Experiential Paradigm Record Type: Review   ID: 794
Cosmos and Anthropos: A Philosophical Interpretation of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle Harris, Errol E.
The author, who is a philosopher, views his work "as an attempt at metaphysical reconstruction, proceeding from the world view that contemporary science has generated" (p. viii). He posits four forms of the Anthropic Principle: Weak, Strong, Participatory, and Final, and then reviews the evidence for each. The chapters are entitled "Wholes," "The Physical Whole," "Physical Prerequisites of Life," "Organism," "Evolution," "Biosphere," "Mentality," "Observation," "Reflection," "The Anthropic Principle Revisited," and "Argument for Design." He concludes that a complete design must culminate "in a completed totality" (p. 170). He adds: "This consummation of the cosmic scale is an omniscient mind. Being the actualization in full of a universal principle of order, which is immanent in every phase and every detail of the scale, it is the Alpha and the Omega of all being. Because the universal principle is immanent in every part, it is what generates and determines the nature of every entity, and its activity is nothing more nor less than its own self-differentiation in and as the spatio-temporal world. But its ultimate realization is a transcendent comprehension and self-conscious realization of the whole. It is thus all-creative and all-powerful, as well as all-knowing and absolutely self-complete. All this is necessarily entailed by the very concept of design" (p. 171). The vision of conscious unity knowable to each "individual" self that Harris sets forth is what is known by first-hand experience via EHEs in what I call the "Experiential Paradigm" or worldview (p. 172).
Publisher Information:	Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1991. 194p. Bibl: 175-187; Chap. bibl; Index: 189-194

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