In The Sleepwalkers and The Act of Creation Arthur Koestler provided pioneering studies of scientific discovery and artistic inspiration, the twin pinnacles of human achievement. The Ghost in the Machine looks at the dark side of the coin: our terrible urge to self-destruction... Could the human species be a gigantic evolutionary mistake? To answer that startling question Koestler examines how experts on evolution and psychology all too often write about people with an ‘antiquated slot-machine model based on the naively mechanistic world-view of the nineteenth century. His brilliant polemic helped to instigate a major revolution in the life sciences, yet its ‘glimpses of an alternative world-view’ form only the background to an even more challenging analysis of the human predicament. Perhaps, he suggests, we are a species in which ancient and recent brain structures - or reason and emotion - are not fully co-ordinated. Such in-built deficiencies may explain the paranoia, violence and insanity that are central strands of human history. And however disturbing we find such issues, Koestler contends, it is only when we face our limitations head-on that we can hope to find a remedy.

The Ghost in the Machine

Health, Fitness & Dieting

KOESTLER, ARTHUR

Mental Health

One 70 Press

On September 23, 1926, and Austrian experimental biologist named Dr. Paul Kammerer blew his brains out on a footpath in the Austrian mountains. His suicide was the climax of a great evolutionary controversy which his experiments had aroused. The battle was between the followers of Lamarck, who maintained that acquired characteristics could be inherited, and the neo-Darwinists, who upheld the theory of chance mutations preserved by natural selection. Dr. Kammerer’s experiments with various amphibians, including salamanders and the midwife toad (Alytes obstetricans), lent much weight to the Lamarckian argument and drew upon him the full fury of the orthodox neo-Darwinists. Arthur Koestler had known about Dr. Kammerer’s work when he himself was a student in Vienna, and he has always been interested in this tragic story. He gives a fascinating description of the venomous atmosphere in which the battle was fought and of the lengths to which apparently respectable scholars would go to discredit their opponents. Heading the attack on Kammerer was a British scientist, William Bateson, who hinted that the Viennese’s experiments were fakes, but who failed to examine the evidence, including the so-called nuptial pads of Kammerer’s last remaining specimen of the midwife toad. It was a young American scientist who delivered the coup de grace; on a visit to Vienna, he discovered that the discoloration of the nuptial pads was due not to natural causes but to the injection Indian ink. When his findings were published, Kammerer shot himself. Mr. Koestler, whose recent writings, in books such as The Act of Creation and The Ghost in the Machine, have been in part concerned with evolutionary theory, decided to investigate this old mystery. When he started on his researches, he expected to relate the tragedy of a man who had betrayed his calling, for Kammerer’s suicide was accepted as a confession of guilt and his work was discredited from that day to this. Instead, as Mr. Koestler read the contemporary papers, corresponded with Kammerer’s daughter, Bateson’s son, and the surviving scientists who attended Kammerer’s lecture in Cambridge, he found himself writing a vindication of a man who in all probability was himself betrayed. The story that emerges is, on one level, fascinating piece of scientific detection; on another, it is a moving and human narrative about a much abused, brilliant and lovable figure. Though no Lamarckian himself, Mr. Koestler ends the book with an appeal to biologists to repeat Kammerer’s experiments with an open mind in order to verify or refute them. If Kammerer’s claims were posthumously confirmed our outlook on evolution would be significantly changed. A superb intellectual thriller whose implications still reverberate today, The Case of the Midwife Toad is an entirely new kind of book for Mr. Koestler, and perhaps only he could have written it, for it required expert knowledge and familiarity with the academic world of science, combined with the creativity and imaginative insight of an outstanding novelist.

The Case of the Midwife Toad

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

The book is the first of a trilogy, including Darkness at Noon, and Arrival and Departure, which address idealism going wrong. This is a common theme in Koestler's work and life. Koestler uses his portrayal of the original slave revolt to examine the experience of the 20thcentury political left in Europe following the rise of a Communist government in the Soviet Union. He published it on the brink of World War II. Originally written in German, the novel was translated into English for other audiences and was published in 1939. In 1998 the British critic Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote of the novel: "In The Gladiators, Koestler used Spartacus's revolt around 65BC to explore the search for the just city, the inevitable compromises of revolution, the conflict of ends and means, the question of whether and when it is justifiable to sacrifice lives for an abstract ideal.

The Gladiators

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

This selection of essays, book-reviews, broadcast talks and papers delivered to learned societies reflects the extraordinary breadth of Arthur Koestler’s interests. From the trial of Galileo to the pleasures of canoeing down the Loire, from a detailed examination of the ‘memory’ of flatworms to an equally detailed examination of the futility of quarantining dogs, the author writes about a vast range of subjects which occupied his attention in the twelve years (1955-1967) covered by this collection. Those were the years that saw, among many other works, the publication of his great trilogy about the mind of man: THE SLEEPWALKERS, THE ACT OF CREATION, and THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE. It is not surprising therefore, that many of these essays elaborate certain aspects of arguments which occur in those books. They could, as the author says in his Preface, ‘be called variations on certain themes’, and the selection of books reviewed also reveals a certain thematic coherence. There is, however, a great deal of miscellaneous material, quite different in nature from Koestler’s scientific preoccupations, with which he has been so closely associated in recent years. This includes the subjects of his ‘crusades’, such as the campaign for the abolition of hanging, the scandal of our quarantine laws, some escapist travel essays, and some controversies in which he became engaged. Like everything Koestler writes, DRINKERS OF INFINITY not only stimulates the mind, but gives the greatest pleasure to the reader while doing so.

Drinkers of Infinity: Essays 1955-1967

THIS is the third volume of an empirical study of the relationship between Western technology and entrepreneurship and the economic growth of the Soviet Union. 
The continuing transfer of skills and technology to the Soviet Union through the medium of foreign firms and engineers in the period 1945 to 1965 can only be characterized as extraordinary.

Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1945-1968

History

Sutton, Antony C.

Military

The most adventourous, polymathic - and readable - scientific populariser of the age offers in Janus a summing up of a quarter of a century's study and speculations on the life sciences and their philosophic implications. Koestler has an interesting theme to propose. It is this; the human brain has developed a terrible biological flaw, such that it is working now against the survival of the race. Something has "snapped" inside the brain. It is no longer necessarily a function which will lead us to a better world, but something demonic, possessed, perhaps even evil.
The anguished humanity of Koestler's concepts and the lucid energy of his style comman respect. Here is one of the major political "experiencers" an dmost widely informed spirits of the age turning to the crux of human survival on a ravaged planet. The title of the book tells not only of a central allegory of division in the human species. It stands for the rare tension on Koestler's discourses: between desolation and zest, between darkness and noon.

Janus: A Summing Up

Science & Math

Evolution

This book is distinguished from other current texts on gem therapy because of its careful presentation of new and original research material. Most of the information presented in this book was obtained by Gurudas through working with two channels. The channeled material is carefully explained and supported with numerous footnotes and commentaries. In this encyclopedic text, Gurudas introduces you to such topics as: Quartz crystal technologies, music with natural quartz crystals, astrology and gem elixirs, how vibrational remedies work, Earth as a living being, talismans and amulets, new physics and gems, new data on the 7 rays, bath therapies and gems, future prospects, and the use of gemstones in Atlantis and Lemuria. The use of gem elixirs to aid spiritual and psychic growth. New data on the miasms and the real causes of all diseases. Comparison of gems to homeopathy, flower essences, and herbs. Use of gem elixirs in birthing, agriculture, color, and with animals. Five unisolated elements that will soon appear in new minerals to play a key role in manifesting the New Age consciousness. Ancient technology to project into and change the future using astrology and gemstones in a mandala pattern. Nostradamus used this system. The return of the Teacher of Righteousness and the possibility that he will soon step forward to expand the Christ consciousness.

Gem Elixirs and Vibrational Healing Volume II

Religion & Spirituality

Gurudas

New Age & Spirituality

THIS is the second volume of an empirical study of the relationship between Western technology and entrepreneurship and the economic growth of the Soviet Union. The continuing transfer of skills and technology to the Soviet Union through the medium of foreign firms and engineers in the period 1930 to 1945 can only be characterized as extraordinary. A thorough and systematic search unearthed only two major items—SK-B synthetic rubber and the Ramzin ‘once-through’ boiler—and little more than a handful of lesser designs (several aircraft, a machine gun, and a motorless combine) which could accurately be called the result of Soviet technology; the balance was transferred from the West.  

Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1930 to 1945

Russia

The Act of Creation

The Act of Creation begins where this view ceases to be true. Koestler affirms that all creatures have the capacity for creative activity, frequently suppressed by the automatic routines of thought and behavior that dominate their lives. The study of psychology has offered little in the way of an explanation of the creative process, and Koestler suggests that we are at our most creative when rational thought is suspended - for example in dreams and trance-like states. Then the mind is capable of receiving inspiration and insight. Taking humor as his starting point, Koestler examines what he terms 'bisociative' thinking - the creative leap made by the mind that gives rise to new and startling perceptions and glimpses of reality. From here he assesses the workings of the mind of the scientific or artistic genius. The general reader as well as the reader with a deeper knowledge of the topics covered will find this richly documented study of creativity both illuminating and compelling.

Arts & Photography

The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage

UNCENSORED! This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry. To the general reader the Khazars, who flourished from the 7th to 11th century, may seem infinitely remote today. Yet they have a close and unexpected bearing on our world, which emerges as Koestler recounts the fascinating history of the ancient Khazar Empire. At about the time that Charlemagne was Emperor in the West. The Khazars’ sway extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain. Thereafter the Khazars found themselves in a precarious position between the two major world powers: the Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium and the triumphant followers of Mohammed. As Koestler points out, the Khazars were the Third World of their day. They chose a surprising method of resisting both the Western pressure to become Christian and the Eastern to adopt Islam. Rejecting both, they converted to Judaism. Mr. Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces detailed research to support a theory which could make the term ‘anti-Semitism’ become void of meaning.

Middle East

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the One 70 Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by One 70 Press