underlying Ideas of The Phenomenon
                    Concepts in General
                    Ideas of Energy in Antiquity

Chapter II  A Very Brief History of Energy
                   Aristotle's Energeia
                   Matter and the Forces of Nature
                   The Conservation of Energy
                   Fields Everywhere
                   The Tiny Quantum World
                   The Paradoxes of  Nature: Matter/Ether                                      Particles/Waves,Local/Nonlocal
                    
Chapter III The Becoming of It All
                    Back to the Forces of Nature
                    Big Bang(s)
                        Something's Missing
                        The Universe Unfolds
                        From Star Dust to Us
                    Disorder or Order?
                    Creative Evolution: The E'lan Vital and Dissipative
                        Structures
                    Are There "Hidden Variables?
                         The Implicate and Explicate Orders
                          Consciousness, A Hidden Variable?
                          Morphogenic Fields
                    The Earth as Gaia

Chapter IV  Human Beings: More Than Just Matter
                    The Mind-Body Problem
                    The Mind is in The Matter: The World of Neurons
                    Beyond the Brain or Beyond the Body?
                    Para-Phenomena in the Realm of Sentience
                    Meaningful Coincidences
                    Body, Mind, Energy and Consciousness
                    The Science of Unitary Human Beings
                    A Different View
                    
Chapter V  The Nature of Health and Healing
                    A Healing Force of Nature
                    The Human Energy Field and Energy Therapies
                    Spontaneous Healing
                    Miracle Healing
                    Participating Knowingly In Change
                    Another View: Transforming the One
                    
Chapter VI  The Spiritual Essence of The Enigma
                    Back to The Beginning
                    Aquinas and Aristotle
                    Genesis, Time and Energy Transformation
                    The Argument over Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
                     What, Exactly, is Nature?
                     Human Nature and Nature: All Essentially One
                     Death and The Eternal Soul
                     
Chapter VII  Full Circle: Back To The Enigma
                     What is Energy?
                     How and Why Things Change
                     De-Coding The Pattern
                   Beyond A Piecemeal View
                     Closing Thoughts
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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The Enigma of Energy can be ordered from 

amazon.com by clicking on the  book cover.

If you prefer, the book can also be bought at Barnes and Nobles or any neighborhood bookstore.

If you have difficulty obtaining the book e-mail me.  I have a limited number of books for sale.

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