Faith in the Distance The Wisdom of Loren Eiseley eBook David Lavery
Download As PDF : Faith in the Distance The Wisdom of Loren Eiseley eBook David Lavery 
Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) was a professor of anthropology (a specialist in physical anthropology), formerly chairman of the department at the University of Pennsylvania, Provost of the University, Curator of Early Man at its museum, and the author of numerous scholarly articles and fourteen book—ten prose and four poetry (four of which were published posthumously)—reflections, both scholarly and personal, on subjects like evolution, the natural world, anthropology and archaeology, the history of science, and literature. But he became a professional scholar and academic only by chance. As his autobiographical writing reveal—and in sense all of his work is autobiographical—throughout his life he believed that he was always about to be snatched away from his ordinary, tame world into a “world of violence” far removed from the sober pursuits of the university life for which he felt only a dubious affinity. Eiseley came to intellectual ventures relatively late in life and in a roundabout way after a youth spent, in part, as a hobo during the Great Depression. His first book, The Immense Journey (1957), which launched his career as a literary naturalist, was not published until he was nearly fifty, and as a glance at a bibliography of his work will reveal, he maintained his career as a writer afterwards only with some difficulty, at times in the twenty years of his life that remained finding it impossible to publish at all. From 1960 to 1969 he did not produce a single book.
That he ever came to write the kind of books that he did—which have been described as occupying a kind of no man’s land between literature and science—came about almost by accident. Commissioned to do an essay on evolution for a scholarly journal in the 1950s, Eiseley had completed his preparation when the journal backed out of the agreement. Although he was at the time suffering from temporary deafness, he nevertheless decided to attempt instead a “more literary venture” into the then out-of-fashion personal essay. The Immense Journey was the eventual result, and with it was born his experimentation with a form he liked to call the “concealed essay,” in which “personal anecdote was allowed to bring under observation thoughts of a more purely scientific nature . . . “ (All the Strange Hours 177). The essayist, Eiseley believed, unlike the painter, “sees as his own eye dictates” (with his “archaeological eye,” in Eiseley’s case, as a later chapter will show); “he peers out upon modern pictures and transposes them in some totemic ceremony” (All the Strange Hours 154-55).
Faith in the Distance offers a comprehensive reading of all of Eiseley's work as simultaneously an autobiographer and and what I will call (after Daniel Dennett) "primate autobiography," as both phylogeny and ontogeny.
Faith in the Distance The Wisdom of Loren Eiseley eBook David Lavery
To me, the implication, from the limited description of this book, was that it contained some of Eisley's writings. It does not. It is a set of essays by Lavery ABOUT Eisley, mostly in the form of exhaustive quotations from other writers used by Lavery to support his interpretation of Eisley. These are often abstruse and obscure, and detract rather than add to the text. Lavery is not a very good prose writer, and his text is uninspired, dry, and academic -- unlike Eisley's own fine readable style. The first chapter concerns man's burning desire for a philosophic understanding of the world; Lavery quotes many philosophers to show how central to our existence this is. Which it may be -- if you're a philosopher, or a young adult finding your way in the world. My own experience suggests that most "men" are less concerned with this than with fulfilling their responsibilities and just getting through the day. In any case, if you are interested in Eisley, this book has little to add. Spend you time reading Eisley's own, and far superior, work.Product details
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Faith in the Distance The Wisdom of Loren Eiseley eBook David Lavery Reviews
Lavery has created som thoughtful analysis of Eiseley's work. He draws interesting comparisons between ideas. I would have preferred a more personal commentary and more excerpts from Eiseley's writing.
Reasonably pedantic, but not persuasive. There were too many quotes from others that smudged the presentation of David Lavery himself who has a brilliance of his own. Although I enjoyed this reading, and spent many moments digesting what was said and reflecting upon it, I kept trying to figure out where the "distance" was in which Eiseley's faith lay. Isn't that what the title purposes--- to tell you this? I finally decided that David Lavery needs to read more neuroscience. The theory of evolution needs a brain as well as data. The understanding that captures on imagination, is not explainable as both Eiseley and Lavery had hoped. They write around the subject and do not take it head on. I think they argue this way The brain is constructed in a particular way by nature, and the data found in nature somehow leads to an eventual acquired cerebral structure that comes to know God... and death. This knowledge is emergent, not inherent, nor necessary in all humans. There is no direct path that leads to God, just as there is no direct path from the fossil remains to the idea of natural selection. But if you adore Eiseley's works as I do, then buy this book.
To me, the implication, from the limited description of this book, was that it contained some of Eisley's writings. It does not. It is a set of essays by Lavery ABOUT Eisley, mostly in the form of exhaustive quotations from other writers used by Lavery to support his interpretation of Eisley. These are often abstruse and obscure, and detract rather than add to the text. Lavery is not a very good prose writer, and his text is uninspired, dry, and academic -- unlike Eisley's own fine readable style. The first chapter concerns man's burning desire for a philosophic understanding of the world; Lavery quotes many philosophers to show how central to our existence this is. Which it may be -- if you're a philosopher, or a young adult finding your way in the world. My own experience suggests that most "men" are less concerned with this than with fulfilling their responsibilities and just getting through the day. In any case, if you are interested in Eisley, this book has little to add. Spend you time reading Eisley's own, and far superior, work.
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