Spice: The History of a Temptation / Jack Turner-- N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004

In the penultimate paragraph of Spice: A History of a Temptation, author Jack Turner describes his work as a "long ramble" through the history of spices. There could be no more apt description of the work, though it might be better titled A History of Europe's Encounters with and Responses to South Asian Spices, as the work is more limited than its actual title suggests.

In general, the work begins with a chapter covering the Age of Discovery and the efforts of European seafaring powers to acquire Asian spices. Following this are two chapters on spices as used in cooking, a chapter on spices used for health and funerary practices, a chapter on spices as aphrodisiacs, and a chapter on spices used for religious and spiritual rituals. Two concluding chapters describe the reaction against spices and the decline of their importance in international trade and European culture from the twelfth century to the eighteenth century.

To its credit, the work is a scholarly tour de force. Turner uncovered numerous references to spices in wide variety of European literary and historical sources and in practically every major European language. Unfortunately, Turner's organization of his material is blunt and his conclusions are limited. One is left with the sense that in the course of his research he collected every reference to spices he could find, drafted brief descriptions of their import, and filed them into a few categories: food, health, sex, and religion, etc. Then within these categories, he linked his references with whatever connective discussion he could devise. The result is a long ramble indeed.

Perhaps the most valuable element of the work is the 24 pages describing his sources and bibliography. These pages will give a serious scholar an excellent starting point for doing more in depth and hopefully more consequential work in one or another of Turner's subjects. Unfortunately, many of Turner's sources will be hard to acquire outside of the extraordinary libraries that served Turner's research.

One particular avenue of research the begs examination is the relationship between class, economics, and spices. Turner make frequent mention of how expensive spices have been through out history and how this affected their popularity or desirability, but he does not take this up in much detail. One is left wondering just how the purchase of spices was supported and how it affect the European economy and social structure. One gets only an inkling of a sense about how Asian spices competed with European spices and who were their main markets. Much of the work covers the period of the Middle Ages, and while there is a relatively fine chapter on the reactions of the Christian Church to spices, one does not get a clear picture of role that spices played in the interrelations of the Church, the European nobility, commercial enterprises, and the great mass of people who composed European peasantry.

There are occasional sections in which a more extended story is told, e.g., Colombus's voyages, Magellan's voyages, Bernard of Clairvaux's criticism of spices, and Pierre Poivre's efforts to steal clove and nutmeg plants from the Dutch monopoly for the benefit of France. There is also a fascinating description of the mythical medieval "land of Cockayne" where "the only virtues were gluttony, leisure, and pleasure, the only vices exertion and care." The churches in Cockayne "were made of pastry, fish, and meat and buttressed with puddings. There were rivers 'great and fine,' flowing not with water -- a rarity in Cockayne -- but with 'oile, milk, hony and wine,'" and of course spices were a pervasive.

One must admire Turner's scholarship. His mastery of classical, medieval, and modern sources on spices is genuinely delicious, but in the end, one wishes the meal he serves was little more nutritious.

Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants / Douglas W. Tallamy -- Portland, OR: Timber Press, 2007

I've known more than a few wags who have remarked slyly that a weed is simply a plant that you don't want, and while that initially seems generous and open minded with respect to the natural world, it misses the critical role that some plants play in their ecosystem and the role that others don't play. From the perspective of a healthy, diverse, and functioning ecosystem, some plants (weeds) simply don't pull their weight, while others are citizens in good standing. In the first half of Bringing Nature Home, Douglas Tallamy brilliantly argues that plants in good standing are, generally speaking, native to the region, while non-natives tend in almost every case to be either unhelpful or positive threats to the diversity of life. What Tallamy hopes the reader will take home from this is that converting your garden to a native plant preserve is one of the easiest ways a gardener can help recover the ecosystem that is most beneficial to his or her locale.

The key element in the overall picture is the insect population. Gardeners often treat insects as the enemy and in some cases they can be; however, in a well-functioning ecosystem herbivorous insects are a critical link in the food chain linking plants to larger, more charismatic animals, like birds, frogs, rabbits, and turtles. Non-native plants have become best-sellers in nurseries all over the country in large part because they are "insect resistant," meaning, they aren't food for anything in the ecosystem. Planting such species is comparable to laying down astroturf, planting plastic flowers, and erecting artificial trees. They may look nice and be generally whole and intact, but they serve no other purpose but to decorate one's garden. Worse, they have a tendency to spread out of control and take up an enormous amount of space, crowding out ecologically valuable species. Of course, the loss of habitat for insects results in a loss of habitat for larger animals. After reading Tallamy's arguments, one comes to appreciate the beauty of the ragged shape of an insect-eaten leaf. One's heart goes out to noble native plants that has given up some portion of their foliage for the greater good of the ecosystem.

One of the most significant environmental problems we face today is the loss of habitat. Urban sprawl and mono-cultural fence-to-fence agribusiness farming has left less and less room for inhabitants of the natural world and is drastically reducing the size of numerous species' populations. Tallamy argues that urban and suburban gardeners can do quite a lot to mitigate this problem simply by choosing to plant natives in their gardens. One small suburban lot may not seem like a significant contribution to the solution, but if gardening with natives becomes as popular as gardening with non-natives, the problem will be cut in half.

A yet stronger response to the urban-suburban desert-scape that we have created would be to organize whole neighborhood or cities to plant native plants. Recent ecological research shows that the size of a contiguous ecosystem is important to maintaining a native wildlife population. This runs counter to the belief that many small fragments of an ecosystem can effectively support the population. Obviously, fragments suitably close and with no significant barriers can be helpful, but organizing large swaths of natural habitat is preferable. Still, to get to this stage, pioneer native gardeners are critical. Happily, Tallamy provides tips on "making it happen."

The second half of Bringing Nature Home is essentially a reference guide to useful native plants and insects, a.k.a., "bird food." Tallamy also provides a valuable chapter entitled "Answers to Tough Questions," like "If birds eat the berries of alien plants..., why shouldn't I plant those species?" (The short answer is that those berries do not provide adequate nutrients required to make eggs, to feed the parent birds while they are feeding the young, and to feed the young themselves. Too many such plants means there will be fewer insects to provide the nutrition needed for reproduction.)

Finally, there are three excellent indexes listing native plants across the U.S., host plants for specific butterflies, and results from experiments comparing the value of native and non-native plants. Also there are numerous beautiful color photographs and a superb bibliography.

No gardener interested in native plants should be without this book!

Green Washed: Why We Can't Buy Our Way to a Green Planet / Kendra Pierre-Louis -- N.Y.: Ig Publishing, 2012

There are plenty of books still to be published in 2012, but for now, I would rate Green Washed as the book of the year. This is not to say it does not have some unfortunate weaknesses. Broadly put, the book's thesis is that all of the highly publicized "green" products that have been coming out in recent years do little to address the serious environmental challenges we face. Even were we all to substitute green products for the conventional products we currently buy, we would still be facing environmental contamination, depleted resources, degraded and vanishing habitats, and of course, climate catastrophe. According to Kendra Pierre-Louis, the author of Green Washed, our only way out is to consume less.

My own views on this are in complete accord with Pierre-Louis's and because of the urgency of the environmental problems we face, I dearly hope that her book receives a wide audience. Unfortunately, the case she makes for her thesis is merely good -- not great. I suspect that anyone in the developed world who is moderately attached to his or her current lifestyle will find ways to dismiss Pierre-Louis's arguments, but hopefully Green Washed will be the starting point for a more serious examination of the futility of green consumerism and the need for reduced consumption and that it will not serve as a vaccine that inoculates consumers against calls for reduced consumption.

Most of the book is taken up exposing the environmental damage that is done by many "green" products: organic cotton, local food, cleansers and cosmetics, hybrid and electric cars, aluminum water bottles, and LEED certified buildings. Perhaps the strongest case can be made against hybrid and electric cars. Pierre-Louis points out that the advantages that hybrid and electric cars have over gas-powered cars are that they are marginally more efficient, that tail pipe pollution is not concentrated in city centers, and that the electricity on which they run can be produced from renewable sources.

What is left out in the enthusiasm for hybrid and electric cars are the resources necessary to make a car in the first place. The embodied energy in a hybrid or electric car is comparable to that in a gas-powered car; consequently, the improved gas mileage of a hybrid represents a fraction of a fraction of the energy consumed by the cars.

Even more telling is the environmental cost of building and maintaining the system of roads and parking facilities, without which our cars would be useless. The amount of concrete and asphalt that goes into our road system is staggering and it needs to be virtually rebuilt every decade or so. Roads themselves constitute a significant portion of the impermeable surfaces that are destroying our watersheds and heating our urban areas. Roads quickly transport tire fragments and motor oil into our sewers, streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans, regardless of whether they are accommodating gas or electric powered vehicles. Roads encourage the urban sprawl that is responsible for the destruction of vital natural habitats. Pierre-Louis is completely correct in observing that the "green" car is little more than a device that will perpetuate a system of transportation that is destroying the planet.

A more sensible response to the crisis brought on by gas-powered cars is to stop driving cars, or at least drastically reduce the amount that we drive. Imagine if all auto and truck traffic was reduced by a mere 50%. Auto production would decline significantly and the number of lanes we would need to maintain would diminish. Plant and animal life would rebound and our air and water would become significantly cleaner. Rational bicycle-oriented city planning and improved public transportation could make our cities completely car-free. This is far greener approach than converting our gasoline-powered car culture to an electric-powered car culture.

Pierre-Louis employs a similar style of critique to the other topics she addresses. Her criticism of the LEED building standards and organic cotton clothing are strong. She points out that the greenest building is the one that's already built and that wearing clothes to the end of their useful life is a far better way to green our wardrobe than buying organic cottons if we replace those clothes as rapidly as we do.

Her critique of the local food movement is not quite so persuasive as she focuses primarily on the slight benefits of reducing "food miles" and ignores a number of other environmental benefits of local food production. Oddly, in that chapter, she describes the rapid depletion of the Ogallala aquifer, upon which the production of food in the American Midwest depends. It would seem that local food production would need to make use of the water that is available nearer to population centers on the East and West Coasts, thereby forcing agriculture to rely once again on surface water and not as much on non-renewable ground water.

As her general approach is to point out how our social and economic institutions are at the root of our environmental crises, it is curious that she does not mention the significant environmental damage that is done by our meat-eating culture. This is particularly true in that her recommended way forward is to consume less, reduce waste, and develop alternative institutions that are more environmentally friendly. Meat production requires a significantly greater input of energy and a significantly greater use of land than plant food production for the same nutritional value. Furthermore, a 2006 UN Food and Agriculture Organization report estimated that the ranching and slaughter of cows and other animals for meat is responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse gases and, of course, concentrated animal feeding operations (a.k.a. factory farms) have a profound impact on their environs due to the enormous and concentrated mass of manure they produce. There is likely nothing easier and more effective for reducing the negative impact one is having on the planet than simply becoming a vegetarian, or better yet, a vegan.

Pierre-Louis devotes three chapters to alternative, or "green" energy. Clean coal is an easy target, but Pierre-Louis's critique of biomass is a more valuable contribution to the discussion. Her examination of solar power is somewhat ambiguous. She criticizes impacts of constructing photovoltaic panels and their poor positioning by consumers, but solar power does not receive scathing criticism. The worst that is said of it is that it is likely to simply facilitate continued consumption of other resources and degradation of the land and water.

The last three chapters address "the way forward," which is, again, to reduce consumption. Pierre-Louis recognizes that our economic system is dependent upon ever increasing consumption and so the way forward will involve an entirely new economic model. Here, she recommends the "steady state economy" advanced by Herman Daly and others.

Among the more disappointing aspects of the book are its numerous typographical errors. The work appears not to have been proofread and instead, seems to have been prepared for publication by a spell check program. (Amory Lovins is, for example, noted as "Armory" Lovins.) The errors are -- in the big picture -- trivial, but it leads one to wonder how carefully done was the research that went into the work. As the research is based on a variety of kinds of sources (peer-reviewed scientific articles, government publications, N.G.O. reports, and popular news sources), one needs to look carefully at the support for the claims being made. Obvious errors in the bibliographic citations do not instill confidence.

Despite these criticisms of this particular work and its presentation, the thesis is eminently plausible and supremely important. Kendra Pierre-Louis has given us an honest attempt to make the case for adopting institutions that will support sustainable lifestyles. Very much of what she has given us makes perfect sense and she provides much material to raise questions about the effectiveness of green products. My hope is that she or someone like her will continue to publish works along the lines of Green Washed.

Nepal / Tessa Feller -- London: Kuperard; N.Y.: Distibuted by Random House Distributing Services, 2008

Nepal is a volume in the series Culture Smart!, "the essential guide to customs and culture." Most travel guide books tell you where to stay, where to eat, where to shop, what to see, and what to do. This one gives you some valuable tips on how to navigate the strange social world that you'll encounter: how to greet someone, when to stand, when to sit, what to wear, how to eat, how to address people, whom to tip, which hand to use, what to touch, what not to touch, etc. Most of all, it tells you what you might expect of native Nepalis.

If the volume on Nepal is at all representative of the series, anyone traveling to a destination covered by the series should pick up a relevant copy. It certainly won't prevent you from making a fool of yourself in every instance, but it is likely to head off more than one embarrassing incident.

Illustrated Atlas of the Himalaya / David Zurick and Julsun Pacheco -- Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 2006

The Illustrated Atlas of the Himalaya is a beautiful introduction to the Himalaya. Geographically, it covers everything between the Indus River and the Karakorum Mountains in the west to the Brahmaputra River in the east and from Tibetan plateau in the north to the Terai lowland in the south. It is divided into five chapters: the regional setting, the natural environment, society, resources and conservation, and exploration and travel. It contains maps, tables and charts, photographs, and text.

The pages are ten inches by thirteen inches and oriented in a landscape format. This allows large panoramic images of mountain vistas and other subjects. While the photographs are the work's strongest feature, it is not simply a coffee table picture book. The other features are also of high quality.

The maps are detailed and usually precisely drawn, though often smaller than they could be. In several cases, details are lost in the small scale. At the same time, there is also a great deal of white space on the pages. While this makes reading the work a pleasure, the white space could have been used to include more detail or at very least to enlarge some of the graphics.

The text generally is well-written and informative, but the authors have an unfortunate habit of making reference to places not shown on any of their maps. This is curious, since much information appears on the maps that is not referenced in the text. It is almost as though the text and maps are for two separate works. The atlas does contain a place index, listing longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates; so it is possible to look up a place, find its coordinates, and then refer to one of more of the maps to locate the place. This usually is more work than is desirable. I found myself skipping the effort or seeking out other maps and atlases to supplement the work. Greater coordination between the maps and the text would have greatly improved the usefulness of the atlas.

The geology of the region is complicated, making the section on the natural environment difficult, but a careful reading is rewarding. The section on society provides much typical demographic information, along with information about the transportation and communication systems, development issues, and governance. It is, however, a somewhat elementary treatment of the society. Importantly, the section on governance is now quite obsolete with the success of the Maoist insurgency. The section on resources and conservation describes the flora, fauna, minerals, and water resources. Curiously, nothing is said about the effects of climate change in the region. One would think that a work published in 2006 would take this into account, since by that time it was well understood that the Himalaya will be profoundly affected by a warming climate. (Just recently, Appa Sherpa, the man who has made it to the top of Mt. Everest more often than anyone, asserted that climbing Everest would soon be too dangerous due to melting ice and snow.) The final section on exploration and travel is a concise history of the expeditions into the mountains by outsiders. It provides enough information for an interested reader to seek out more detail in other works.

Imagine: How Creativity Works / Jonah Lehrer -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012

Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer is an entertaining, though, rudimentary introduction to the psychological and sociological dimensions of creativity. It leaves one with more questions than answers. Furthermore, the answers it provides are not especially Earth shaking and the questions it raises are largely due to a superficial treatment of the topic.

The most significant shortcoming is Lehrer's failure to give a clear definition of creativity. While he occasionally writes about artistic creativity, most of the book focuses on problem solving in the high-tech industry. This is perhaps unsurprising in that Lehrer is first of all a contributing editor at Wired magazine. Not only are his central cases of creativity peculiar, Lehrer gives us no sense of the scope of problem solving. Some problems stand out for us and require significant time and energy to solve. Others are routine and mundane. For example, how to open an unfamiliar cabinet door might count as a problem to be solved, but the solution might also reveal itself after only a moment's examination. To be fair, one could distinguish degrees of creativity that map to the difficulty of the problem, but complex problems could be broken down into numerous smaller problems. Any of these problems might also be more or less obvious depending upon the background knowledge of the person solving the problem. The point here, is that the concept of problem solving is not as simple as it appears in Lehrer's book. To make problem solving the central case of creativity without exploring these complexities provides us with only a superficial insight into creativity.

The specific claims about problem solving that Lehrer does make are few and sometimes contradictory. Certainly, Lehrer is not unaware of these contradictions, but he provides us with little help in understanding how we can resolve them. For example, his first substantive claim is that creativity (in solving a problem) often comes after one has focused on a problem long enough to conclude that it is unsolvable. Then, after taking one's mind off of the problem and relaxing, one is able to see the problem from a broader perspective and possibly connect seemingly unrelated facts or concepts in manner that provides the necessary insight.

In contrast to this, Lehrer also observes that problems are often solved by sheer, dogged concentration. Instead of a relaxing walk in the woods or taking a warm shower, the problem is solved by taking enough Benzedrine to keep one's mind fixed on the problem. All that a reader can conclude from this is that problems get solved in lots of different ways. This is by no means a surprising revelation.

The more interesting portion of his work comes when he discusses the social context of problem solving. Lehrer observes that many problems are solved by "outsiders," i.e., people who are not steeped in the paradigms of the field that contains the problem. They are sometimes capable of pursuing solutions that an insider would discount as implausible from the start. He also observes that difficult problems are more likely to be solved when numerous people with different backgrounds collaborate in seeking a solution. One is reminded of the commonplace maxim, "two heads are better than one."

Again, Lehrer's observations about society and creativity are not terribly enlightening; however, the final chapter begins to make a bit more of the social elements of creativity. Lehrer points out that different times in history, social circumstances have fostered creativity. His chief example is Elizabethan England. According to Lehrer, the liberal attitude toward theatre productions and the availability of written material in 16th and 17th century England made possible a flowering of excellent dramatic productions, including the work of William Shakespeare. According to Lehrer, Shakespeare's success was in large part due to favorable social conditions, though his genius certainly made him stand out from the numerous other talented playwrights of his time.

This emphasis on the social climate for creativity does not, however, reach far enough. Lehrer overlooks (or at least understates) the role that resources play in problem solving. According to Lehrer, venture capital funding "is widely regarded as one of the best measures of innovation; money chases good ideas." While it may be true that venture capitalists constantly are seeking to invest in good ideas, a more likely relationship is that venture capital, along with a lot of unanticipated and coincidental factors make an idea successful. Without these external circumstances, good ideas are apt to come to nothing. We have no way of tracking all those extremely creative, but unlucky ideas. While so many other factors are involved in the success of an idea, one cannot use success alone as a defining characteristic of a good idea. Because Lehrer overlooks these factors, his book tends to reinforce the cult of the entrepreneur.

Among the best aspects of the Imagine is Lehrer's effort to ground his claims about creativity and problem solving on scientific research. Unfortunately, he does not always provide complete citations for these references. While one could track down some of the original research, it would be difficult to get to all of it. This forces the reader to simply accept Lehrer's judgements about the quality and representativeness of much of the research on which he draws.

All in all Imagine is an easy and often entertaining work, aimed at a popular audience, but for anyone genuinely interested in creativity, it's not a good use of time.

Butterflies Worth Knowing / Clarence M. Weed -- Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, and Co., 1925

Not having any significant knowledge of butterflies, it is difficult for me to know how reliable Butterflies Worth Knowing is. First of all, much has changed since it was copyrighted in 1917 and published in 1925. Large swaths of butterfly habitat have been destroyed, migration routes are different, and climate conditions are changing. Nonetheless, much in the work is in all likelihood quite reliable.

The introduction to Butterflies Worth Knowing describes the behaviors, life histories, and attributes common to most all butterflies and provides a little advice on photographing and collecting butterflies. It then provides entries for scores of butterfly families, tribes, and individual species found in North America. Accounts of the discernable features of the butterflies are likely still reliable. The descriptions of their life histories, though, may be less so. The author, Clarence Weed, frequently acknowledges that there are gaps in the current understanding of one or another species. Indeed, he ocassionally suggests a fertile research topic for young entomologists. His very caution makes one wonder if there also might not be mistakes in his settled understanding, particularly as the growth of our knowledge of the natural world has changed significantly since Butterflies Worth Knowing was written.

Regardless of these doubts, reading the work cover to cover (as opposed to using it as a reference book) likely leaves the lay reader with a better impression of North American butterflies generally. Unfortunately, reading it cover to cover subjects the reader to a repetition of details describing slightly varying species, making it a bit mind numbing. The best use of Butterflies Worth Knowing would be to consult it in conjuction with a recently published reference work on butterflies to see just how our understanding has changed.

Planning for Uncertainty: Living Wills and Other Advance Directives... / David John Doukas and William Reichel -- Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2007

Medical science has reached a stage of development in which the ability to keep a person's body alive well outstrips its ability to maintain worthwhile cognitive functions. Consequently, irreversible comas, persistent vegetative states, and extended periods of unconsciousness during the final stages of an illness are increasingly common. This raises troubling questions for families and doctors regarding what sort of treatment is appropriate in such cases. In response, living wills, durable powers of attorney, and other advance directives have become increasingly popular. Still only a small percent of people draw up such instruments. Planning for Uncertainty: Living Wills and Other Advance Directives\ by Doukas and Riechel provides a useful guide to thinking about these critical situations and offers practical advice on drawing up an advance directive.

The work provides some background for the legal development of advance medical directives, but it's real strength is providing the reader with the opportunity to think carefully and systematically about issues that they might otherwise consider in a jumbled and confused way. However, when all is said and done, it seems that the purpose of most advance directives is to provide assurance to the doctors and family members of an unconscious patient that withholding or withdrawing treatment is a morally acceptable path. In some cases, it can also bind a family to withhold or withdraw treatment or establish obstacles to such a course.

There are numerous books of this sort in print. One may be as good as another. Anyone seeking to draw up an advance directive would be well advised to investigate the state laws that regulate such documents.

The Happiness Project / Gretchen Rubin -- N.Y.: Harper, 2009

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin is the sort of light reading that you'll find in popular, daily blogs. It fits into the gimmicky genera of "The Year of... books" (the year of eating locally, the year of living Biblically, the year of cooking Julia Child recipes, etc...). Rubin's year consisted in making a "project" of being happier. Rubin chose this project on the belief that being happy is often thought to be the most important goal in life and while she felt she already was happy, becoming happier would not be a bad goal.

Her project divided into committing herself to twelve resolutions, one of which she concentrated on each month of the year. Actually, her twelfth resolution was to fulfill all her previous eleven resolution at once. My initial reaction to the project was somewhat negative: turning being happy into a project seemed rather artificial to me, but there were enough thoughtful passages early in the book to make me think that the book would eventually offer something worthwhile. Furthermore, Rubin anticipated nearly every facile criticism of the book that crossed my mind. She dispensed with them in a rather charming and disarming way, writing something along lines of, "O.K., but if I'm going to be happy, I've got to be myself, so I'm going to do this anyway." Fair enough.

The most serious objection to her work is the superficiality of her concept of happiness. Despite claiming to have read Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, and the Dalai Lama (or some other treatment(s) of Buddhism), her notion of happiness is by and large the temporary psychological state that has its epitome in euphoria. Contrast this with, in particular, Aristotle's concept of happiness (or eudaimonia) which goes well beyond euphoria to involve living a good life. If Rubin truly wants to follow the path recommended by philosophers through the ages, then the happiness that she ought to seek should reach beyond her first-person perceptions of her own emotional state. Certainly, pleasant experiences are likely to be a component of happiness, or a good life, but Rubin seems to think that the highest good is built on these experiences. To be fair, she occasionally recognizes that happiness contains components that are other than euphoria, but the bulk of her book is a compendium of tips on on boosting one's mood. One wonders if Prozac, Paxil, or Ecstacy might be an easier and more effective approach.

Despite this criticism, her mood-enhancing tips are frequently worthwhile and given the success of her blog, they appear to resonate with many blog-readers; some of whom claim to be following her explicit advice and engaging in "happiness projects" of their own. One should not diminish the importance of maintaining a happy state of mind nor deny that it can be cultivated. Rubin reports that her project was successful, and if it leads others to enhance their own happiness, it is all to the good. The danger is that it will feed narcissistic and ego-centric tendencies that are a significant obstacle to the general happiness.

The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Madhyamika System / T.R.V. Murti -- London: George Allen and Unwin, 1955

The Four Noble Truths often stand out as the central ideas of Buddhism among Western Buddhists and perhaps rightly so. The recognition of the fact of suffering, the cause of suffering, the elimination of suffering, and the practical method for doing so is critical to any understanding of Buddhism. All schools of Buddhism accept these truths. After the Four Noble Truths, the concept of the bodhisattva is perhaps the second most significant Buddhist concept. It is among the advances over primitive Buddhism that the Mahayana school generated. Embracing these ideas is likely to place one squarely on the path of the Buddha, refine one's spirituality, and enhance the quality of one's life. The history of Buddhism, however, offers more subtle concepts than these which can lead one still deeper into the enlightenment that Buddhism offers. Chief among these, according to T.R.V. Murti, is the concept of sunyata, or what some have translated as "emptiness," which he admirably explicates in his masterful work, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism.

The work is divided into three parts: the origin and development of the Madhyamaka philosophy, an exposition of the philosophy itself, and a comparison of it to other systems, especially Western philosophical systems. This is not a book for beginners. To appreciate the work, one should already have a good background in the Madhyamaka tradition, but also the Theravada, Sarvastivada, and Yogacara Buddhist traditions and the Hindu Advaita Vedanta.

The "central philosophy" that Murti identifies is a philosophical "dialectic" advanced by the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna which results in the recognition that absolute reality is sunyata or emptiness. The Madhyamika first of all accepts that there is a division between the world of ordinary experience and absolute reality. This sets it apart from the early Buddhism of the Theravada and Sarvastivada schools, which asserted the reality of the dharmas, i.e., elemental or atomic units of existence which were infinitesimally extended in time and space. Early Buddhism rejected the ultimate reality of composite objects, including the self. Indeed, on this view all things lack substance or permanent identical reality. Consequently, early Buddhism did not maintain an absolutist metaphysic.

In contrast, the Madhyamaka view accepts that there is an absolute reality beyond the ordinary empirical realm composed of the early Buddhist dharmas, but it rejects any suggestion that our reason can bring us to understand this reality. This sets Madhyamaka Buddhism apart from two other absolutist philosophies, the Yogacara's Vijnanavada or Consciousness Only philosophy, and the Upanishadic Advaita Vedanta philosophy which posits the absolute as Brahman and equates it with Atman, making the absolute a kind of universal soul.

According to Murti, all three of these non-Madhyamaka philosophies are speculative metaphysics which the Madhyamaka school rejected through its dialectical critique.  Madhyamaka Buddhsim exposed contradictions within each of systems and furthermore claimed that any metaphysical doctrine would fall apart under similar careful examination. However, instead of becoming nihilistic, the Madhyamaka philosophers merely concluded that reason was simply incapable of grasping the absolute and that instead, it must be immediately intuited in a non-discursive way.

One of the most informative observations in Murti's work is his comparison of the Madhyamaka philosophy to the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The contradictions uncovered in the Madhyamaka dialectic function much in the way the Kant's antinomies function in the Critique of Pure Reason. For Kant, the antinomies show that reason cannot reveal the true nature of the noumenal world (the absolute). Instead, we can merely know that our understanding of the world is shaped by the nature of our reason -- by the forms of intuition and the categories of understanding that are the standard operating equipment for how we construct the empirical world. According to Murti, the Madhyamika and Kant differ in that "Kant's Transcendental dialectic is directed against speculative metaphysics...not because he did not believe in the reality of God, Freedom and Immortality of the Soul, but because he wanted to make them safe from the unwarranted ascriptions of pure Reason. The difference between the two...is that Kant seeks to realise these noumenal realities in a non-intellectual mode -- Faith and practical Reason; the Madhyamika does it in Intellectual Intuition -- Prajnaparamita."

As profound as Murti's work is, I am left wondering whether the dialectic of the Madhyamaka philosophy, insofar as it is based on The Large Sutra of Perfect Wisdom, is not more like Kant's critical philosophy than he suggests. Where Kant resorts to practical reason to arrive at his absolute (the three transcendental ideas: God, freedom, and the immortal soul), The Large Sutra of Perfect Wisdom employs "skill in means" to perfect wisdom and reach the "Intellectual Intuition" of the absolute. Skill in means seems nothing if not practical reason unconsciously performed.

Regardless of this criticism, Murti's work is among the finest treatments of Buddhist epistemology and metaphysics ever written. Anyone seeking a good understanding of Buddhism would be well-advised to procure a copy and, while reading it, search out whatever other works might fill in the gaps of one's understanding.