Fritjof Capra

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Dr. Fritjof Capra – photo by Kate Mount

Fritjof Capra (born February 1, 1939) is an Austrian-born American physicist.

Born in Vienna, Austria, Capra earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Vienna in 1966. He has done research on particle physics and systems theory, and has written popular books on the implications of science, notably The Tao of Physics, subtitled An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. The Tao of Physics makes an assertion that physics and metaphysics are both inexorably leading to the same knowledge.

table of contents

Work

After touring Germany in the early 1980s, Capra co-wrote a book on Green Politics with ecofeminist author Charlene Spretnak called Green Politics, in 1984.

Capra contributed to the screenplay for the 1990 movie Mindwalk, starring Liv Ullman, Sam Waterston, and John Heard, which was loosely based on his book, The Turning Point. This book was also the inspiration for a broad based ad campaign called "The Turning Point Project". In the Fall of 2000, under the leadership of Jerry Mander and Andrew Kimbrell, The Turning Point Project produced full page-ads in USA Today and The New York Times criticising nanotechnology. The ads claimed that proponents of molecular nanotechnology never considered how people would live without jobs, though that discussion is popular and perennial in nanotech circles.

In 1991 Capra coauthored Belonging to the Universe with David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk and a man who has been called a contemporary Thomas Merton. Using Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as a stepping stone, their book explores the parallels between new paradigm thinking in science and religion that together offer what the authors consider remarkably compatible view of the universe.

Capra pushes for western society to abandon conventional linear thought and the mechanistic views of Descartes. Critiquing Descartes' reductionistic view that everything can be studied in parts to understand the whole, he allows his readers to take an objective and fresh mind, encouraging them to see the world through complexity theory.

Capra is purportedly setting the grounds for change in many new theories, one of which is the living systems theory, a theoretical framework for ecology. This theory is only now fully emerging but it has its roots in several scientific fields that were developed during the first half of the twentieth century — organismic biology, gestalt psychology, ecology, general systems theory, and cybernetics.

The physicist and Nobel prize laureate Leon M. Lederman criticized The Tao of Physics in his 1993 book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?(1)

Starting with reasonable descriptions of quantum physics, he constructs elaborate extensions, totally bereft of the understanding of how carefully experiment and theory are woven together and how much blood, sweat, and tears go into each painful advance.

Fritjof Capra is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy located in Berkeley, California, which promotes ecology and systems thinking in primary and secondary education.

Bibliography

Capra has written several books and articles. A selection of his books:

1975, The Tao of Physics.
1984, Green Politics, with Charlene Spretnak.
1982, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture
1988, Uncommon Wisdom
1991, Belonging to the Universe: Explorations on the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality, coauthored with David Steindl-Rast and Thomas Matus.
1997, The Web of Life
2004, The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living
2007, The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance

References

Leon Lederman (1993), The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?, New York: Bantam Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-31211-3, p. 189-193

External links

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