The enigma of energy : where science and religion converge / Vidette Todaro-Franceschi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Todaro-Franceschi, Vidette.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Force and energy--Miscellanea.

Force and energy.

Vital force.

Miscellanea.

Physical Description:

xiv, 178 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Crossroad Pub., [1999]

Summary:

Trying to capture the essence of a concept like energy is like being in a maze and having a great deal of difficulty finding the exit. There is always an exit out of the maze, albeit perhaps well hidden. Disguised beneath the facade of a particulate, mechanistic universe in which energy is transferred, used, lost or gained when one thing acts on another, there has been, throughout history, a subtle idea that energy is more than just the ability to do work. Energy is a phenomenon.

Today there is scientific evidence to authenticate what the mystics and sages have known all along. We are but manifestations of a whole, a whole that by its very nature is both knowable and unknowable. All is essentially one. Every single thing is a manifestation of energy--one thing--that is continually transforming. It never stands still. Nothing is ever lost, just changed. And to know that is to know that it all couldn't possibly just happen to be here.

From Aristotle to Aquinas, Descartes to Teilhard de Chardin, Einstein to Hawking, Hippocrates to Dossey, Nightingale to Rogers--this history of ideas surrounding the concept of energy leads to the resounding conviction that there must be a reason for it all.

Contents:

1. The Enigma 7

Energy: The Word 9

The Underlying Ideas of the Phenomenon 10

Concepts in General 24

Ideas of Energy in Antiquity 13

2. A Very Brief History of Energy 19

Aristotle's Energeia 20

Matter and the Forces of Nature 24

The Conservation of Energy 27

Fields Everywhere 29

The Tiny Quantum World 31

The Paradoxes of Nature: Matter/Ether, Particles/Waves, Local/Nonlocal 34

3. The Becoming of it All 42

Back to the Forces of Nature 43

Big Bang(s) 44

Something's Missing 45

The Universe Unfolds 46

From Stardust to Us 48

Disorder or Order? 51

Creative Evolution: The Elan Vital and Dissipative Structures 53

Are There "Hidden Variables"? 55

The Implicate and Explicate Orders 55

Consciousness, a Hidden Variable? 57

Morphogenic Fields 59

The Earth as Gaia 60

4. Human Beings: More Than Just Matter 65

The Mind-Body Problem 65

The Mind Is in the Matter: The World of Neurons 69

Beyond the Brain or Beyond the Body? 72

Para-Phenomena in the Realm of Sentience 76

Meaningful Coincidences 77

Body, Mind, Energy, and Consciousness 81

The Science of Unitary Human Beings 83

5. The Nature of Health and Healing 90

A Healing Force of Nature 93

The Human Energy Field and Energy Therapies 97

Spontaneous Healing 99

Miracle Healing 102

Participating Knowingly in Change 102

Another View: Transforming the One 106

6. The Spiritual Essence of the Enigma 113

Back to the Beginning 116

Aquinas and Aristotle 117

Genesis, Time, and Energy Transformation 118

The Argument over Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection 121

What, Exactly, Is Nature? 123

Human Nature and Nature: All Essentially One 128

Death and the Eternal Soul 130

7. Full Circle: Back to the Enigma 134

What Is Energy? 135

How and Why Things Change 136

Decoding the Pattern 137

Beyond a Piecemeal View 142.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-172) and index.

ISBN:

0824517857

OCLC:

41039869