The Birth of Reason

In The Birth of Reason Louis Dudek establishes the link between ancient pre-Socratic Atomism and modern quantum mechanics. In characteristically unencumbered terms, Dudek shows how this revolutionary philosophy, the invention of thinkers from Ioanian Greek trading cities, has been consistently misrepresented and resisted. Atomism nevertheless marks the transition from primitive mythological thinking (mythos) to the abstract, concept-based rationality (logos) that informs our modern approach to an ultimately unknowable reality.This essay iis a kind of summation of myself o gnothi seautun.... I am neither a materialist nor a theist, really, nor am I altogether an agnostic. As I say in [the] essay, ethe ultimate reality is unknowable, i but I am sure that if it were knowable it would satisfy both the materialist and the theist, and much more that we cannot imagine.i Identified by Wynne Francis as Canadais first iman of letters, i Dudek once again ventures into new intellectual territory o and reveals the underpinnings of his own remarkable cultural, social, and economic thought.Critical CommentiIf anyone could make the Ionian skeptics palatable to a generation raised on music and television, itis Louis Dudek.io The Ottawa Citizeni...the highlight is ... 39 fragments from the pre-Socratics that Dudek astutely describes as reading elike a philosophical poem.iio The Montreal Gazettei...includes the thesis that the scientific conception of the universe ... is the most advanced stage of religious evolution.io Canadian Book Review Annual