Schumacher

Schumacher SSC-1500A Ship 'N' Shore Speed Charge Charger
$103.30
Just what my husband wanted! Fast delivery and it works just great! Thank you!!!

Michael Schumacher Speedline T-Shirt
$59.99
Roundneck t-shirt with white horizontal, piping with "F1 World Champion Michael Schumacher" script in red on front and back. Embroidered Michael Schumacher helmet and signature on the left chest and Michael Schumacher Speedline logo on the right chest.

Michael Schumacher: The Edge of Greatness
$14.95
The best book I have read regarding Michael Schumacher. However, I get the sense that James Allen (ITV) broadcaster could have explored the subject more closely. After all James Allen is an F1 announcer!

Guide for the Perplexed
$12.00
I got this book, because one of the reviews here said it was a good idea to read it before reading Small is Beautiful. Small Is Beautiful, was the book I was actually interested in, but A Guide For The Perplexed looked short and if it was to deepen my understanding of Small Is Beautiful then so much the better. However, I encountered several problems with A Guide For The Perplexed from a stylistic and empirical standpoint.

In terms of Schumacher's basic thesis, I could find little to argue with. There was, and still is to a certain extent, for science to claim orthodoxy over all "important" or "relevant" thought and cast aside philosophical and spiritual matters as beside the point. These spiritual matters are what people yearn for to gain insight and meaning in their lives and they are things that hard science is woefully equipped to handle. There has been a reversal of course since the book was published, at least in the United States, to religion attempting to again gain hegemony over the hearts and minds of the populace, to powerful and often destructive effect, but Schumacher acknowledges the ills of religious as well as scientific imperialism of though. So far so good.

The problem arises with his rather dogmatic assertion that there are questions that science will "never" answer, and the philosophy and arguments he constructs around this theory. I wouldn't assert that science will or will not answer questions of spirituality, consciousness and the origin of life in general, but that is beside the point. The problem arises when you make the assertion that it "never" will. Apparently he has a crystal ball that we didn't get. Absolute statements are the hallmarks of dogma and dogma in any philosophy is inherently dangerous. He is asserting certainty, which requires absolute knowledge and absolute knowledge, to me at least, seems to be inherently unattainable, even if you're sure you have it.

He then goes on to engage in that most dubious of philosophic endeavors, using extremely limited knowledge of science to devise a model of the natural world. His proposition of the 4 levels of existence is extremely simplistic and betrays a fundamental lack of knowledge of physics, chemistry and biology. He asserts that the 4 levels of existence are mineral, plant, animal and human, which harkens back to the archaic description of the basic elements, earth, fire, air and water. He goes on to argue that each of these levels represents a "jump" in level of life for which there is no "link" or intermediary phase and the lower forms lack the fundamental element of the higher forms above it. The mineral is the lowest and has only "matter" or form. However at the next level, plant, "life" is introduced. At the next level, animal, "consciousness" is introduced. Finally at the level of human "self-consciousness" is introduced. Something is either one or the other. Nothing in between.

Herein lies a fundamental problem. There are innumerable examples of intermediary forms in nature. I'm not a scientist and I can come up with several off the top of my head. Mineral to plant: coral reefs (elements of both simple matter and life). Plant to animal: jellyfish (a colony of specialized cells that moves and responds to stimuli, but is essentially mindless). Animal to human: chimpanzee, dolphin, bonobo (highly intelligent behavior in the cetaceans and examples of self-awareness in the higher primates).

We've come a ways in our understanding of the natural world in the last 30 - 40 years, but still these would not have been ground breaking revelations in the time that Schumacher wrote this book. With this as the basis for his ensuing arguments, he unfortunately lost me.

Additionally, as is the case with many books of philosophy, there is a tendency towards ponderous prose that re-examines the same point endlessly. I got the idea of each of his philosophical ideas within the first couple of sentences, but he nevertheless goes on and on, examining the same point from several redundant angles, making for a very painful read.

Again, I agree with his fundamental philosophical idea that there are spiritual holes that science cannot fill, but I found his philosophical backing of it to be very flawed. Others seem to have gotten much more out of this book. I'm glad they did. I hope to get much more out of Small Is Beautiful.