Chandogya Upanishad in The Thirteen Principle Upanishads -- London: Oxford University Press, 1954

Along with the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the Chandogya Upanishad is perhaps the oldest of the Upanishads. The Upanishads make up the literary form that completes the sacred literature known as the Vedas. They express the general philosophical and theological positions that are implicit within the earlier Vedic literature.

The Vedas are divided into four groupings, the Rigveda, the Samaveda, the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda. Each of these are associated with Vedic schools which preserved the literature. Some of these schools also preserved Upanishads that express ideas consonant with their pariticular Veda. The Tandins preserved the Samaveda and the associated Chandogya Upanishad.

Perhaps the most famous passage from the Chandogya Upanishad is "that art thou." This expresses one of the most significant ideas in all of the Vedas, that there is no distinction between subject and object. The Chandogya Upanishad clearly stakes out an answer to the problem of the one and the many which asks whether the universe is most fundamentally a unity or a plurality. Not only does the Chandogya Upanishad come down on the side of monism, it identifies the substance of that monism as mind.

Of course, there is a sense that the mind is separate from the external world and that it is an individual among other minds; however, the truth, according to the Chandogya Upanishad is that this is an illusion masking reality. Famously, that reality is betokened by the word or symbol "om."

The content of the Chandogya Upanishad is similar to the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. It is, however, less cohesive and direct than the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and seems to emphasize the esoteric, apostolic character of the Upanishads. The word "upanishad" is often translated two ways: first, as "secret knowledge," but also as something like "to sit at the feet of." The Chandogya Upanishad contains numerous stories of secret knowledge being passed on from teacher to pupil and in this respect is a literary enactment of upanishadic teaching.

Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad in The Thirteen Principle Upanishads -- London: Oxford University Press, 1954

The Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad is among the oldest of all the Upanishads and at 105 pages in translation, it is the longest. Anyone not familiar with its philosophical and religious tradition will find it rather curious, though a number of passages will stand out for their profound expression of a clear theological or cosmological concept. Its deeper value is in its expression of a metaphysical monism that characterizes Hinduism to this day.

The monism is the Upanishad’s answer to a deep philosophical question sometimes known as "the problem of the one and the many" which asks what is the fundamental nature of being – a multiplicity of ephemeral individual things or a permanent and unchanging single thing. The Upanishad describes the world metaphorically as the body of a person and by this metaphor, alludes to the idea that each component of the world exists primarily as a dependent element of the whole. As the heart would have no existence were it not developed as a part of a body, similarly, each component of the world exists only in its interdependence with all other parts of the world.

One is tempted to think of this as an early expression of the Gaia thesis which asserts that the world is a single living being; however, the Gaia thesis tends to describe the world in materialist terms. In contrast, a second strand of thought in the Upanishad clearly comes down on the side of a non-material reality. This is presented by describing objects in connection with, and as dependent upon, our senses. Bringing these strands together, the Upanishad understands the world as a whole that is a manifestation of a perceiver.

Finally, the interconnectedness of being and its origin in the perceiver leads to the conclusion that what appears to us as our individuate soul is in fact an illusion and that the basis of reality is a single universal soul or Brahma.
With a basic understanding of these concepts, a reader can experience the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad is an exhilarating piece of poetry, laced with beautiful imagery, and drawing inspiring conclusions about such things as the fate of the soul after death and the working out of karmic relations.

An Outline of the Philosophy of the Upanishads / Robert E. Hume in The Thirteen Principle Upanishads -- London: Oxford University Press, 1954

The subject of this review is a 72 page introduction to a translation of thirteen Upanishads by Robert Ernest Hume. Hume's introduction is itself divided into eleven short chapters dealing with a number of important aspects of the Upanishads. Its main focus is the peculiar monism expressed in the Upanishads, particularly in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad.

Hume briefly discusses the place of the Upanishads in philosophy and particularly in Indian philosophy, but he quickly turns his attention to the concept of Brahma which he characterizes as "the world-ground" and "the Real of the real." This most fundamental idea is the conceptual starting point out of which all else flows. It is, however, posited as a speculative, but objective fact. In contrast to this, Hume describes the Atman or the the cosmic soul. Its character can be best understood by beginning with the multifarious, illusory world of experience. Recognizing that it comes with no guarantee of facticity, the phenomenal world is understood to be the creation of mind. Furthermore, the atman (or individual mind) also is recognized as an illusion. Through deep reflection, or the practice of yoga, one can come to understand that one's sense of self and the world are fragments of the all-embracing Atman, which in turn is no different from Brahma. Identifying the Atman with Brahma overcomes the duality of subject and object and brings one to understand the monism at the heart of reality.

It is notable that a Hume asserts that a true understanding of Brahma is not really possible and that the nearest experiences we have of it are deep sleep and death, essentially non-experience; however, by accepting this metaphysical monism, one is placed in a position to more nearly understand the fundamental truth. According to some portions of the Upanishads, simply holding this metaphysical view will cause one to live morally.

Hume points out that the views expressed in the early Upanishads are sometimes different from those of the later Upanishads and that even within a single Upanishad, important differences can be identified. The dating of the Upanishads relies to great extent on these differences and the reliability of these dates depend in turn on a theory about the progress of religious insight. It assumes that the Upanishads that are characterized by a closer affinity to the nature worship of the earlier Vedic period were written first and that those describing an abstract monism were written later. The moral components of Hinduism also are suggested to make a later appearance. These may be a very reasonable assumptions; however, they do need to be recognized as assumptions. In The Origin and Growth of Religion Max Muller makes a strong case against religion generally progressing from animism to monotheism.

In any case, monotheism certainly has become the dominant and lasting form of the Indian religious vision and its roots are in the Upanishads.

Early Zoroastrianism / James Hope Moulton -- London: Williams and Norgate, 1913

In 1912, James Hope Moulton presented a series of lectures in Oxford which were later published in the Hibbert Lectures (1913). His topic was "early" Zoroastrianism by which he means Zoroastrianism, its immediate predecessor beliefs, and its descendant beliefs up to the time of Alexander. The work is quite valuable, but uneven. Moulton's first two chapters, "The Sources" and "Before Zarathustra" are somewhat unclear and confusing. His frequent name dropping and brief allusions, indicates that he was addressing an audience that was well-informed about the prevailing issues in Zoroastrian scholarship. After almost 100 years, it's all a bit baffling to the casual reader.

In the first chapter, Moulton presents numerous arguments for various theories about when Zarathustra lived. His evidence does not provide a clear and simple conclusion, but in general it tends toward an earlier date than what is often suggested. The clearest evidence for Zoroastrianism is the Behistan bas relief and inscription depicting Darius around 500 B.C. It is often thought the Zarathustra must have lived about a century or two before this; however, the arguments Moulton relates could place Zarathustra three or four hundred years early at the start of the first millennium.

Moulton's third chapter, "The Prophet and the Reform" is clearer. Here, Moulton argues that Zarathustra flourished in Bactria and traces the development of his thought -- portrayed as a great reformation of early Aryan nature worship -- though its transmission west by the Magi. In the hands of the Magi, Zarathustra's religious insights were transformed and -- in many of their essentials -- lost. The course of this transformation is described in two chapters, "The Magi" and "The Magi (continued)." Moulton argues that many of the more popular (and sometimes disturbing) notions of Zoroastrianism are actually alien to Zarathustra's teaching and were grafted onto the religion by Magi who, having failed to maintain political power in the Achaemenian period, established themselves as religious leaders.

The rest of the work addresses more specific features of Zoroastrianism and happily is clearer and more direct. The polytheistic doctrine of the divine beings (amesha spenta) is presented as a departure from Zarathustra's monotheism. Similarly, the moral dualism setting the good god Ahura Mazda against the evil Angra Mainyu (or Ahriman) is presented as a Magian perversion. This has come to be known as the Zurvanian heresy and now widely accepted.

Zarathustra made, however, a number of very important theological contributions that are prominent in many religions today, including monotheism, the immortality of the individual soul, a future day of judgement when our moral conduct will determine our eternal fate, and the existence of fravashis, or guardian spirits associated with each person. This notion, however, was not so exclusively Zarathustra's, but it was an important component of his thinking and may have been the origin of contemporary Western angelology.

In the final chapter, "Zarathustra and Israel," Moulton takes up a question that occupied the scholars of his time: what was the relationship between the theology of Zarathustra and the theology of the Bible, which have a number of striking similarities. Moulton's chapter is an interesting, though brief argument that while there might have been some cross-fertilization, the two theologies arose independently. For a more thorough treatment of this question, I recommend Lawrence Mills's series of lectures Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia. Mills's lectures also were published in 1913, though their publication was based on work done in past years. It is likely that Moulton had access to at least some of these before writing his own lectures.

Mills outlines three possibilities: (1) Zoroastrianism and Yahwehism arose largely independently, (2) Yahwehism impressed upon Zoroastrianism its monotheistic tendencies when the Jews were held captive in Babylon, and (3) the converse: Zoroastrianism impressed upon Yahwehism its monotheism during the captivity. Mills, like Moulton, opts for the first possibility, but it seems as though both are motivated by a desire either to glorify monotheism by claiming that its truth was independently evident or by the desire to defend the independence of Yahwehism.

If Moulton is correct, that Zarathustra's monotheism along with his other theological insights arose around the tenth century B.C., and if recent archeology and scholarship is correct, placing the origins of the Bible at or around the time of the exile, then it would seem natural that Zoroastrianism was the progenitor of monotheistic Yahwehism. While not absolutely certain, it seems more likely that a relatively minor ethic group (the Jews) might, while in captivity, adopt the elements of the theology of their surrounding culture. This is particularly likely in that prior to the rise of monotheistic Yahwehism in the post-exilic period, the Jews were at most henotheistic and so open to a variety of theologies. Second, their Babylonian captors were far and away the most powerful state in the region. Finally, their Achaemenian liberators (again the most advanced state of the region) were unquestionably monotheistic. It would have been a very easy step to adopt the monotheism of Ahura Mazda under the old, familiar name "Yahweh."

Moulton's Early Zoroastrianism, while somewhat frustrating at the start, develops into an extremely interesting examination of major theological ideas, whose origins are not well known today. It is no wonder that it remains in print today.

Native Plants for Wildlife Habitat & Conservation Landscaping-Chesapeake Bay Watershed / Britt Slattery, et al -- MD: US Fish & Wildlife Service, 2003

There are a lot of very good reasons to remove invasive plants -- particularly non-native invasives -- and replace them with less aggressive native plants. Most important is the ability of a variety of native plants to support the local wildlife, but also important is their ability to improve the soil quality by sinking deep roots that aerate the top soil and add organic matter. Deep rooted plants are also far better at retaining water and in urban and suburban areas, this is critical for reducing the destructive, polluting, storm water runoff that is killing our streams rivers, and bays.

However, identifying the right native plant is not always easy. Fortunately for those of us who live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has published a handy catalog of hundreds of native plants: ferns, grasses, herbaceous plants, herbaceous emergents, shrubs, and trees. For each (or almost each) plant, the guide provides basic information to help you decide if the plant is right for you.

The guide identifies the basic characteristics of the plant: size, colors of its flowers, leaves, and fruit, as well as the time of the year when it flowers and fruits. It also provides basic information about its optimal growth conditions: sun, shade, and partial shade; but also soil pH and soil conditions: clay, loam, sand, or organic. It even provides an indication of the ideal habitat and geographic region within the watershed to help ensure that its nativity is reasonably local. For anyone particularly interested in attracting wildlife to your garden, it indicates how attractive the plant is to song birds, water fowl, small mammals, butterflies, beneficial insects, and hummingbirds.

The authors point out, of course, that the Chesapeake Bay contains many more native plants than are included in this catalog, and encourage the reader to seek out other sources to learn about those plants outside of their selection. The encouragement isn't necessary, though, as one's appetite for more information about native plants is whetted by the guide's clear presentation alone.

Perhaps the only weakness is the size of the photographs. While it is great to have photos of each plant, the photos are tiny and there is only one (sometimes two) for each plant, sometimes showing fruit, leaves, or blossoms, but seldom more than one of the characteristics. Consequently, using the book in conjunction with other reference sources amplifies its value, but regardless of this drawback, it is an extremely helpful starting point for learning about what native plants will grow well in your garden.

Metaphysics / Aristotle -- Richard Hope, tr. -- Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1975

There is a popular saying among philosophers that all of Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato and Aristotle. Nothing supports this more effectively than Aristotle's Metaphysics. Though written in the fourth century B.C.E., Metaphysics grapples with the central problems in ontology that have held the attention of Western philosophers ever since. Moreso than Plato, Aristotle's language and views have provided the foundation of how we think about existence and the conundrums that it poses.

Richard Hope's translation of Metaphysics identifies "primary being" as the central object of Aristotle's study. The term is perhaps clumsy, but nonetheless apt in that Aristotle identifies and expounds on a number of "objects" that exist in some form or another, but which need to be distinguished from the most fundamental objects of reality. By making these distinctions, Aristotle is able to provide insight into what exists and what merely holds a relationship to what exists.

We can attribute to Aristotle many of the most basic notions with which we understand the world. At least we can find no earlier extensive exposition of these or similar ideas, with the exception of Plato; but even here, Plato is a myth-monger, overly reliant on metaphor in comparison to Aristotle. Indeed, the lack of comparable material during or before Aristotle is evidence that his genius was perhaps unrivaled in the Western tradition.

Metaphysics explores the relationships among objects and their attributes, attributes and other attributes, causation, change, materiality, space, number, ideas, unity, permanence, relationships, and a host of other ontological concepts. Many sections of the work are obscure, if not unintelligible, but other sections are lucid descriptions of the most basic structure of experience. Lurking just below the surface is Aristotle's logic. For example, the relationship of contraries appears again and again to explain the possibility of change, while Aristotle explicitly asserts that the law of non-contradiction is the most certain of all principles and that all demonstrations rest upon it. It is perhaps here that Aristotle's genius is most evident. While earlier philosophers employed the same reason as Aristotle, none did so consciously, and by doing so, Aristotle set a standard for intellectual discourse that has born valuable fruit through the millenia.

A careful reading (and re-reading) of Aristotle will certainly yield great rewards, particularly in understanding the details of his thinking, but even a casual reading pays dividends as a systematic and exhuastive meditation on the most fundamental concepts of existence focuses one's mind on the amazing gift that is human experience.

Bookbinding & Conservation by Hand: A Working Guide / Laura S. Young -- New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1995

There are a lot of published handbooks on bookbinding and repairing damaged books. The ones I have looked at seem pretty similar and Laura Young's handbook is no great exception. It is, however, among those that are fairly complete in the coverage of bookbinding, but less complete in the coverage of book repair. In any case, it is admirably informative and readable, including several photographs and numerous clear drawings that illustrate various techniques.

There are chapters on book structure, binding styles, equipment, and materials; but the heart of the book describes various techniques for assembling and binding a book from scratch. In the course of this, one comes to understand the component parts of a book and can recognize how minor damage might be repaired. A later chapter provides more explicit advice on conservation methods, but even here, the treatment is brief and insufficient to give one confidence that one might not do more harm than good in repairing a book.

Young is fairly good about not expecting the reader to be acquainted with bookbinding jargon, but the novice reader might do well to have on hand a glossary of bookbinding terminology. ABC of Bookbinding: A Unique Glossary with over 700 Illustrations for Collectors and Librarians (also published by Oak Knoll Press) is a good choice.

Interestingly, YouTube offers a number of valuable videos on bookbinding and repair that may well make handbooks of this sort obsolete.

The Life and Growth of Language: An Outline of Linguistic Science / William Dwight Whitney -- NY: D. Appleton and Co., 1896

In 1786, Sir William Jones published The Sanskrit Language in which he remarked on similarities between Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek and suggested that all three developed from a common extinct language now called "Proto-Indo-European." Jones's observations were an important landmark in the study of language. One century later, the field of philology was in its golden age. William Dwight Whitney was among the leading philologist of the era. He was professor of Sanskrit and editor of The Century Dictionary, an English language dictionary surpassed only by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Whitney published a general treatment of language and the principles of comparative philology in 1875 entitled The Life and Growth of Language: An Outline of Linguistic Science, which covered much of the same ground that appeared in his 1867 work, Language and the Study of Language. Life and the Growth of Language is an excellent exposition of the state of the art in philology during its heyday. It combines a clear explanation of basic linguistic concepts with hypotheses about how languages change over time. This is illustrated with analyses of specific word forms as they are transformed by the tendencies among speakers that alter language.

The great bulk of his book examines various Indo-European languages which he claims belong to the most well-developed language family. His examples show the genetic links between modern languages by examining three basic linguistic forms: inflective, agglutinative, and word order languages. All languages make use of each of these forms, though normally one is dominant. In Latin which is mainly inflective, case endings express the role that the word plays in the sentence; suffixes tell us, for example, whether the noun is the subject of the sentence or the object. In English, this information normally is revealed by the order of the words in the sentence. Agglutinative languages employ specific words to express cases and link them together in complex, compound words. Whitney's prime examples of agglutinative languages are Scythian and Chinese, in which words tend to be single syllables. These syllables are brought together to express numerous semantic relations, e.g., cases common in English, as well as passive, reflexive, causative, negative, and impossible action.

These linguistic properties are explained in the course of showing how language changes, sometimes to the extent of altering the dominant structure the language. For example, Modern English, a word order language, developed out of Old English, a inflected language; however, contrary to this trend, some Modern English inflections were formed from older agglutinative or word order features. Whitney's example of this is the past tense suffix "-ed." According to Whitney, it is the worn away expression of "did." "Did" is still used to indicate the past tense as in expressions like "he did love." The origin of the -ed ending came from a slightly different word order, "he love did." The existence of both "he did love" and "he loved" in Modern English indicates that early English was probably agglutinative where "did" served to indicate the past tense.

The Life and Growth of Language drives home the plasticity of language. Suffixes and prefixes are formed out of words worn away by lazy speakers. Conversely, word orders are standardize or specific words are employed to express what was expressed previously by now neglected inflections. Whitney describes other changes to the language related to the invention of new words and word borrowings. Both often take place as a result of significant cultural changes due to new technologies or modes of life or due to exposure to foreign cultures through trade, migration, or conquest. According to Whitney, many words originated in onomatopoeias.

In the later chapters, Whitney describes features of other language families, highlighting the amazing diversity of linguistic forms. For example, outside Indo-European languages, the distinction between verb and other parts of speech is not so stark. Single words are made to do the work of numerous parts of speech and are distinguished only by their inflections. Whitney observes that intonation is critical to distinguishing Chinese words, Native American languages make an important distinction between animate and inanimate objects rather like some languages distinguish genders, and Scythian employs fifteen to twenty separated cases.

Philologists of Whitney's time believed that the relationship between languages could be recognized by the similarity between certain core words, e.g., mother, father, brother, and others that were not likely to be replaced by new or borrowed words. Famously, Jones recognized the similarity of the Latin and Greek "pater" and "mater" and the Sanskrit "piter" and "matar," along with other similar words. Similarities between the grammatical structure of two languages provided an even stronger argument for their common ancestry. Such arguments, however, are not always convincing since accidental commonalities clearly appear between languages.

The difficulty of establishing strong connections between languages raises an important question about the "science" of philology. Whitney examines this in his last chapter. His sensitivity to the difficulties of drawing sound conclusions is, however, limited by the progress of the philosophy of science of the 19th century. While not yet widely and clearly articulated, verificationism and induction was the state of the art in the philosophy of science in Whitney's day. Falsificationism and the hypothetico-deductive method was still 50 to 75 years away from its seminal articulation in Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Since philology was concerned chiefly with reconstructing dead language that had no written record, there was little to no possibility of testing an hypothesis. All that could be done was to formulate elegant, but untestable theories that linked existing languages. This short-coming may well have been the main reason that philology did not last far into the 20th century as a science. However, with recent advances in archaeology and genetics, a larger body of evidence has become available to support philological claims. Furthermore, more recent philosophers of science and epistemologists, e.g., W.V.O. Quine and Nelson Goodman have enhanced the significance of theory construction in the progress of science, potentially establishing greater respect for future philological activity.

Whitney's work is surprisingly advanced when compared to 20th century linguistics. It is evidence that the advances in 20th century linguistics were not radical departures from the ideas of the 19th century, but merely clearer expressions of nascent older ideas. Similarly, Whitney views Indo-European languages as somehow more developed than those of other families. This reflects his time, but he also exhibits a budding awareness that all human languages are essentially equally sophisticated and are a product of a common natural human capacity. There are many passages that make Whitney sound like a typical 19th century ethnocentric imperialist and other that seem to recognize that non-Indo-European languages, even "primitive" languages, are no less sophisticated than Indo-European languages. In these passages, the difference for Whitney is mostly in the size of the languages' vocabularies, and he recognizes that this is merely a reflection of a more complex industrial society.

All in all, Whitney's The Life and Growth of Language is a fascinating romp through Indo-European philology. Happily, it requires no special knowledge to enjoy the excursion.

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the OED / Simon Winchester -- NY: Harper Collins, 1998

The Oxford English Dictionary is one of the truly monumental literary achievements of all time. Not only did it purport to define every English word (past and present), but it provided quotes from a wide variety of sources, exemplifying the meanings of those words and tracing the changes in their meanings over time. Furthermore, we are given the etymology of each word. The final publication of the first edition was completed forty-nine years after its primary editor, James Murray, took responsibility for the effort, but those years were preceded by approximately two decades that saw preliminary work on the dictionary by others.

The first edition was completed in ten volumes in 1928, but reprinted in twelve volumes plus a supplementary volume in 1933. In the 1970s and 1980s, four more supplements were added to the work until in 1989, the second edition was published in twenty volumes. The work was the unique product of a rather post-modern project. The first editors put out a call to the English-reading public, asking for volunteers to send in quotations that included any word that was interesting or used in an unusual way. From these contributions, sub-editors would compile promising quotations for the editors to chose from to compile the final entries. The work was, in essence, a Victorian wiki, finally composed of 414,825 words and 1,827,306 illustrative quotations.

Among the most important volunteers was William Minor, an American doctor living in England. Along with Murray, Minor is the subject of Simon Winchester's book, The Professor and the Madman. Minor, the madman, was incarcerated for a murder he committed in a delusional fit. His detention began in 1872 when he was 37 years old and continued until months before the end of his life in 1920. During this time, Minor indexed the words of a huge number of books, particularly eighteenth century books, and sent quotation to Murray and his team as they compiled the dictionary. Although he did not submit the most quotations for consideration by editors, Minor's quotations were especially well chosen and timely in the publication process. As particular words were being prepared for inclusion, Murray would contact Minor for his assistance and Minor would respond by examining his index and sending off the necessary quotations. Consequently, his efforts were perhaps the most important of any single volunteer.

Winchester's account of Minor's life and contribution to the dictionary is sympathetic and touching without excusing Minor's murder. Along with an informative account of the composition of the dictionary, Winchester vividly describes Minor's mental illness. As such, The Professor and the Madman is as much a case study of paranoid schizophrenia as it is an account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. The descriptions of Minor's delusions stand in fascinating contrast to the systematic work of the dictionary's editors and Minor's own meticulous research.

If there is a weakness to Winchester's account, it is that it focuses too narrowly on its two protagonists and gives short shrift to the wider community of philologists, lexicographers, and volunteer readers. Granted, Winchester clearly set out to present the extraordinary story of William Minor, with James Murray in a supporting role, but Minor's contribution to the dictionary cannot be fairly assessed or even understood without placing it in its proper context.

What Technology Wants / Kevin Kelly -- NY: Viking, 2010

Computer technology, particularly the Web, is having profound impacts on the world and our lives, but that is entirely uncontroversial. It is the significance of those impacts that is worthy of discussion. Which changes wrought by technology are important and which are trivial? Which are beneficial? Which are detrimental? How will they shape our future? I had hoped that Kevin Kelly, a former editor of Whole Earth Catalog and the founding editor of Wired Magazine, would provide some illuminating answers to these kinds of questions in his new book What Technology Wants. Sadly, he has not.

What Technology Wants places the rise of technology in an evolutionary -- indeed, cosmic -- context. According to Kelly, technology (or "the technium" as he calls its collective existence) is an inevitable product of the self-organizing forces of nature, set in motion with the big bang. The technium is one of Earth's seven kingdoms of life, an ever developing outgrowth of the human mind that has already taken on such characteristics as autonomy and sentience. These are startling claims outside the circles of science fiction and require much stronger defense than Kelly provides.

Nonetheless, much of What Technology Wants is interesting and informative. In his acknowledgements, Kelly tells us that the book was based on interviews and conversations with the 48 smartest people he knows, and much of that knowledge-base is manifest in the rich detail of his book. Unfortunately, when Kelly goes beyond the details and asserts broader philosophical claims, he is out of his depth.

The book's central idea is disclosed in its title. The technium is (or at very is now becoming) capable of intentional action on the order of highly evolved living species, including humans, but with all due respect to Kelly, I can want to close a window in my house to keep from getting cold, but my thermostat does not similarly want to regulate the temperature in my house. It is simply a changeable physical link between the electric power grid and my radiator system. Kelly blithely disregards the distinction. He willfully attributes human traits to technology based on the slenderest similarities. Furthermore, crucial concepts, like intelligence, sentience, choice, and freedom, are so ill-defined that he can assert nearly anything he likes about their relationship to technology. His treatment of these psychological and philosophical ideas are surprisingly naive.

More worthwhile aspects of his book include his discussion of evolutionary forces. Here, he goes beyond a simple outline of natural selection and notes the significance of structural and historical influences on the modification of species. His extension of these observations to the development of technologies is interesting, though not aways clear. The basic outlines describe a sequence of technologies, where each new technology is predicated on its predecessors. Technologies are transformed by (1) human intention, (2) the laws of nature i.e., the structure of technologies, and (3) historical accident. Together, these forces make certain technological developments inevitable. So much so that any particular discovery commonly is made multiple times, independently, and just at the time they are ripe for discovery. Kelly suggests that this inevitable development is the trajectory that technology "wants." It is unfortunate that he employs this description, since it distracts from a serious examination of the likely future of discovery.

Among the most egregious omissions from What Technology Wants are analyses of economic forces. Today, the inevitable progress of technology likely has to do less with the nature of the technology and more with the imperatives of capital. This, of course, fits with human intentionality that Kelly identifies as driving technological development, but his fixation on the structure of technology underplays this as the most significant driving force. At most, the structure of technology establishes certain limits to what can be or is likely to be developed. By overlooking the significance of economic forces, Kelly overstates the inevitability of certain technologies. Government regulation can significantly influence the path of technological development, if the political will can be mustered.

The second greatest omission is an analysis of the consequences of the end of easily acquired oil as an energy source. This historical accident might profoundly delay or reverse the growth of technology. Kelly suggests that the accumulation of technological advances has led to an constant doubling of the power of the technium. This is known as "Moore's Law" when applied to the development of computer chips. Allegedly, this exponential growth has generated the astounding explosion of technology in recent years, but was is missing here is the discovery and use of easily available oil as a fuel for growth. Kelly might, of course, identify the harnessing of oil as a technology that fits within his growth curve, but he does not recognize that far from being an interim step toward greater growth, oil-powered technologies are only as sustainable as the reserves that fuel them. Kelly's unlimited technological development is more likely to slow and even reverse when our oil-based economy slows to a crawl.

Finally, at least for the purposes of this review, Kelly's notion of progress is based on expanding "freedom" understood as nothing more than a greater range choices. For Kelly, the evolving technium is a choice-creating force and choice-creation appears to be his highest value. Kelly explicitly rejects the alternative value of human happiness as a direct measure of the value of individual technologies or the technium in general. While it is certainly true that technologies often have promoted human happiness, they have also promoted human suffering. Kelly believes the the former slightly out weighs the latter. It is a judgement that is hard, if not impossible, to quantify, but Kelly's infatuation with technology ensures his own answer. It is likely to be persuasive only to those previously convinced of its truth.

In the final chapters, Kelly confides his infatuation with technology. He probably expects the readers who have stuck with him for so long agree with him. He writes, "I find myself indebted to the net for its provisions. It is a steadfast benefactor, always there. I caress it with my fidgety fingers; it yields to my desires, like a lover. Secret knowledge? Here. Predictions of what is to come? Here. Maps to hidden places? Here." He continues this sort of lurid prose for several paragraphs. In the final chapter, Kelly discusses the technium's relationship to God. He writes, "If there is a God, the arc of the technium is aimed right at him....The ongoing self-organized mutability of life, evolution, mind, and the technium is a reflexion of God's becoming," and "we can see more God in a cell phone than a tree frog."

What Technology Wants is a lively, interesting, entertaining, infuriating, absurd book, filled with over-generalizations, willfull surrender to conceptual errors, inappropriate analogies, and dubious metaphysics. Hopefully, better books on its important topic will evolve soon.