{"product_id":"other-worlds-9780674984295","title":"Other Worlds","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChristopher White points to ways that both spiritual practices and scientific speculation about multiverses and invisible dimensions are efforts to peer into the hidden elements and even existential meaning of the universe. Creatively appropriated, these ideas can restore a spiritual sense that the world is greater than anything our eyes can see.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith this dazzling work of intellectual history, Christopher White provides a significant contribution to the seemingly endless task of undermining the secularization hypothesis. Turning his eye to the turn-of-the-century enlivening of the dead, mechanistic universe of Newtonian physics, White attunes his readers to the metaphysical hypotheses and spiritual disciplines conditioned by the very techno-science that keeps allegedly doing away with ‘religion.’ …In eminently readable prose augmented by carefully chosen, often arresting images, White gathers together a crew of under-celebrated interlocutors. -- Mary-Jane Rubenstein * Reading Religion *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOther Worlds \u003c\/i\u003ehas a revelatory quality about it…This is one of those rare books that should be mined time and again by a diverse body of scholars seeking to build on White’s impeccable foundation. It is virtually impossible to think of a future of the religious imagination without taking it into account. -- William B. Parsons * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *\u003cbr\u003eA broad-ranging account of the ways in which mathematics and physics have opened up vast realms of mystical speculation and helped animate new modes of spiritual inquiry. From Edwin Abbot’s \u003ci\u003eFlatland\u003c\/i\u003e to Rod Serling’s \u003ci\u003eThe Twilight Zone\u003c\/i\u003e, White makes plainly visible a hitherto largely hidden dimension of the modern spiritual imagination. An impressively original and sweeping work. -- Leigh Eric Schmidt, author of \u003ci\u003eRestless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhite shows us how it has come to pass that there is no more spiritual subject in modern life than science. In a wide-ranging study of modernist art and pop supernatural talk, dimensional logic and fantastic fictional worlds, haunted TV and hyperspace, he makes clear that Americans think more about metaphysics through math than they do through theology. -- Kathryn Lofton, Yale University\u003cbr\u003eA breathtaking portrait of the ways scientific investigations into ‘higher dimensions’ have inspired spiritual imaginations, religious possibilities, and aesthetic experiences. White shows the imaginative power of scientific observations as it extends far and wide in popular culture, shaping an important domain of religion and science where the two appear to be not combatants but unwitting co-contributors to modernity’s sense of its own potential beyond the here-and-now. It is a fascinating and important contribution to our understanding of the making of modern spiritual belief and experience. -- Courtney Bender, author of \u003ci\u003eThe New Metaphysicals\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn popular media, science and religion are all too often presented as antagonists, with modern secular science seen as emptying the premodern religious world of its magic and mystery. \u003ci\u003eOther Worlds \u003c\/i\u003eupends this narrative by showing how very often the enchanted world of science underpins rather than undermines the religious imagination. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the intersection of science and spirituality. -- Charles M. Stang, Harvard Divinity School\u003cbr\u003eThis is a book about nothing less than the religion of our times—the religion of the spiritual but not religious, the religion that drives many scientists and even more drives the imagination of those who have lost a traditional faith but not its wonder. It is a fascinating glimpse into the way science becomes a way into faith, and a startling perspective on the ideas many readers take for granted. -- T. M. Luhrmann, author of \u003ci\u003eWhen God Talks Back\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOther Worlds\u003c\/i\u003e is a magisterial and deeply satisfying history of a peculiarly modern idea: the fourth dimension. White focuses on the entanglement between human spiritual aspirations and the notion of hyperspace. The fun is that he makes his history into a juicy narrative, replete with geniuses, scientists, charlatans, impresarios, and artists of every stripe. So incisive is his research that one suspects he has access to an all-seeing, higher-dimensional eye. A book to treasure, a feast. -- Rudy Rucker, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Fourth Dimension\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eInfinity and the Mind\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn an impressive feat of scholarship spanning across several disciplines, White manages to revise the conventional way of writing about the modern ‘conflict between science and religion’ by showing how scientific insights were used sometimes not to attack spiritual beliefs but to buttress them in unexpected ways. -- Aga J. Drenda * SFRA Review *","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403628323159,"sku":"9780674984295","price":30.56,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780674984295.jpg?v=1730484061","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/other-worlds-9780674984295","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}