From Publishers Weekly
These essays, reprinted from scholarly journals, offer seminal ideas on bridging the rift between holism (belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts) and reductionism, on Kierkegaard, rule-making, ethics, phenomenology, and behaviorism in the applied and social sciences. Kurtz, professor of philosophy at the State University of New York, sets forth his brand of "pragmatic naturalism," a secular outlook rooted in the scientific method. He has no use for the quests of existentialists or Zen Buddhists, seems wary of Freud, and would grant metaphysicians limited tasks. Although, as the author states, his secular humanism offers a cosmic outlook on the universe and our place in it, for the lay reader he fails to grant sufficient depth to the nature of that cosmic outlook. When Kurtz ventures into matters of values, personal needs or ultimates, he is tepid or tentative ("There seems to be a human necessity both to give and receive love").
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Collected here are 14 essays published over a 35-year period; most, however, date from the 1950s and 1960s, and only one is fairly recent (1985). Throughout, the author is concerned with the philosophical implications of the natural scientific picture of the world, and he gives numerous arguments to show how other world views are fallacious. Pragmatic naturalism holds that all events and processes can be explained by reference to natural causes and events. It is materialistic, behavioristic, empirical, and critical of theism, supernaturalism, dualism, and non-naturalistic ethics. Contemporary philosophers will find the approach--if not the subject matter--somewhat dated, but informed laypersons would find most of the topics here of interest.
- Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was the author or editor of more than fifty books, including The Transcendental Temptation, The Courage to Become, and Embracing the Power of Humanism, plus nine hundred articles and reviews. He was the founder and chairman of Prometheus Books, the Institute for Science and Human Values, the Center for Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He appeared on many major television and radio talk shows and has lectured at universities worldwide.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
