Science, Meaning, & Evolution: The Cosmology of Jacob Boehme

by Basarab Nicolescu, Rob Baker (Translator)

Book by Nicolescu, Basarab

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1991

About the author

Basarab Nicolescu is an honorary theoretical physicist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Énergies, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris.

Reviews

[Wayne Kraus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great read whether you know Jacob Boehme or not. Boehme was a 17th century shoemaker who had an experience of gnostic illumination and started writing books a thousand miles above his education level. "...the gate was opened unto me, so that in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at an University. For I saw and knew the Being of all Beings, the Byss and Abyss; also the eternal generation of the Holy Trinity; the descent, and origin of this world, and of all creatures, through the divine Wisdom; I knew and saw in myself all the three Worlds; namely, the Divine, Angelical, and Paradisical World and then the Dark World, the original of the Nature to the Fire; and then thirdly, the external, visible World, being a Procreation, or External Birth, from the two internal and spiritual Worlds; and I saw, and knew the whole working Essence in the evil, and in the good; and the mutual origin, and existence of each of them; and likewise how the fruitful bearing Womb of Eternity brought forth..."

Nicolescu, a theoretical physicist, links JB to the modern world. "I consider Boehme to be not a precursor to modern philosophy, but a modern philosopher himself. His writings are alive…"

I digitized this book for Dr. Nicolescu, and an interesting thing happened. We were exchanging emails between Detroit and Paris when, out of the blue, the publisher contacted Basarab to notify him that they were discontinuing the book and transferring publishing rights to him. Synchronicity.

[Miriam Cihodariu · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this essay, the physicist-turned-epistemologist Basarab Nicolescu finds some seeds / roots of modern relativity theory in the written thoughts of Jacob Boehme, a seemingly simple man from several hundreds of years ago. Said German worker had expressed what were at the time novel ideas, like contradictions present at the same time in each object, the 'imanent', deeper side to everything, how things depend on the perspective and so on.

It makes an interesting read, though I, for one, didn't share the author's enthusiasm in its full extent. It was perhaps my past reads in the history of religions that familiarized me with the same notions as the ones expressed by Jacob Boehme, and I know they were present in the cosmology of virtually every developing religion and cosmology of various peoples. Therefore, I can't really see Boehme's views as being that revolutionary and unheard of, and am not as thrilled by the discovery of his works as Basarab Nicolescu was. But the book is a very interesting, logical and poignant read nonetheless, and Jacob Boehme himself and undoubtedly interesting figure, worth knowing more about.

[Iohannes]

mildly interesting