Product Description

A personal adventure, a fascinating study of anthropology and ethnopharmacology, and, most important, a revolutionary look at how intelligence and consciousness come into being.

This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences," leads the reader through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind to the heart of knowledge.

In a first-person narrative of scientific discovery that opens new perspectives on biology, anthropology, and the limits of rationalism, The Cosmic Serpent reveals how startlingly different the world around us appears when we open our minds to it.

"The Cosmic Serpent is a spellbinding, scholarly tour de force that may presage a major paradigm shift in the Western view of reality." --Michael Harner, Ph.D., president, Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and author of The Way of the Shaman

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34981 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Anthropologist Narby's very personal account of his encounters with Amazonian shamanism and his passionately researched syntheses of anthropological, biochemical, neurological and mythological scholarship fascinate but do not convince. His defense of the rights of indigenous peoples against usurpation by capitalist, technological countries is admirable; his methodology is not. Throughout, Narby appears to mistake enthusiasm for evidence and he takes similarities of form (e.g., any helical pattern, hexagon or snakelike figure) to be proof of identity or of casual connection: that the serpent of shamanic lore is DNA. Of his assertion that the Amazonians' specific knowledge of pharmacology derives from hallucinogenic trance (and not from some other more diffuse source), he undertakes no experimental test, offering the typical complaints that the "presuppositions" of science are too narrow to permit the test. Narby does well to question the assumptions of scientists who dismiss all teleology in favor of mechanistic interpretations that are often deeply inadequate, and he does well to inquire into the meaning of the vast commonality of forms between science and world mythologies, but his answers too often come off as groundless invention. He provides an intriguing detective story, wondrous visions and a wealth of fascinating information on genetic science, shamanism, etc., and he also offers some valuable thoughts on the parochial smallness of official science, but, overall, his book's greatest value, perhaps, is as a case study in the excesses of scholarship gone astray.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Customer Reviews

Poorly written, tedious.
I'm surprised that no one before me has mentioned how poorly written this book is. It sounds like it was written by an eighth grader with no imagination. For somone who is discussing hallucinations, he would have done well to have been more colorul in his writing. It reads like a technical brochure. Half the things he talks about are of no consequence to the point he's trying to make.

6th Sense?
I found the book to be well researched with over 90 pages of notes, indexes, and bibliography to support the 162 pages of the author's perspective and one possibility of how all life is interconnected. Myth or truth? Not easily answered because I don't think one could ever know now that most every inch of the planet has been explored and the primitive cultures "found" have been affected in too many ways. What impressed upon me most was that there is something profound that we can learn from studying and understanding these ancient ways. An interesting read.

Modern Mythology
Apparently countless civilizations have recognized the serpent or other double-helix like shapes as of primal importance, and consumption of hallucogenic drugs induces similar visions. Narby has taken this information and declared that humans are, and always have been, somehow aware of the DNA that underlies our existence. He also believes that DNA has intentions, can communicate with us, and it not of this world (he does not believe in natural selection, etc). As a geneticist with an interest in neurobiology and consciousness myself, I am aware that he has butchered much of the science he presents (for example, claiming that the circularity of natural selection makes it untestable). However he writes well, and I enjoyed reading about the anthropology (which appears well documented to my admittedly inexpert eye) that led him to derive this new mythology. I certainly don't agree with his conclusions, but I appreciate his intellectual creativity and sense of discovery.