For more than 60 years (since 1939), Walter Kistler has captured his
observations, comprehensions, and conclusions in a series of diaries,
seeking always to move from kennen, mere
knowledge of facts and details, to wissen,
true understanding of the explanatory processes and resulting ramifications.
In Reflections, we observe a scientifically
trained mind involved in scientific application, seeking wissen not only
in his chosen fields of physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology, but
also in the experiences of day-to-day life.
Reflections on Life,
thus, is not a one-dimensional path of intellectual inquiry, but explores a wide
range of fields and subjects. Picture a human mind exploding into cognition and
expanding outward, not along a single trajectory, but in multidirectional complexity.
By presenting this panorama of concepts and information, Kistler creates a taxonomy
of knowledge that seeks to explain the interrelationships and the substance
at the core.
Commencing with an examination of laws of the mind, Kistler asserts that
basic, implacable laws govern matters of the mind in exactly the way
basic, implacable laws govern the field of physics. He details three
laws, beginning with the balance of pleasure and pain in any given human
life.
Deploring the blurring of boundaries between politics, science, and religion,
Kistler reflects on the problems that arise when a requirement exists
that a statement be considered ethically good in order to be accepted
as scientifically true. With insight and authority, and unhampered by
concerns for political correctness, Kistler asks hard questions about
the mission of the soft sciences, the role of religion, and whose business
it is to “manage” the truth.
In fact, truth is the point of it all. Kistler’s intellectual life
has been guided by one inexorable Golden Rule: We must always seek the
truth, the whole truth, and only the truth. The Reflections journey
of truth-seeking examines the meaning of success, addresses the question
of the existence of mass-energy before the Big Bang, considers the possibility
of a Theory of Everything, explains why Darwin’s law is best grasped
as a process of creative destruction, evaluates the traits that build
and those that undermine a good society, and faces our modern dilemma:
Where does humanity go from here?
Along the way are intellectual surprises – for example, the juxtaposition
of Jesus, Darwin, and Heisenberg, three giants Kistler credits for shaping
his understanding of the world. The implications of Heisenberg’s
uncertainty principle for physics, philosophy, and even humankind’s
comprehension of reality exceed, he believes, even those of Einstein’s
theories of special and general relativity.
Here in Reflections on Life are
the compelling findings of an extraordinary man’s lifelong search for truth.
© 2003 Foundation For the Future
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