Janus: Summing Up V886

by Arthur Koestler

Book Overview

"To put it crudely: evolution has left a few screws loose between the neocortex and the hypothalamus." Thus Arthur Koestler defines his hypothesis of "schizophysiology" in Janus. Written towards the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394728866
• ISBN13: 9780394728865
• Release Date: February 1979
• Publisher: Vintage Books USA
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Strong effect on your reader soul

Kevin Kelly (Wired) recommended this book - indeed a very good starting point. He's right about how Koestler compels you to his ideas, no matter if you agree with them. But believe me, if you like me is always thirsty for a text that awes you, here is one of them. Koestler writes very, very well and he entertains and disturbs you from the first to the final page. I concede that I am vulnerable to dense statements at the bottom of a chapter, but this gentleman does know how to do that. Read it, and save some time afterwards to savor the effects on your soul. Simply amazing.

Original and difficult consideration of the human situation

Koestler is a true original, and a thinker who makes a real effort to integrate many different worlds of experience. In this work he is obsessed with the turning point event which is the use of nuclear weapons. As he understands it Mankind lived throughout its history with threats to individual life, but nuclear weapons have brought a new kind of collective threat, a threat that Mankind will completely destroy itself. Koestler's concern here connects with his perception of Mankind as a kind of defective product of Evolution. He especially focuses on the conflict between our reptilian brain , our lower mammal brain and the brain of reason our neocortex. He too sees the human propensity for violent conflict as something which relates to our being controlled by the emotional lower brain. But he too singles out our propensity for 'loyalty' for collective bonding as source of violence. And his claim is that the kind of individual criminal act people often focus on when talking about the defects of Mankind, is secondary to the evils we do out of loyalty to the Collective. Koestler in analyzing the human situation also makes an effort to supply an overall theory of the organization of reality. He speaks of a heirarchal principle in which things are organized in all realms in two directions. The Janus- like character of reality is that each thing is organized as independent and autonomous on one level, and as a part of a higher whole on another. This dual aspect character in which the ' wholes' or as he calls them 'holons ' are greater than the parts he seems as integrating all realms of experience. Koestler writes a chapter on Humor and on the Act of Creation. He sees humor as operating by what he calls 'biassociation' which involves bringing two different frameworks into connection. He provides many examples. But I do not feel myself capable of adequately assessing his theories here , though I do have a basic feeling that ' comprehensive and all - inclusive explanations' cannot really cover the various kinds of creative activity there are. This is an ambitious, challenging work. I must admit his pessimistic evaluation of human character and nature set me back a bit. The horrifying possibility that Disaster is the Ultimate end of us all does not warm the heart. Again I do not feel I can properly evaluate Koestler's theories but I do appreciate his capacity to arouse interest and curiosity. A truly outstanding work.

From the archives of the Darwin debate

Koestler was an acute critic of the Darwinian theory and this work is still worth reading for its short story at the end about Ali, related to Wallace's problems finally with the account of the descent of man given by Darwin. Against this theory as an adaptationist scenario lies the reality that human software is a latent aspect of man that he can barely learn how to use. This suggests that it emerges as a complete potential very early in man's real and different evolution. Where and when this version upgrade that noone can master occurred is a mystery, but the facts, completely obvious to any student of the yogic sutras, don't speak well to a selectionist scenario of adaptive traits.

Paranoiod interpretation of socio-human"pathology".

Demonstrating with pissimism, "vision" and deep paranoia about the fatal schiz-phrenic human behaviour. For Koestler, the new Calendar has started since August 6,1945 with the Hiroshima bomb. Atomic bombs cannot be "uninvented", therefore they will be evantually used by man to destroy life on earth, unless we find a new injection or prescribtion to enhance the schiz contradictory social behaviour of the human race. Language is the source of human "unity", nobelity, and yet is the main source of dividing and isolating man.Since alwyas, the human history has been a continuous series of words and wars, and it will not get any better with the atomic and mass distruction weapons. It is all laid in the schizic human brain. For Koestler,it seems that through human evolution, a biological explosion has occured in the human brain,creating the new cortex, the new brain, that has the language, religion centers, etc, on top of the archaic brain, where greed, jealousy,lust are centered.A very informative book that is worth reading. It shows a great deal of unbelievably simple visionary observations.