How to Think Impossibly

Auteur

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Texte du rabat

"From precognitive dreams and telepathic visions to near-death experiences, UFO encounters, and beyond, so-called impossible phenomena are not supposed to happen, but do happen all the time. These are the kinds of fantastic experiences that Jeffrey J. Kripal takes up in How to Think Impossibly. The impossible, Kripal asserts, is a function not of reality, but of our present social constructions and subsequent perceptions and cognitions. In other words, we think these events and experiences are impossible, but they are only impossible within our historically constructed frameworks. In How to Think Impossibly, Kripal thinks-with specific individuals and their extraordinary experiences in vulnerable, open, and often humorous ways. These lines of thought interweave the mental and material dimensions of humanistic and scientific inquiry, resulting in a developing awareness in the reader that what we think of as the impossible is not impossible at all"--