Review of "The Dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin

The late ‘60s early ‘70s was a magnificently productive time in Ursula Le Guin’s career.  Though she continued writing award-winning, successful novels, nothing matches the quality and quantity of her output in this time. The first three novels in the Earthsea Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest, and The Lathe of Heaven were all written then, each winning one if not more awards and flying off shop shelves.  The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, published in the middle of this stretch, rounds out the triumphant group and is considered by some her greatest achievement.

The Dispossessed is at heart the tale of the Shevek and his struggle to acquire and disseminate knowledge in two different socio-economic systems.  A minor physicist, Shevek’s research into the effects of time on space is interrupted and downgraded by the orthodox, or exploited by ambitious colleagues.  His home planet essentially a desert wasteland, basic habitation is also a struggle.  Shevek and others, including his partner Takver, spend a great portion of their lives dealing with food shortages and the difficult circumstances arising from their planet’s geological conditions and weather patterns.  Feeling his work holds more value than what it is appreciated for, Shevek sets aside his life’s problems and takes drastic steps to change the quality of his research.  The result surprising, the push leads him places he least expected.  The grass not always greener on the other side, it is the manner in which Shevek compromises the situation that the novel makes its point.

One of literature’s greatest realizations of an anarchic society, The Dispossessed is a thought experiment through and through.  Le Guin imagined a planet and its inhabitable moon, placed a system analogous to capitalism on the former and anarchy on the desiccated latter, and named them Anarres and Urras.  Not a Che Guevara or Sex Pistols-esque style of anarchy glorifying non-government, Le Guin handles the subject with maturity; the lives of the people on Urras are anything but utopic despite their lack of authority.  The social problems they face, while in a context potentially difficult readers to relate to but related clearly by Le Guin, adheres to the nature of an anarchic system—for better and worse.  Human vice being what it is, the oft idyllic nature of anarchic theory does not prevent Le Guin from exposing its vulnerable side.  The capitalist system more well-known, she portrays the Anarrens with equal aplomb, and the resulting ideological clashes between the two planets serve up the tension in the novel, not to mention being amongst the greatest social commentary sci-fi has produced.

The Dispossessed’s narrative structure alternates between the two planets, Anarres and Urras, a chapter at a time devoted to each.  Innate to this structure is also an oscillating timeline: the concluding events of the Anarres timeline correspond to opening events of Urras’ to form a satisfying whole.  This structure, while breaking from the linear to make the text more engaging for the reader, likewise forms an analogy to the ultimate outcome of Shevek’s research.  This symbolism, both in the narrative and in denouement, is rich.

In the end, The Dispossessed is a peak of anthropological science fiction and one of the top twenty-five science fiction books ever written.  Le Guin’s voice neither lavish or expansive, she writes in affective prose, sensitive to the causes and effects of the social concerns raised.  Shevek, those he encounters, and social systems they are a part of are dealt with in a realistic fashion that further belies Le Guin’s maturity.  Both answering and raising an equal number of profound questions, the book is for the ages.

Review of "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" by David Bohm

David Bohm (1917-1992) was a physicist heavily involved with quantum mechanics, systems processes, and, in the latter stages of his life, the relationship between consciousness and his theory of matter.  Having spent the early part of his career in the laboratory examining the behavior of subatomic particles, gaining recognition and winning awards for his work (including the Nobel), his views regarding the direction of physics and the fundamental nature of reality eventually caused him to diverge from the traditional scientific community.  Reacting to the “Copenhagen interpretation,”—the consensus of his peers that the paradox as to how matter simultaneously exists in both static as well dynamic form could be explained—as well as physics continued inability to discover the “ultimate particle,” Bohm retreated from the scientific community to develop his ideas independently.

Believing that “a more harmonious and orderly approach to life as a whole, rather than to a static and fragmentary view which does not treat knowledge as a process, and which splits knowledge off from the rest of reality” was the key to overcoming the anomalies encountered by classical physics, in 1980 Bohm published Wholeness and the Implicate Order (81).  Combining knowledge from the immeasurable, “i.e. that which cannot be named, described or understood through any form of reason,” with the tested outcomes of scientific research, Bohm proposed a theory of reality compatible with both the phenomena of matter scientifically proven to date and the empirical results of intuitive experience (29).  

Under intense microscopic examination, all matter exhibits behavior indeterminate to human analysis: sub-atomic particles simultaneously exist in both wave and particle form, a paradox which cannot be overcome according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.  Thus, in order to surmount the impasse, Bohm proposed that a deeper, indefinable, order-defining structure underlies all definable movement and existence.  This structure he called the “implicate order.”  Patterning all that is both comprehensible and incomprehensible to humans, implicate order is the primary causative structure to reality.  Emulating the polarized wholeness of Daoist thought, Bohm’s theory posits that what is comprehended and scientifically quantifiable is the unfolded, or explicate order, and what cannot be comprehended scientifically—dependent on intuition to perceive—is the enfolded, or implicate order.  According to Bohm, in the enfolded order “space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements;” as a result, “a more basic connection of elements is possible.”  It is this underlying fundamentalism—its primary causative nature—which defines the implicate order as “a harmoniously organized totality of order and measures,” patterning and structuring reality (xviii). 

Bohm goes onto define the sub-categories of his theory, including interactivity—the movement of the system in which content and meaning are conveyed between the implicate and explicate order—and the degrees of applicability.  Furthermore, as Bohm forever sought to avoid the compartmentalization and isolation of knowledge, he sees the “fragmentary view” as a perspective “which creates an endless series of problems and interferes with our clarity of perception so seriously as to prevent us from being able to solve most of them.”  Thus, the wholeness and interconnectedness he purports in his theory of implicate order can thus be perceived as a remedy to that worldview which “has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, worldwide economic and political disorder, and the creation of an environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for the majority who live in it” (1-2).  As Bohm makes clear at the outset of his book, “what is primarily needed is a growing realization of the extremely great danger of going on with a fragmentary process of thought” (24).  Those interested in similar ideas would do well to invest in this book as the details of Implicate Order are more interesting than the outlay.

Review of "Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything" by Ervin Laszlo

Metaphysical phenomena, such as the earth’s biosphere behaving like a massive cybernetic system or the wave-particle paradox of physics, have been interpreted in a variety of ways as humanity becomes increasingly aware of its existence.  In recent decades these and other phenomena have been utilized in combination with other less scientific but more theological and pedagogical ideas to formulate concepts regarding the fundamental nature of reality - as Bohm and Lovelock have done.  Another example of such an amalgam is the work of Ervin Laszlo, especially as expressed in his 2007 Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything.

Based on the anomalies discovered in the fields of physics, biology, and psychology, Laszlo extrapolates on the Buddhist idea of an Akashic field, utilizing it figuratively in combination with relative scientific knowledge to explain the indeterminate fashion in which life exists.  According to Buddhism, the Akashic field permeates all things and forms “the womb from which everything we perceive with our senses has emerged and into everything will ultimately re-descend” (xi).  Primarily a metaphor for the lack of language to describe the interconnected, cyclical harmony Laszlo sees the earth and life as existing within, the Akashic field, much like Bohm’s implicate order, serves as an omnipresent field, a suffuse, indeterminate substance through which reality is ordered into a totality of life.  

In the end, Laszlo’s book will interest readers who enjoy the work of Fritjof Capra, David Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake, James Hillman, and other researchers, scientists, and scholars who incorporate less rational ideas into conventional scientific research and writing.  Laszlo’s style is smooth and easy to read, and offers evidence from physics research to support those claims for which intuition is not needed.  An interesting read in the least.