John O\'loughlin

Elemental Spectra John O\'loughlin

Publisher Marketing: Dating from 1988-9, this work investigates the significance of the four basic elements, viz. air, fire, water and earth, with regard to a variety of different disciplinary contexts, including science, politics, economics and religion, and then seeks to draw ideological and moral lessons from the apperceived correlations. Of additional significance in relation to the Elements are the relationships between being and doing, awareness and emotion, mind and brain, nature and artifice, individualism and collectivism. There is also, within 'Elemental Spectra', a critique of Arthur Koestler's tripartite theories, as developed in books like 'The Act of Creation' and 'Janus - A Summing Up', as well as a refutation of the theory underlying his psychological pessimism concerning the dichotomous relationship between what he calls the 'old brain' and the 'new brain', roughly corresponding to the cerebellum and the cerebrum. In fact, Koestler is no less the principal philosophical target of this work than Schopenhauer was of 'Towards the Supernoumenon', its predecessor, and although the author acknowledges his debt to Koestler's influence on his thought, he was able to move beyond him at this point and accordingly dispense with a number of his theories.

Contributor Bio:  O'Loughlin, John John O'Loughlin is a London-based author who was born in Ireland to an English mother and grew up first in Hampshire and then in Surrey, where he attended a variety of state schools. Most of his adult life has been spent at different addresses in the London Borough of Haringey, north of the River Thames, to which he moved from Surrey in 1974, and all but a few of his books have been written there, the majority of which, like this one, are of an intensely philosophical not to say metaphysical and even ideological nature.