Cosmos And Psyche: Intimations Of A New World View
The book's objective is to challenge the materialistic and dysteleological assumptions of the modern world view, and to set forth evidence for a correspondence between planetary alignments and patterns of human history. The book attempts to provide an archetypal cosmology to accompany Tarnas's proposed participatory epistemology, "in which human beings are regarded as an essential vehicle for the creative selfunfolding of reality".[3][4]
Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View
'In effect, the objective world has been ruled by the Enlightenment, the subjective world by Romanticism,' Richard Tarnas says in his remarkable book Cosmos & Psyche, an attempt to heal that schism, to 're-enchant' the cosmos and redeem what he calls the 'pathos' of the modern condition. By contrast, Dawkins' one-eyed view turns reason, as Blake warned, into the enemy of imagination and of art.[10]
Daniel Pinchbeck, writing in Reality Sandwich, opined that Cosmos was "scrupulously researched and carefully argued", and that it advances "a radical thesis...which seeks to revive astrology as a serious intellectual discipline and provide a cosmological missing link between the human world and the greater universe in which we are embedded." Pinchbeck writes that Cosmos may offer "a transformative matrix for reconceiving our relationship to the cosmos."[15]
With The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas gave the world what many scholars, from Joseph Campbell to Huston Smith, regarded as one of the finest histories of the Western mind and spirit ever written. Now, Cosmos and Psyche challenges the basic assumptions of the modern world view with an extraordinary body of evidence that points towards a profound new understanding of the human role in the cosmos.
In these pages, distinguished philosopher and cultural historian Richard Tarnas traces the connection between cosmic cycles and archetypal patterns of human experience. Based on thirty years of meticulous research, and on thinkers from Plato to Jung, Cosmos and Psyche explores the planetary correlations of epochal events like the French Revolution, the two world wars, and September 11.This brilliant book points to a radical change in our understanding of the cosmos, shining new light on the drama of history and on our own critical age. It opens up a new cosmic horizon that reunites science and religion, intellect and soul, modern reason and ancient wisdom. Whether read as astrology updated for the quantum age or as a contemporary classic of spirituality, Cosmos and Psyche is a work of immense sophistication, deep learning, and lasting importance.
According to Tarnas, acclaimed author of The Passion of the Western Mind, history is on the verge of a major shift, comparable to the one wrought by Copernicus and Galileo, but a seemingly antiscientific one: an astrological turn that can only be understood thorough chronicling planetary alignments as they correlate to the rise of the modern mind over the last 500 years. Understanding planetary alignments, for Tarnas, is crucial to the world's future and requires "a genuine dialogue" with the cosmos, by "opening ourselves more fully" to "the other," to ancient and indigenous epistemologies, even "to other forms of life, other modes of the universe's self-disclosure." Filled with philosophical, religious, literary and scientific thinking ranging from Luther and Kepler through Hemingway and even Hitchcock and Dylan, Tarnas's book is not only sweeping in subject but dense and sometimes painfully slow going. It requires at once a strong background in the history of modern thought, an advanced knowledge of astrology, a willingness to withhold skepticism about the role of planetary alignments of the past in understanding life today and the avoidance of imminent world catastrophe. Tarnas's call to redefine what we consider as "legitimate knowledge" will resonate in some sectors, but it will be a tough sell with the more scientifically hardheaded. (Jan. 23)
Richard Tarnas, Ph.D., is the founding director of the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at CIIS. He teaches courses in cultural history, archetypal studies, depth psychology, philosophy, and religious evolution. Formerly the director of programs and education at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, he is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. 1972) and Saybrook Institute (Ph.D., 1976). He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern widely used in universities. His second book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network, and is the basis for the upcoming documentary film Changing of the Gods. He is a past president of the International Transpersonal Association and served on the Board of Governors for the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. His website is CosmosandPsyche.com.
Richard Tarnas, PhD is the founding director of the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He teaches courses in the history of ideas, archetypal studies, depth psychology, and religious evolution. He frequently lectures on archetypal studies and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, and was formerly the director of programs and education at Esalen Institute in Big Sur. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern widely used in universities. His second book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network, and is the basis for the upcoming documentary film Changing of the Gods. He is a past president of the International Transpersonal Association and served on the Board of Governors for the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. 041b061a72