The Eighth Night of Creation: Life on the Edge of Human History (English and French Edition)

By Jérôme Deshusses

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385272065
• ISBN13: 9780385272063
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: Doubleday
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.0" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

The Eighth Night of Creation

"The Eighth Night of Creation" is a translation of a book by Jerome Deshusses, a Swiss novelist, mathematician, and musician. The book was published in French as "Delivrez Promethee," in 1978. If, like the author, your interests run a gamut of the arts and sciences, you will probably find this a very interesting read. (Otherwise-- or if you've discarded your open-mindedness-- you may not.) In a nutshell, the theme of the book is that life, via mankind, is at an epochal crossroads, in which our current false conceptions are leading to an ecological apocalypse-- a trial by fire, in which the human race will evolve to the next stage or else perish in an inferno arising from an accumulation of our falsehood and folly. Or, to put it another way-- from Nature's view-- we will shortly be either ending up as another one of evolution's deadends, or else we will be moving on to the next stage (a description of which the author generously provides).Along the way, Deshusses leads the reader through an absorbing, and very ingenious, investigation of a dazzling range of human ideation and institutions, including physics, cybernetics, linguistics, philosophy, art, law, literature, psychoanalysis, myth, commerce & industry, nationhood, sex, and religion, in order to establish the plausibility of his thesis. If you follow the thread of "The Eighth Night of Creation" or not-- and whether you agree with its author's theories either some, a little, or not at all-- you will come away from this book with a revised conception of many things you thought you knew and a gratifying awareness of much you may have, so far, never considered. A lot to enjoy in 405 pages!The book is certainly not for everyone, though. Its occasional flights into semi-mystical language, its unstinting cleverness of phrase and poetic fervor, its assumption that the reader already have a basic familiarity with many details of the subject matter, and its tendency to venture into philosphical abstruseness-- all these features of the book undoubtedly kept much of the reading public at a safe distance. Too, since most of the "false conceptions" Deshusses takes to task are my and your nearest and dearest commonplaces and consolations, it's not surprising that the book is out-of-print and greatly neglected. Yet, it is a real marvel and may be one of the most thought provoking books of now limited availability!