On Being

Peter Atkins is well known as an exponent of scientific materialism and absolute believer in the adequacy of this approach to answer any and every question. Here science and scientism are inextricably linked, with no possible distinction between them, and a proclamation of faith in what the author calls the power and possibilities of science, a presentation which I first heard in Cambridge in the mid-1990s. The author claims that the scientific method as he presents it is the only means of discovering the nature of reality, which he then applies to the questions of beginning, progression, birth, death and ending. Death is described as the disintegration of the physical body, and Atkins states that there is 'absolutely no evidence for de distance of a brain-free miasma-like emanation that corresponds to a self's actual spirit.' This statement is far too categorical, as there is in fact plenty of evidence of this kind which he would not consider. He continues that the ostensible communications with the dead are nothing more than trickery that dissolves into airy nothing when inspected by science or by conjurers. One can sympathise with his view that the afterlife can be used as a potent weapon of malicious control, but his dogmatic certainty that there is no evidence to question his view cannot be sustained by those with an open mind. Nevertheless, the book is elegantly written and a stimulus to clarify one's own views on these topics.