Ebook: The immortalization commission: science and the strange quest to cheat death
Author: Gray John
- Tags: Communisme et sciences, Communisme--URSS, Immortalité (Philosophie), Communism--Soviet Union, Communism, Communism and science, Immortality (Philosophy), Intellectual life, Communism -- Soviet Union, Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 20th century, Immortalité (Philosophie), Communisme -- URSS, Grande-Bretagne -- Vie intellectuelle -- 20e siècle, Great Britain, Soviet Union
- Year: 2011
- Publisher: Doubleday Canada
- City: Grande-Bretagne;Great Britain;Soviet Union
- Language: English
- epub
A great philosopher will change the way you think about your life.
For most of human history, religion provided a clear explanation of life and death. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries new ideas -- from psychiatry to evolution to Communist -- seemed to suggest that our fate was now in our own hands. We would ourselves become God.
This is the theme of a remarkable new book by one of the world's greatest lving philosophers. It is a brilliant and frightening look at the problems and opportunities of a world coming to grips with humankind's now solitary, unaided place in the universe. Gray takes two major examples: the belief that the science-backed Communism of the new USSR could reshape the planet, and the belief among a group of Edwardian intellectuals -- popularized through mediums and automatic writing -- that there was a non-religious form of life after death.
Gray presents an extraordinary cast of philosophers, journalists, politicians,...