Subtitled “Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”
With second subtitle “Why the Meaningful Life is Closer than You Think”
(Basic Books, 2006, xiii + 297pp, including 54pp acknowledgements, notes, references, and index. Hardcover with no dust jacket.)
Here is a fascinating book that I didn’t get around to reading until the writer published later books, especially THE RIGHTEOUS MIND (review begins here), that I read first. This one seemed intriguing when I bought it in 2007, despite the whiff of self-helpiness about it, for presuming to compare “ancient wisdom” with modern-day scientific findings. This is exactly one of my core themes, even if in the guise of the discussion of base human nature with more modern enlightenment thinking. In fact, it’s almost exactly analogous to the theme of my book, which compares the assumptions by science fiction writers of how the world might be with the discoveries by actual science of how the world actually is.
So this book focuses on 10 great ideas, as discovered by the world’s civilizations, and then considers them in light of current scientific research. But they’re not just any 10 great ideas; they’re ideas, as the second subtitle says, about how to live, and how to be happy.
