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At a glance
- Condition
- New
- Listening Length
- 11 hours and 59 minutes
- Author
- Adam Frank, see all
- Narrator
- Perry Daniels
- Publication date
- April 9, 2024
- Language
- English
- Publisher
- Tantor Audio
Description
In The Blind Spot, astrophysicist Adam Frank, theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser, and philosopher Evan Thompson call for a revolutionary scientific worldview, where science includes-rather than ignores or tries not to see- humanity's lived experience as an inescapable part of our search for objective truth. They urge practitioners to reframe how science works for the sake of our future in the face of the planetary climate crisis and increasing science denialism.When we try to understand reality only through external physical things imagined from this outside position, we lose sight of the necessity of experience. This is the Blind Spot, which the authors show lies behind our scientific conundrums about time and the origin of the universe, quantum physics, life, AI and the mind, consciousness, and Earth as a planetary system. The authors propose an alternative vision: scientific knowledge is a self-correcting narrative made from the world and our experience of it evolving together.The Blind Spot goes where no science book goes, urging us to create a new scientific culture that views ourselves both as an expression of nature and as a source of nature's self-understanding, so that humanity can flourish in the new millennium. Read more
Specs 8
| Listening Length | 11 hours and 59 minutes |
|---|---|
| Author | Adam Frank, see all |
| Narrator | Perry Daniels |
| Publication date | April 9, 2024 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Tantor Audio |
| Version | Unabridged |
| Program Type | Audiobook |
No specs match.
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Top Amazon Reviews
5 GOLD STARS
Format: Hardcover
This is an outstanding exposition, tracing the development of “the Blind Spot” in science, from the Enlightenment to today. The essence of the Blind Spot and its complex history is that science and technology have led advanced technological civilization (to include component industrial, economic, and political systems) away from direct experiential interaction with our planet; its physical systems and natural processes. This disconnect is the result of abstract substitutions for real experience, used in the workshops of science and biology, that have objectified the earth and reinforced the capitalist view that it is primarily a physical resource for extraction and production. One tragic result of this abstract objectification is that it has led to the desecration of our planet. This has been done via the compound abstractions of, what I will call “cognitive prostheses” (my term, not theirs), e.g., the tools of logic, mathematics, controlled experiments in the scientific workshop, etc. In the Introduction, they write, “The failure to see direct experience as the irreducible wellspring of knowledge is precisely the Blind Spot” (xiv). Of course, like most tools, abstraction, per se, and prostheses, are not, in themselves, the problem; the issue is how they are used to lead further and further away from real experience, into a scientific intellectual world of questionable abstractions. They write that “. . . blind spot metaphysics arises when we mistake a method for the intrinsic structure of reality” (195). As counterpoint to this disconnect and a way back to direct experience in science, the authors draw on the works of phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, natural sciences philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Henri Bergson, and studies in cognition and consciousness, to reemphasize the fundamental importance of inescapable subjective human experience and associated cognitive processes of reality construction; this, as a way back from the compound abstractions of the scientific workshop to a more direct and conscious engagement with geophysical and biocentric processes. From the front book flap: “To finally ‘see’ the Blind Spot is to awaken from a delusion of absolute knowledge and to see how reality and experience intertwine.” To avert the dangers of reductionism, the importance of “complex systems science” is discussed toward the book’s conclusion. (I will add “dynamic” to that rubric.) Dynamic complex systems thinking is one way to avert the isolation of various branches of academic and scientific research. They write that the science of complex systems is a blend of physics, biology, and the social sciences (245). Perhaps the works of early 20th century anthropologists Alfred Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski, known for their work as structural-functionalists, could be dusted off for potential insights into socio-cultural systems analysis. This review is, necessarily, a gross simplification of the book and its complex, fascinating thesis. The book, itself, comprises an historical and comprehensive theoretical overview, well worth the investment of time to study and understand. For a complementary perspective which dovetails nicely, I recommend reading it before or after Marcelo Gleiser’s recent tome, The Dawn of a Mindful Universe, which is an outstanding plea for a reconnect of humanity to the natural world writ large. Another Amazon reviewer docked The Blind Spot by one star because no solution to the identified problems and issues was given. This strikes me as unreasonable. Would it be reasonable to fault field researchers who, at last, discovered some pathogen that was causing mysterious illnesses and death, for presenting their findings to the global scientific community for evaluation and study, but without offering a cure at the same time? Of course not. In fact, in the Afterword, on page 252, the authors write, “Although we’ve pointed to many scientific ideas that go beyond the Blind Spot, we have not tried to formulate a comprehensive scientific or philosophical perspective to replace it. This choice is deliberate. Science is a collective project. It is the entangled dance of collaborative theory building and experimentation that ultimately moves science forward . . . Our hope is that by bringing the Blind Spot into our collective vision, we will be better able to find new paths beyond it.” The book is certain to be controversial in those circles therein challenged, but I can easily see it destined for landmark status, becoming a classic in the field with future updated editions, in the way that Thomas Kuhn’s, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Augustine Brannigan’s, Social Basis of Scientific Discoveries, are. In my opinion, it should become a foundation text in the curricula of undergraduate and graduate programs across disciplines: the sciences, biology, social sciences, and, perhaps, even particular arts programs, inasmuch as it shines a light on the potential problems associated with the disconnect between hyper-abstraction and direct experience. Arts programs, you say?! Indeed. All human activity (especially in ivory tower institutions) is vulnerable to the sorts of compound abstractions that lead away from direct experience. This might be even more of a problem issue in the arts (visual, literary, theater, music, etc.) depending, of course, on one’s perspective on the aesthetic value of degrees of abstraction there (think, the avant-garde). In addition to the disclosure that my own background includes anthropology and the arts, here is a short selection of interesting associated thoughts from the iconic American poet Wallace Stevens (Library of America, Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose), that I jotted down in my copy of, The Blind Spot, that correlate to the book’s thesis: • Man fabricates by abstraction. (883) • Definitions are relative. The notion of absolutes is relative. (901) • Metaphor creates a new reality from which the original appears to be unreal. (908) Finally, I would like to commend the authors and their editors for compiling an exemplary comprehensive, detailed index, and thorough footnotes that serve as excellent bibliographic resource.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2024 by Steve Johnson
A Dilemma for Science: Is This a Key?
Format: Hardcover
“The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience,” by astrophysicist Adam Frank and theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser, along with cognitive science philosopher Evan Thompson, is an academic exploration of complex subjects written for an educated non-scientist audience. After Gleiser’s intriguing discussion with Robert Kuhn on Closer to Truth, I anticipated an exploration of my favorite topics at the intersection of science, especially physics, and philosophy. I was not disappointed. The central thesis of the book posits that science has reached an impasse when delving into subjects situated at the fringes of our understanding. This stagnation is primarily attributed to science's failure to acknowledge the significance of subjective human experiences within the explanatory framework embraced by practicing scientists. The authors label this oversight as a metaphysical issue. Covering a wide array of scientific and philosophical topics, the book's discussions are profound and relevant to its core arguments. As an avid reader of popular science literature, I found the depth of their discussion on physics to be just right—a skillful balance between oversimplification and excessive complexity. The depth and relevance of the information presented make the book a worthwhile investment. Written in an engaging and accessible style, it attempts to address the “crisis of meaning” in the naturalist worldview. It covers major questions in the philosophy of science, classical and quantum physics, cosmology, consciousness, and Earth science, all while advocating for the restructuring of science's metaphysical deficiencies. They effectively contest our intuitive notions regarding objectivity and reality, as well as its implications for the philosophical underpinnings of science. Despite its strengths, my primary critique pertains to the authors' own metaphysical stance. While acknowledging the need for a radical reevaluation of science, the authors admit that mental states and subjective experiences elude full comprehension through purely physical processes, hinting at a property dualist viewpoint, which posits that mental and physical properties are distinct yet arise from a single substance, in contrast to substance dualism that holds the mind and body as two separate substances. However, they refrain from examining the implications of substance dualism, as advocated by Descartes, leaving a gap in their argument. Perhaps substance dualism was deemed uncomfortably close to spiritual or theological domains, rendering it an unacceptable subject of inquiry. From my perspective, the authors' fundamental philosophical commitments to naturalism constrained their ability to explore the full range of potential solutions. It would have been beneficial if they had clarified the rationale behind imposing such limitations on their explanatory framework. Furthermore, the book leans heavily towards critiquing the current state of science's metaphysics, while lacking a proactive contribution towards resolving the identified issues. While the arguments are compelling and well-developed, the absence of constructive suggestions is notable. The authors themselves acknowledge this shortfall in the afterword. Despite these critiques, I thoroughly recommend "The Blind Spot" and rate it 4 out of 5 stars for its captivating, informative, and meticulously researched content. They creatively strive to align science with a more optimal and credible worldview; however, the authors' philosophical commitments limit the scope of their inquiry.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2024 by My 2 cents
A book that is a gateway out of ignorance.
Format: Paperback
This book, The Blind Spot, is really The Gateway out of ignorance––if you can get through it! The combination of expert physics and skilled philosophical writing makes this book more than worthwhile, the reward being, for your great hard effort to comprehend the complex arguments, a better understanding of how humans get themselves into logical predicaments that become, over time, virtually irresolvable. So here we are.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2026 by Willy
A new view of science for our times
Format: Paperback
A powerful book. Very thorough but maybe too much detail and a little repetitive. Need to look up some of the terms as you go
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2026 by Jerry
Profound ideas written with amazing clarity - it will change your view of science
Format: Audiobook
The generally accepted views of the Enlightenment included one major misstep—the one addressed in this book. Without understanding that, science—as powerful and predictive as it is— has to deal with a worldview that fails to truly conform with reality. You don’t have to get too far in the book before you will see what I’m talking about.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2024 by Art
Ambitious Critique of Scientific Objectivism and its Cultural Consequences
Format: Paperback
This is an ambitious book. Maybe too ambitious. We'll get to that. The three authors, two astrophysicists and one philosopher, present a case that science in its quest for objectivity and a “reality” beneath or beyond that of direct human experience has created for itself a blind spot with respect to human experience itself. The blind spot they are referring to is the sometimes forgotten dependence of scientific knowledge on the direct experience of the world. The blindness comes in part from our supposing scientific knowledge to supply knowledge of a world more real than the world of direct experience. And that that world is more real because it is thought to be the world as it is in itself, independent of us and the peculiarities and distortions of human perception and experience. They survey several areas of contemporary science — cosmology, quantum physics, biology, cognitive science, and the neuroscience of consciousness — to articulate and illustrate their claim. In each we find mainstream science constructing an objective account of reality that is not just foreign to common human experience but that claims independence from human experience. As they’ll claim in the closing chapters of the book, that separation is, in part, to account for a cultural blindness to the crises that we are experiencing today, principally climate change. The book’s primary question is wrapped up in theories of knowledge — what does knowledge consist in, and how do knowers know what they know? The authors present and defend a view of knowledge as an interaction. An interaction between entities within a world. That view sounds trivially true, but it is not the prevalent view of scientific knowledge. What knowledge is not, but what scientific knowledge pursues, is knowledge by a knowing subject of a world that is external to it and independent of it — the “objective world,” one not biased and colored by the perceptions and thoughts of the knowing subject. Thus their claim is a methodological one, that science blinds itself to the experiencer, that its theories explicitly exclude the role of the experiencer and the grounding role that that experience plays in the construction of knowledge. Scientific knowledge, in a real sense, becomes the knowledge of no one, or in Thomas Nagel’s phrase, “the view from nowhere.” They identify four inter-related “pathologies” associated with the blindness. All have to do one way or another with abstractions — how we create them and how we treat them in relation to human experience: - surreptitious substitution — substituting an abstraction constructed in scientific theory for the content of human experience (e.g., causal neuronal chains substituted for thoughts) - the fallacy of misplaced concreteness — taking those abstractions to be real, concrete entities (e.g., taking those neuronal chains to be what thoughts “really” are) - reification of structural invariants — treating mathematical laws as if they were true agents governing reality (e.g., that the causal descriptions of neuronal interaction express an active, governing force behind what we call thinking) - amnesia of experience — losing sight of human experience altogether and falling into the claim that the world constructed in scientific abstraction is the real world (e.g., reaching the point where it seems plausible to regard consciousness, or what we would call direct human experience of the world, an illusion) There are two important kinds of consequences for the blindness, and for our being caught up within it. One, the one that comprises the bulk of the book, is that the blindness poses a problem within scientific theories themselves, when those theories run up against a limit imposed by their dependence on human experience. Maybe the clearest examples are in quantum physics and in the study of consciousness. In quantum physics, or more accurately in the interpretation of quantum reality, we find ourselves wavering between what the authors refer to as “ontological” and “epistemological” interpretations, that is whether the peculiar qualities of quantum reality are inherent in quantum reality itself or whether they are properties of our knowledge of quantum reality. Relatedly, it shows up in what is called “the measurement problem”, one of those peculiar qualities, namely that the properties of quantum particles have definite values only when measured (by observers). The role of the observer seems ineliminable in quantum physics, thwarting the construction of a truly objective, physicalist account of reality. We can find some similar conundrums in other areas of physical science, e.g., in the “fine tuning” problem in cosmology that poses the question why is the universe, particularly its physical constants, so well-suited to the evolution of life such as ours? With the study of consciousness, the problem posed by the blind spot is blatant. The object of the study is the subject of the study. How do we turn our eyes around to look at ourselves in the very act of looking at ourselves? Objectivist accounts of consciousness, in terms of neurons, neuronal chains and webs of interaction, never seem to be able to bridge the gap between physicalist descriptions and what Nagel again famously refers to as “what it is like” to experience the world as a conscious subject. A key claim by the authors is that consciousness is “horizonal.” By that they mean that anything that appears to us, appears to us, becomes a part of our world, (ultimately) by way of consciousness. Things exist for us when they enter our consciousness. And that includes consciousness itself. But in supposing we can construct a truly objective account of consciousness, we attempt to look at it as if from outside in. Its elusiveness is its very omnipresence. The remedy the authors propose for the conundrums reached within the sciences is a science of reality that begins with a study of the experiencing subject. In the case of consciousness, the traditional approach asks how objective, physical reality produces a conscious experiencing subject. The authors would instead have scientists enter what they call a “strange loop.” How does an experiencing subject generate an account of the world as made of physical objects, and then how in that account of the world as physical objects do we close the loop back to an account of the experiencing subject itself? That third node of the loop will not be a simplistic, objectivist account of the experiencing subject in terms of brain states, but rather in terms that are consistent with and adequate to the account of the relationship between the first two nodes, i.e., how an account of the world of objects is generated by that experiencing subject. The authors draw this approach via the thoughts of philosophers Husserl, Bergson, and Whitehead. All three, along with Merleau Ponty in later discussions of consciousness, perception, and the human body, are contrarian thinkers in a objectivist age. The authors give some space to a discussion of Bergson’s famous/infamous “debate” with Einstein over the nature of time, illustrating something of the difference between experienced time (Bergson’s “duration”) and objective time (Einstein’s clocks) and claiming that the objective account of time cannot be divorced from the subjective account, that in fact the objective account can only be derived from the subjective one. A second kind of consequence to our being caught within the blind spot is the cultural disconnect between the world and ourselves that I mentioned at the outset. Ultimately I think this one is the more important consequence for the authors. The blindness poses a metaphysical error at the core of a scientific age — the substitution of an abstract account of the world for the world itself, as disclosed in direct human experience. That metaphysical error has more than academic consequences. In a scientific age, knowledge divorces our selves, our humanity, from the natural world. It affects a disconnect between human life and human value and the natural world around us. The divorce is manifest in our attitude toward nature, nature as “resource” to be consumed, improved, used in one way or another rather than valued in and of itself and as something we are essentially enmeshed in. To be honest, this argument is underdeveloped in the book. This is where I think the authors may have been a little too ambitious. The great bulk of the book is the survey of scientific disciplines, often going down some interesting but ultimately a bit distracting rabbit holes, especially in quantum theory and cosmology. I think the authors’ ambitions might have been better served by a bit less attention to the rabbit holes and more attention to what I think they really want to get to — our divorce from reality and how it is manifest in current crises such as climate change. Both the critique of objectivism and the argument from that critique to a pervasive cultural blindspot are big arguments. The critique of objectivism has been a major theme of modern epistemology and philosophy of science. What’s interesting about the authors’ own take on this critique is that their critique is an inside-out one, by practitioners in astrophysics seeing the limits of objectivity for themselves. The cultural critique is, as I said, under-developed here. There are other scientists, philosophers and writers who undertake that critique as well. Besides the purely academic, I’d recommend Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass as in that vein.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2026 by Doctor Moss
Ultimately deeply disappointing, not the book it wants to be -- it has its own “blind spot”
Format: Kindle
If there were ever a book written for me, I thought this would be the one. I grew up with an exceedingly scientific and mathematical worldview, only to change direction into artistic pursuits which opened up a whole new world of focusing on experience, which opened my eyes to just how much the scientific approach has gotten wrong. Much like the authors, I’m 100% pro-science, but had very much come to the conclusion that it has gigantic “blind spots” in its practice. Which leads to things like doctors focusing solely on measurable cures and entirely ignoring holistic wellness, or nations to focus on industrial output and GDP rather than well-being and environmental sustainability, and so forth. The first two chapters of the book are superb. The first one lays out precisely how there’s more to life than numbers and scientific measurement, and the fatal mistakes we make when we think that current science explains more than it actually does. And the second chapter provides a welcome (albeit short) history of how the modern scientific attitude arose. After these, I couldn’t *wait* for a detailed analysis of how this affects the world today in its science, economics, and culture. I was expecting case studies of how “blind spot” scientific thinking has led to blinkered science that misses the forest for the trees — like thinking it was ever a good idea to put lead in gasoline, or a million other scientific mistakes you might easily think of that seemed like good ideas at the time. And then I was hoping big ideas around how scientists might ignore these blind spots in the future, whether via reformed academic guidelines, or new governmental regulatory philosophies, or the start of a new set of scientific ethics. Unfortunately, absolutely none of that came to pass. The rest of the book that follows is a complete hodgepodge of big-picture subjects — the remaining titles are literally titled “Time”, “Matter”, “Cosmology”, “Life”, “Cognition”, “Consciousness”, and “Earth”. And I honestly don’t know who the intended reader is for these chapters. On the one hand, they’re such wide-ranging overviews and the authors keep repeating the capitalized term “Blind Spot” so often (you almost expect a “(TM)" after it each time), that it feels almost more like a New Age or self-help book where the author wants to apply their Grand Idea to absolutely Everything! But on the other hand, they delve *so deep* into scientific and philosophical details, that if you aren’t already extremely familiar with each subject, it’s going to seem like gobbledegook for you. There’s an entire lengthy section on quantum mechanics that, if you haven’t already read full books on QM from the past couple of decades, I can’t imagine anyone not being just completely lost. But also, none of these chapters really have much to do with the “blind spot” at all. As hard as the authors try to claim that the “blind spot” is somehow related to a bunch of ongoing controversies in each field, I find myself entirely unconvinced. Each of these fields *do* have major controversies, but the described controversies seem to belong entirely *within* each field, and not have anything to do with the “blind spot” issue described by the first two chapters of the book at all. It isn’t until the final chapter “Earth” that we finally move to anything that might have practical application, because after all, global warming is a perfect example of where scientific thinking is leading to harm. The authors, finally, correctly diagnose: “...we suggest that these tightly woven threads of the Blind Spot in the political economies of industrial society are an important cause of our society’s inability to comprehend the rise of the Anthropocene, its existential threats, and its profound inequities across the Global North and South, as well as between settlers and indigenous peoples.” Amazing! I can’t wait to find out what they *finally* have to say. Finally, the good stuff! But tragically, it is immediately followed by: “We acknowledge that this proposed codependency of science and the value system behind industrialization would require an entirely separate work to elaborate using the scholarly tools of history, economics, and political science. We offer here just a few points to motivate our claims.” Ugh. They basically point to the book that needs to be written — the “entirely separate work” that uses “history, economics, and political science”. The book that the first two chapters had led me to believe *this* book would be. And then... they admit that they haven’t written it. And their “few points” don’t amount to much. It’s followed by a section on complex systems science, which was once an area that seemed highly promising but these days has just been (usefully and correctly) subsumed into normal science. It’s not an answer to the “blind spot”. Finally, to make this book even stranger, there isn’t even a concluding chapter that tries to tie it all together — just a trivial Afterword. After attempting to survey everything from “Time” and “Cosmology” to “Consciousness” and “Earth”. Their final conclusion is merely: “What, however, does leaving the Blind Spot behind look like? Although we’ve pointed to many scientific ideas that go beyond the Blind Spot, we have not tried to formulate a comprehensive scientific or philosophical perspective to replace it.” I mean, I wasn’t expecting anything “comprehensive”, but I was definitely looking for *something*. Some suggestions. *Anything.* But nope. They’re just here to raise awareness, not provide any actual insight or anything new. So ultimately this book is a disappointment. The first two chapters are fantastic in describing one of the central problems of scientific culture in the 20th and 21st centuries (although nothing particularly new if you’re already familiar with phenomenology). But then the rest of the book is just a hodgepodge of concepts that don’t really have anything to do with the “blind spot” and which you’d be *far* better off reading dedicated books on. I think that, fundamentally, the problem is that the authors are two physicists and a philosopher, as opposed to say, a science historian, a sociologist, and a philosopher. Because the solutions needed to the problems the book describes do not lie in discussing quantum mechanics or the hard problem of consciousness — two subjects the book spends an extraordinary length of time on. They lie in the actual practice of science — the cultural values, the social expectations, and the economic incentives involved in the actual work of scientists and engineers and technocrats today. So in the end, it’s deeply ironic that a book titled “The Blind Spot” turns out to focus mostly on completely irrelevant content, and have a massive blind spot itself around how science needs to change to avoid the kinds of outcomes the authors are correctly concerned about.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2024 by Michael
Broad review of our reality
Format: Hardcover
A new and outstanding review of Reality from philosophical and physical approaches, in a simple and clear way. Very good around the cloak work. Every body interested can read it through.
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2024 by Filippo