Book Reviews

Daniel Heller-Roazen
The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation
Zone Books, 2007, 300 pp. $33.00/£19.95 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781890951764
Reviewed by Clare McNiven
‘Living’, Aristotle explains, ‘is said in many ways’.1 The word has a
range of meanings. Life can be said to belong to living things through
the principle of nutrition, but animals can be regarded as living
through the principle of sensation. In Hoffman’s lyrical nineteenth-
century novel, Lebensansichten des Katers Murr (the autobiography
of cat Murr), the feline narrator is poised in empty night. He is driven
by hunger and he feels life. There are few more efficient examples of
grass roots stoicism than when Murr writes ‘cannot possibly resist … I
ate the herring!’.2 It is with a natural stealth, appropriate to his species,
that our articulate tomcat finds his way into the preface of Daniel
Heller-Roazen’s latest book. In The Inner Touch Heller-Roazen
grapples with the ‘I’ who ‘ate the herring’ and exposes it to a compre-
hensive measure of philosophical scrutiny. From Aristotle’s doctrine
of the animal soul to Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment, he chooses to
select and present only the very best, most influential, thinking on the
nature of life as experienced through the senses. Never one to forget
that his audience are themselves sentient, Heller-Roazen attends to
each thesis, fusing literary talent with poetic philosophy, to form
images that seem to infiltrate the senses as well as the intellect.
In De Anima, Aristotle broods over three weaknesses in the account
of the role and nature of senses. If we have only the five senses, he
wonders, how do we account for notions of rest, figure, magnitude,
number and unity? Moreover, how do we account for those moments
when we manage complex sensations — seemingly at once able to

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15, No. 2, 2008, pp. 120–28

 BOOK REVIEWS 121

identify, for example, that a thing is bright and also sweet? And
finally, recognising that the individual sense cannot acknowledge its
own absence, to what can we attribute the sense that we are sensing
anything in the first place? The great philosopher conceives a unity in
the soul by which it senses everything. Reigning as the dominant
sense organ, ‘for the most part simultaneous with touch’, this rudi-
mentary consciousness need not be clever but has to be perceptive;
it need not be consistent but must be continuous. With a few master
brush strokes, it is presented, not only as the solution to all three
problems but the very key to animal life. The Stagirite (Aristotle) thus
embedded the notion of a master sense with its many connotations into
the philosophic psyche. Like a gentle archeologist, Heller-Roazen,
traces this invented notion through the convoluted history of philoso-
phy, recording its influences and its mutations. It is from the evolving
concept of this master sense, this named and unnamed king, this com-
mon sense, this inner touch, that the book takes its title.
In the twilight of the sixteenth century, Tommaso Campanella
labels all perception as a tactile act. To sense, he argues, is to be
affected and to discern that we have undergone change. Coming in
contact with a source of heat, for example, the perceiving body is
warmed: ‘transmuted in part, and not entirely’.3 There is perception
and mutation everywhere, in plants as they turn towards the sun, in
water as it flows, in a man bitten by a rabid dog or by a tiny flea, in the
heart and in the pulse beat. ‘It is necessary to state’, he persists, ‘that
the world is an extremely sensitive animal’.4 Heller-Roazen reveals
the beautiful layers of this living thing. On every page he writes of
animals and authors, of mice and men: Al Farabi, Avicenna and
Albertus; Leibniz and Locke; Cabanis and Chrysippus. The pinna
guard crab making its home inside the pinnas shell, acting as sentinel;
the dog sniffing at the fork in the road, hoping to find its master;
hedgehogs, whales and moles. The mongrel, struck on the head with a
stick, illustrates the continuum of perpetual perception; Rousseau,
stunned by encountering a great dane in the park, perceives every-
thing filled with his light existence; perceives but cannot perceive
himself.
As the book draws to a close, the Princeton professor turns his per-
ceptive eye on the deepest stratum of the ‘inner touch’ as it encom-
passes the perception by which we perceive ourselves: the sense of the
co-existence of us and our bodies. He investigates, with elegant psy-
chological, and medical reference, the impact of loss and disturbance
of this faculty: what it means for a young woman to sense that she does
not exist or for a veteran to feel an itch in an amputated limb.
122 BOOK REVIEWS

Daniel Heller-Roazen’s humanity and engaging modesty illumines

every chapter of his book but, fluent in several languages, his excep-
tional erudition is no less apparent. ‘Those whose touch is delicate’,
writes Thomas Aquinas in his comment on Aristotle’s classic treatise,
‘are so much the nobler in nature and the more intelligent’.5 This
finely crafted book, his third, bears the hallmarks of a subtle imagina-
tion, discreet wisdom and an extremely sensitive touch.
References
(Taken from The Inner Touch)
1. Aristotle, De somno et vigilia 2.455a12-21
2. Hoffman, Lebensansichten des Katers Murr, pp. 51 and 56
3. Campanella, Epilogo mango, p. 367
4. Campanella, Metafisica bk. 6 ch. 7
5. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima sec 483

Ruth Richards (Ed.)

Everyday Creativity and New Views of Human Nature
American Psychological Association, Washington DC, 2007,
349+xiii pp. ISBN: 9780979212574

Richard Elfin Jones

Music and the Numinous
Rodopi, New York, 2007, 122 pp.
ISBN: 9789042022898; ISSN: 1573-2193
Reviewed by Jo Edwards
Everyday Creativity makes interesting reading, but for me largely
because its approach seems so flawed that I have to ask why trends in
thought go so badly wrong. The issues addressed are important and
there is legitimacy to criticisms made in the book of conventional,
biological, even ‘masculine’, thinking; in some ways I strongly sym-
pathise. Nevertheless, the approach seems naïve: little more than
wishful thinking. The project involves a certain amount of self-con-
tradiction too, for I found little original and meaningful here, which is
how the authors define creativity. Moreover, writing a recipe for more
originality seems inherently problematic.
What I do find are questions. Why is insight into how we view our-
selves and our world currently at a low ebb, compared to some post-
enlightenment thinking? Why is there so much division and shifting
fashion? Why so many reinventions of wheels? Some of the contribu-
tors claim that we enjoy a new enlightened period of ‘integrated’
thought. I sense more of a muddled magpie’s nest here.
 BOOK REVIEWS 123

The volume comprises thirteen essays, opened and closed by Ruth

Richards. Many of the authors clearly work with Richards and share
her viewpoint. Some topics are quirky, for example ‘teletherapy’
(watching telly to feel better), or why three people started painting
when they were ill. The central thesis is that ‘creativity’ is a feature of
everyone’s daily life. It is defined as anything with originality/novelty
and either meaning or fitness for purpose; or, later, as any decision, or
indeed any cause of change by a ‘self’. With a definition this open, the
thesis becomes such a platitude that one assumes it reflects some
socio-political agenda. Reading through, that agenda becomes clear,
especially in the essay by Riane Eisler. The call is to reject the cold
‘biological’ paradigm and to reclaim a place for things like love and
creativity, noting that these are often considered feminine concerns.
Switching to a theory of mankind based on creativity will solve the
world’s problems.
Yes, love and creativity deserve to be back on the agenda. However,
as a (?creative) male maverick, capable of enthralment by both Maria
Callas and Pablo Casals, I cannot see that this need have anything to
do with gender (which is what Eisler implies), being human, or even
mammalian. The most apparently devoted caring beings are asexual
insects. All adaptive behaviour was once novel. The way to restore a
place for love and creativity is to find how they can be made to fit in
with the reliable, testable ideas we already have (i.e. science) not to
lapse into unfettered intuition.
What is so disappointing is that Everyday Creativity is mostly full
of polemic and buzz-words in the absence of anything more substan-
tial. Page after page announces a new vision based on systems theory,
chaos theory, quantum theory or fractals, with no illustration (beyond
the self-evident) of how these theories might actually help. Arguably,
the Origin of Species, too, is mostly polemic, with little firm data. But
Darwin’s book did contain a hugely creative idea: natural selection
will occur by default and provides a firm basis on which to account for
somatic evolution. In contrast Richards’s volume confuses genetic
and behavioural evolution and gives us nothing new.
But it is not unreasonable for people to want to write books like this.
Some neurobiologists have indeed appeared to deny love and creativ-
ity, their message being that there is only ion flux and neurotransmitter
diffusion. And that’s bunkum because love does exist. The problem
may, I think, lie in the fact that people generally do not realise that
science requires and uses two accounts of the world. One relates to
actualities, which boil down to experiences. The other relates to what
we tend to call processes: the unfolding of rules governing the
124 BOOK REVIEWS

occurrence of actualities. What few, other than physicists, realise is

that the process account is not a progression of actuality, but some-
thing quite different, a progression of potentiality, which cannot ulti-
mately be described in the same language as actuality. We need two
complementary ways of describing one world. Since 1925 this has
been explicit in physics but is not new. In fact it is implicit in Zeno’s
paradox. We all know that processes are never red, but tend to forget
that the same principle applies to all actualities: spaciousness, dura-
tion, movement — the lot. Most of the time we can fudge things. For
really interesting questions, however, we come unstuck.
Words like love and creativity conflate these two descriptions. This
conflation is rife in the social sciences, but also, if in different ways, in
biomedical science. ‘Loving’ is an actuality, but is also used to imply
certain processes. The actuality has no meaning in the language of
processes and vice versa, even if everyday language seems to allow it.
Creativity might seem to deal with processes, but it subtly requires a
concept with meaning only as an actuality: that of agent or self
(strangely allowed in chapter 9 to ‘extend beyond the individual
person’). These are close to the sense of free will or purpose. Such
ideas have no meaning in terms of what we know of processes — they
are useless for describing the progression of the potentialities that
determine the world’s events.
This might seem a bleak analysis, with love and agency having no
place in the way the world moves forward. But that is not quite the
message. Love and creativity as actualities must be associated in some
way with the progression of certain potentialities: with the laws of
physics. It is just that the association does not need to involve a direct
functional correspondence that reflects our sense of the causal roles of
these ideas. The sense of being creative goes with certain internal pro-
cesses, but how and why it does so is not something we can grasp by
intuition. It needs long, hard scientific study.
And conceivably, although love, purpose, and agency have no
recognisable place in classical physics, they might just relate to
aspects of modern physics, in which traditional concepts of space,
time and causality break down. Aspects like telicity and ‘desire’ might
even have a place. However, it remains doubtful that a sense of agency
relates to the local existence in the brain of a valid example of that
concept, any more than a sense of red is associated with redness in the
brain.
The crux is that love and creativity are not extra sources of causality
supplementary to biophysics; they are simply complementary descrip-
tions of the same world that science’s rules of potentiality describe
 BOOK REVIEWS 125

another way. You cannot replace survival of the fittest with a sense of
creative agency. The words belong to different accounts. The pro-
cesses associated with the actualities of these ideas are already part of
Darwin’s theory. We cannot ‘choose’ to escape destiny by ‘being
creative’.
***
In contrast to Everyday Creativity, Richard Elfin Jones’s Music and
the Numinous tries to meet process and actuality head on, drawing on
their most famous modern commentator: Alfred North Whitehead.
Moreover, there is considerable charm to this personal essay on the
transcendental nature of music. I think many people will find it
entertaining.
What I am less sure about is whether Jones’s analysis breaks
through the main problem with Whitehead’s approach: how to make it
a usable tool rather than just an elegant viewpoint. Jones’s working
example of a Bach prelude seems to take the right track. He illustrates
how musical actuality ‘prehends’ the raw physical aspect of the
sounds, abstract relations that shape the music and a higher aesthetic,
and for Jones, numinous, aspect beyond conception. But the relation
between the processes of vibrations and the actuality of harmony is
glossed over. In a sense Bach gives only a formula for a finger-based
process. Yet the process gives us a musical actuality, and for those
lucky enough to read scores the music comes straight from the page
with no vibrations! To be truly productive a theory of music has some-
how to tackle these mysteries. I fear that in some ways, like Richards’s
volume, Jones’s is a romantic approach to an important problem that
does not quite get to grips with practicalities.
I am reminded of Jonathan Miller (the ex-neurologist and success-
ful stage director) rebuking his host at a medical dinner for implying
that artistic activities like directing operas were just what doctors were
rather good at in their spare time. Miller pointed out, as I remember,
that directing operas, like being a neurologist, consists mostly of hard
slog, detail, and knowing when you got it right and when you did not.
The goal of linking the actualities of our experience to the processes
that underpin our lives, which both these volumes try to address, is a
worthy and fascinating one. However, I suspect it needs a more pains-
taking approach, with detailed support from both biophysics and
metaphysics.
But I would not want to appear wholly negative. At least these con-
tributions address issues that some others are too blinkered to touch. If
126 BOOK REVIEWS

the different sorts of description of the world were to be clearly sepa-

rated, progress of the sort adumbrated in these books could be made.

Stephen E. Braude
The Gold Leaf Lady and other parapsychological investigations
The University of Chicago Press, 2007, 202 pp.
ISBN: 9780226071527
Reviewed by Chris Nunn
You might well ask why your review editor should have written about
this lady. I’m no expert on parapsychology and knew of Stephen
Braude only as author of a book on multiple personality (First Person
Plural) that I had admired for its good sense. I originally approached
two parapsychologists about reviewing this new work. The first had
already been nabbed by another journal; the second didn’t reply to my
emails. I got fed up with composing begging letters. Meanwhile the
publishers had sent us another copy. Maybe this was a synchronistic
hint that I should read it myself — anyway it looked intriguing.
Before offering no doubt naive views on the book, I should perhaps
describe my own ‘psi’ preconceptions — given that opinion on the
subject is so often polarised. The statistical evidence that weak ‘psi’
effects occur is now stronger than the rather similarly based evidence
that antidepressant drugs, for instance, can cure depression. Since I
often prescribed antidepressants, believing in their efficacy, it would
be dishonest to deny the probable reality of ‘psi’. Of course it is often
claimed that there is a vital difference of principle in that people can
explain, they say, how antidepressants work, whereas no-one has a
clue how ‘psi’ could occur. But it’s worth remembering that, after 40
years of research, stories about precisely how antidepressants cure
still involve a lot of hand-waving. Despite my basically pro-psi
stance, however, the aura of tackiness and self-deception that sur-
rounds the whole field had put me off taking any great interest in it.
Stephen Braude, on the other hand, has never been so pusillani-
mous. He has been an active ‘psi’ researcher for many years, often, so
he tells us, enduring opprobrium from academic colleagues (he’s a
philosophy professor) in consequence. This book is not about statis-
tics; he goes for the big effects, arguing that they actually provide
better evidence for the reality of ‘psi’ than endless card guessing pro-
tocols, or whatever. And he’s surely right about this. The old aphorism
is true that, if a drug is really effective, elaborate statistics are not
needed for proof. Similarly, one incontrovertible example of large
 BOOK REVIEWS 127

scale psychokinesis, for instance, should be enough to establish the

reality of ‘psi’. So he gives us a selection of case histories, which are
of two sorts: some describe putative examples of ‘psi’, mainly
psychokinesis; others detail shenanigans that some psi enthusiasts and
debunkers have got up to. The debunkers come across as the more
dishonest and hypocritical from these accounts, for their misrepresen-
tations are generally cloaked in a mask of virtue.
The eponymous Gold Leaf Lady (‘Katie’) is a hick from the sticks,
now in her fifties; almost illiterate because she had to drop out of
school to look after her Mother who had developed a ‘psychogenic
paralysis’. It’s a sadly common type of story. But then, after marrying
her second husband and moving to Florida, Katie displayed rare tal-
ents. The most unusual was to apparently exude flecks of brass foil
(they have been collected and analysed) from her skin; she also
showed a range of clairvoyant talents, plus an alleged ability to write
quatrains in archaic French in the style of Nostradamus. Braude thinks
the ‘gold’ leaf provides the best evidence of ‘psi’ since deception
seems to have been fairly convincingly ruled out, while magicians,
when consulted, said they doubted they could replicate the phenome-
non. He suggests it should be regarded as an example of psychokinetic
‘apportation’, rather than some ectoplasm-like phenomenon.
Another description is of Ted Serios, the ex-elevator operator who
could cause images to appear on polaroid film and who was investi-
gated rigorously by a number of people including Braude. This case
appears fraud-proof and is also remarkable for the widely trumpeted
claim that psi debunker and CSICOP stalwart The Amazing Randi had
‘easily’ duplicated Serios’ images — a claim that was repeated by
Martin Gardner among others. In fact, says Braude, Randi always
ducked out of trying to produce images in the tightly controlled set-
tings used in the Serios investigations. The one time he did try, under
looser conditions during a television show, he failed.
And that’s basically it, evidence wise. Not all that much to show,
one may think, for nearly a lifetime in the field. ‘Big psi’ seems
almost, but not quite, as elusive as Bigfoot. Apart from the final chap-
ter, the remaining case histories describe historical examples (Braude
thinks that D.D. Home and Eusapia Palladino produced ‘genuine’
phenomena, though Palladino was also at times fraudulent), or exam-
ples of relatively recent fraud and/or self deception, along with their
associated tantrums and hissy fits. There are also some thoughts on
confusions surrounding the concept of synchronicity and the difficul-
ties of ‘psi’ research.
128 BOOK REVIEWS

The final chapter is mainly about the current Mrs Braude, an astrol-
oger. She has developed her own methods, dependent on exactly
calculating to within a minute or so relevant ‘times of birth’, which
enable her to make remarkably accurate forecasts, especially sporting
ones. At least the Braudes have put their money where their mouth is
and placed bets (allegedly with good resultant profit) on the basis of
her forecasts. But the astrological claim did rather exceed my personal
boggle threshold. After all, apart from anything else, births are usually
quite prolonged and messy affairs so what could a ‘precise’ time of
birth possibly mean? Braude himself wonders whether his wife may
not be using astrological paraphernalia to focus an unconscious talent
for clairvoyance.
I enjoyed the book for its fascinating anecdotes and discussion of
issues that they raise, though I’m not sure that it has strengthened my
belief in the reality of ‘psi’. One would probably need to personally
encounter and test a Gold Leaf Lady for that to occur. It can certainly
be recommended, however, to anyone thinking about entering the
‘psi’ arena, for it gives a clear impression of the heat to be found in that
particular kitchen. One has to admire Braude for having endured it so
long with no apparent impairment of his enthusiasm or integrity.

BOOKS RECEIVED
Mention here neither implies nor precludes subsequent review
Casey, Edward S., The World at a Glance (Indiana University Press 2007)
Hadreas, Peter, A Phenomenology of Love and Hate (Ashgate 2007)
Haggard, P., Rossetti, Y. and Kawato, M. (ed.), Sensorimotor Foundations of
Higher Cognition (OUP 2007)
Kelly, Edward F., Kelly, Emily Williams, et al., Irreducible Mind: Toward a
Psychology for the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield 2007)
Martin, C.B., The Mind in Nature (OUP 2007)
O’Callaghan, Casey, Sounds: A Philosophical Theory (OUP 2007)
Powers, John, Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, rev. ed. (Snow Lion 1995/
2007)