Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A faculty member at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, scientist Tate (Altered States of Consciousness, On Being Stoned) spent more than 50 years studying the paranormal. In this challenge to traditional science and spirituality, Tart employs scientific skepticism and an open mind (both essential to interpreting results "as objectively as possible") to question the seeming contradiction between "the formal, rational rules of science, which have worked so well in understanding the physical world" and "behaviors that cannot be reduced to materialistic explanations." To substantiate his thesis, Tart analyzes a number of scientific paranormal experiments: distinguishing the color of face-down cards, testing the hypothesis that feedback training improves telepathic ability, attempts to show a relationship between electromagnetism and clairvoyance, etc. Elsewhere, Tate makes intriguing comparisons between out-of-the-body experiences and near-death experiences, both of which support (but don't prove) the phenomenon of "postmortem survival" (children who "remember" past lives are also examined). While admitting that he has no "final, absolutely certain, and wonderful answers," Tart covers a wide range of phenomena (remote viewing, psychic healing, mediumship) and leaves readers much to ponder.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

"With recent public debates on bringing intelligent design into the biology classroom and embryonic stem-cell research, scientists--experts from the hard sciences, like evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience, have joined anthropologists and psychologists in the study of religion, making God an object of scientific inquiry."

--New York Times, "Darwin's God," 4 March 2007.

Modern science has taught us much about the world, but will science ever make spirituality obsolete? Today, the need for spiritual explanations remains strong--some 20 percent of the population describes themselves as "spiritual, but not religious," that is, unaffiliated with a specific church or synagogue but engaged in spiritual seeking. A 2006 survey found that 92 percent of Americans believe in a personal God--that is, a god with a distinct set of character traits.

The classic materialist view is of a universe of separate objects that occasionally and meaninglessly affect each other through material forces. These objects are considered to be dead matter. But are things more linked than we normally imagine? This book presents an elegant argument that the twenty-first century needs a much broader perspective on the nature of reality than traditional science is capable of delivering. In The End of Materialism, Tart presents research that supports the existence of paranormal phenomena and shows readers how science and spirituality can be understood as two interconnected halves of a whole instead of as forces in opposition. The book presents Tart's most intriguing findings in his fifty-year career investigating paranormal phenomena in scientific experiments at prestigious institutions including Stanford University and the University of California, Davis.

This book offers evidence for the existence of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and psychic healing, and explains other phenomena such as out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences. This book is ideal for scientifically minded individuals curious about life's spiritual side as well as spiritually inclined people seeking to back up their beliefs with legitimate scientific evidence.