Gary Zukav is a spiritual teacher, author of four New York
Times bestsellers, and prominent member of the Human Potential Movement.
He is also an Oprah favorite, having appeared more than 30 times on her show to
ramble about “transformation in human consciousness” concepts as discussed in “The
Seat of the Soul”. He rose to fame, however, with “Dancing Wu Li Masters, An
Overview of the New Physics”, claimed to be “a book that manages to explain
relativity and a lot more without resorting to a single bit of mathematics.”
Indeed, Zukav himself explains that “physics is not mathematics. Physics, in
essence, is simple wonder at the way things are and a divine (some call it
compulsive) interest in how that is so. Mathematics is the tool of physics,
stripped of mathematics, physics becomes pure enchantment.” It inexplicably won
the American Book Award for Science.
Most of his writings file under inconsequential, fluffy
newage technobabble with a penchant for applying “quantum” as a substitute for Prior’s “tonk”, i.e. an inference rule that licenses any conclusion Zukav may want to draw whatsoever (Jeremy Bernstein on Zukav and Capra: “A
physicist reading these books might feel like someone on a familiar street who
finds that all the old houses have suddenly turned mauve”). Particularly
prominent is – predictably – the move from claims concerning the role of
observation on atomic systems to the claim that “physics has become a branch of
psychology”. In fact, part of Zukav’s incoherence stems not so much from not
understanding physics as from his complete lack of philosophical training or
rigor (for a philosophical criticism of Zukav, see here).
Diagnosis: Although Zukav may perhaps be evasively fluffy
more than ardently committed to crankery – a borderline loon, in other words –
he is still one of the main influences of the disparaging mass of quantum woo
floating around the Internet, and he must at the very least be held partially
responsible for evils such as Deepak Chopra.
For a good primer on quantum quackery, go here.
Oh, thank you for this wonderful explanation of Zukav. My mom, who passed recently, used to love Oprah, yet when Zukav was on, she was baffled by his ramblings and felt she was just not smart enough to understand him. Somehow, Zukav had hit my radar as well, so when we'd watch him together, I would rail at his complete nonsense to the utter delight of my gentle mom. Curiously, I find him to have a total lack of compassion, which I'm sure his fans would disagree with. I could go on here, but I don't want to take up your page. Thanks for the links...I look forward to learning even more about loons and their quack science.
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