Cultural historian, philosopher, critic, essayist, and polymath William Irwin Thompson is the author of bestsellers At the Edge of History and The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light. His academic work has been as multidisciplinary as it is possible to be.

In this present work he ranges through time and space looking at science as mythopoeic narrative, and myth as science.

The style is unorthodox, and by turns a mental roller coaster, or a swim in a piranha-infested, subconscious ooze. The language within is confusing.

I suppose if you have specialised in science, arts and another 100 intellectual or artistic pursuits, this is unavoidable. Someone please tell me what a “noetic polity” means? How about, “catastrophic bifurcation”?

To describe his style as unorthodox is both praise and criticism. In this current collection of essays, he dances like Shiva on the edge of time; times past and times future, presiding over the annihilation of present culture.

From the humble spirochete to the complexities of societies and cultures in the information age, Thompson is there dancing with words and ideas, drawing our attention to what we should already know, but often ignore, due to choice or design.

The volume comprises fourteen essays and an afterword. The essays move over the development of consciousness from biological, religious, and anthropological perspectives, moving out of the body and into the mind and imagination.

If you have a favourite theory of life, death, conspiracy or anything, Thompson will bite a sizeable chunk from it and spit it out – big time. This is wonderful in areas for which you maintain contempt (perhaps the global economic/military/patriarchal/matriarchal/media conglomerates), but it smarts when it is something you have held dear.

OK, I admit it, I was stung over his treatment of Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. But it makes you think in other ways, from other perspectives.

The big idea here is that when individuals come up with a brilliant concept, their followers eventually turn it inside out and it becomes the rigid opposite of the original intention. The notable examples that Thompson gives are Christianity, Anthroposophy and Academe.

Thompson looks at the big shifts in language, philosophy and religion. For instance, he shows the shift from the agricultural/matriarchal to the warrior/patriarchal societies. The constant question is how these changes took place. The shift from arithmetic to geometric thinking is examined in a fascinating and compelling way.

Thompson uses his sternest tone when he writes of palaeo-anthropology. He describes practitioners more as storytellers than as scientists. Each practitioner gives a different tale of the ascent of man according to the fossil fragments that he/she discovers. That funding bodies in archaeology and palaeo-anthropology have their bias is also clearly noted.

Prehistoric sculptures are considered to be of utmost importance to human development and there are illustrations of the goddess statues such as the Goddesses of Willendorf, Lespugue and Laussel included in the text.

Important texts discussed are as far back as Sumer’s Enuma Elish, proceeding through time with in-depth analyses of the Rig Veda, the Ramayana, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, Homer’s Iliad, Sappho’s fragmentary works, the Bible, and finally, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching.

The author has cast a huge net in this collection, but he reveals a lot of energy and passion for his subject: humanity.

The writing style, as noted earlier, is startling, at times annoying, at other times sublime. I encountered occasional difficulty with extended compound words, but the context rules the meaning.

The theme is ‘change’, and Thompson brilliantly weaves deep research and personal opinion together to make an exciting work that will stimulate and inform.

The reader who wants an overview of the development of human consciousness from cellular beginnings to the current state of global culture will gain much from this book. It is a sophisticated piece of writing that keeps the eyes open and the mind wide awake.

Agree or disagree with Mr Thompson, you will find much to think on here. It is a book of doom as well as a book of hope for our ‘Post-Civilised’ world. Change is inevitable, it happens constantly! Let’s get on with it! Recommended.

– Reviewed by Jennifer Hoskins in New Dawn No. 86