Marriage of Sense and Soul

The full title of this 1998 book is “The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion” by Ken Wilber. Wilber is something of a guru in the New Age  and Integral Thought movements. This book clearly is an attempt at bridging the two extremes as indicated by its title. But analysis of his position, and his personal history, indicates that he really is a committed proponent of the Sacred mostly at the expense of the Secular. He denigrates all of natural science as “narrow science” and only praises science when it includes attempts to measure and include the supernatural (“broad science”); which position is unacceptable to the rigors of the scientific method. It is interesting that there are what we would call “soft” critiques of his work by even some of his supporters, but the conventional scientific community largely ignores his work, probably because it departs so radically from anything they would recognize as science. For a book to truly be a bridge it would have to address the central elements of both domains and give each significant coverage and weight. To eliminate most of natural science from the secular and redefine it in your own terms does not meet this criterium. Nevertheless, his goal and purpose in this book and several preceding books is the integration of science and religion, so we place it under bridges as another attempt. Actually his life work, not just this book could be placed in this category. [123Sp’14]