Marcus Chown

El Dzogchen es la esencia del budismo tibetano. Mediante sus explicaciones e instrucciones claras, directas y precisas, el Maestro Chögyal Namkhai Norbu hace accesibles a todo el mundo estas profundas enseñanzas del linaje de Garab Dorje. Enseñanzas Dzogchen ofrece una extensiva y amplia recopilación de enseñanzas ofrecidas por un gran maestro de Dzogchen y erudito tibetano. Todos los capítulos contienen beneficiosas instrucciones tanto para estudiantes noveles como para los avanzados, sin tener en cuenta la tradición que puedan estar siguiendo, y profundiza en el significado auténtico de temas importantes relacionados con los Sutra, el Tantra y el Dzogchen.'… (more)

The thing about What a Wonderful World is that it is like a fruitcake – very rich, very dense, and full of tasty little nuggets. For instance, did you know that the invention of cookery was a milestone on a par with tool use? It allowed us to broaden our diets in prehistory, and any ecologist will tell you what access to good nutrition will do for any animal. Or that galaxies are organized, and indeed possibly even created, by the giant black holes at their centre?

What a Wonderful World is a digest, if you like, about the construction and function of practically everything – the cells in your body, the Earth itself, international banking, quantum theory, sex, Deep Time – the list goes on. It’s something that you dip into when you’re in the right mood, but when you are it’s consistently interesting and rewarding and represents a considerable body of scholarship and research which has been dissected to the point where you can be gently guided through its more fascinating corners. The image of a “plate graveyard” at the centre of the Earth where tectonic plates drift down to die still lingers in the imagination, and as I am not particularly driven to seek out books on plate tectonics, its something that I might, in the normal course of things, never have learned anything about.

It’s also deeply topical in places (see the section on international banking, for one). There’s a great discussion on the eminently newsworthy topic of inflation in relation to the Big Bang (I only received this book last year, and inflation is described within, quite carefully, as a theory). As a writer interested in the idea of multiverses, there is a fantastic wealth of imaginative detail. Did you know that scientists have worked out how far you need to walk in order to meet your doppelganger in another universe? (Clue, it’s a long, long way, but you will meet them if you keep going.)

Sometimes I was a little lost, but that’s okay, because you feel in safe hands just following on.

I really enjoyed it – in the madness of house, job, and life move and the insane rush of mandatory reading that took up the earlier part of my year, this was a guilty pleasure I could dip into as Fate allowed. Though challenging in places, there is nothing a reasonably literate person couldn’t follow. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the universe than the usual surface tropes.

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A readable and fairly easy to understand explanation of many of the essentials of modern physics, though a few diagrams wouldn't have gone amiss. I also couldn't help wondering which technical details Chown had streamlined or left out for clarity's sake.

I'll doubtless seek out a few more introductions to physics and quantum mechanics in hopes of enriching my personal comprehension of these concepts...but I do think I might take another crack at Connie Willis' "At the Rialto" with a better chance of grasping the metaphors now.… (more)