An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism

Fritjof Capra (born 1939) is an Austrian-born American physicist, who is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy and is on the faculty of Schumacher College. He is also the author of The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture,Uncommon Wisdom,The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, and The Hidden Connections: Integrating The Biological, Cognitive, And Social Dimensions Of Life Into A Science Of Sustainability.

Subtitled "An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism," Capra wrote in the Preface to this 1975 book, "Five years ago, I had a beautiful experience which set me on a road that has led to the writing of this book. I was sitting by the ocean one late summer afternoon, watching the waves rolling in and feeling the rhythm of my breathing, when I suddenly became aware of my whole environment as being engaged in a gigantic cosmic dance..." He later admits that "In the beginning I was helped on my way by 'power plants' which showed me how the mind can flow freely..."

He writes in the first chapter, "The purpose of this book is to explore this relationship between the concepts of modern physics and the basic ideas in the philosophical and religious traditions of the Far East. We shall see how the two foundations of twentieth-century physics---quantum theory and relativity theory---both force us to see the world very much in the way that a Hindu, Buddhist or Taoist sees it, and how this similarity strengthens when we look at the recent attempts to combine these two theories in order to describe the phenomena of the submicroscopic world..."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"The particle world cannot be decomposed into elementary components." (Pg. 81)
"Quantum theory thus reveals an essential interconnectedness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units." (Pg. 137)
"The relativity of time also forces us to abandon the Newtonian concept of an absolute space... there is no absolute space independent of the observer." (Pg. 166)
"The distinction between matter and empty space finally had to be abandoned when it became evident that virtual particles can come into being spontaneously out of the void, and vanish again into the void..." (Pg. 222)
"The whole universe is thus engaged in endless motion and activity; in a continual cosmic dance of energy." (Pg. 225)
"...the theories of atomic and subatomic physics made the existence of elementary particles increasingly unlikely. They revealed a basic interconnection of matter, showing that energy of motion can be transformed into mass, and suggesting that particles are processes rather than objects." (Pg. 285)

If one approaches this work with a preconceived determination to find in it mysticism and spirituality, or conversely, to adopt it for misguided religious reasons, they may be offended or disappointed. Certainly there is much righteous offense offered under the guise of science in many of the reviews. Neither approach fits my understanding. I saw Capra as trying to harmonize the rationality of the West with the empiricism of the East. Beginning with equating the unknowable essence preceding the big bang theory of the West with the unknowable essence of the Tao, he then extends the comparison of Aristotle's concept of the Golden Mean with the concept of ying/yang. Taoism proposes not rationality and second hand explanations of Western science, but direct experience as the keystone of living. That Capra's science may in fact be dated is hardly the point. That there is a balance of nature found in both systems is his thesis. The West is uncomfortable with nature as such and has generally treated it as a an external mechanism that has been constructed and therefore can (and should) be deconstructed like any machine. Taoism sees nature as an organic whole grown, not assembled. Western science seems to increasingly concur the latter view.

The Tao of Physics: An exploration of the parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism, by Fritjof Capra, Wildwood House, UK, 1975; Fontana, 1983, 384 ff.

Fritjof Capra is a physicist who was teaching at University of California at Berkeley when this book was written. He is now Director of the Center for Ecoliteracy there and a visiting lecturer at the Schumacher College in England. This was his first book and it was one of the first to open up the New Age philosophy. It challenges the conventional wisdom of both materialist science and western religion by demonstrating striking parallels between ancient mystical traditions that are practiced in the East and the discoveries of 20th century quantum physics. The congruence between Buddhism and quantum physics has also been pointed out by His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama in The Universe in a Single Atom and elsewhere.

In this book, Capra first introduces us to some of the strange ideas of quantum physics: that fundamental particles of the atom are more energy than matter; that there is constant exchange between the two kinds of properties; that atomic particles interact through intervals of time and space.

The second section of the book takes us through Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Zen, emphasizing their holistic, monistic world view - that everything is connected and interacts with everything else: just like the atomic particles Capra's been describing in the earlier section.

In the third and final section Capra draws together ideas from these separate worlds of science and religion. When we are confronted with fundamentalist western religion, this eastern mystical philosophy has so much to tell us, especially when it resonates with rather than contradicts the world-view of science.

You won't need to be a scientist or a mystic to appreciate this book - just open-minded.

Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics by Gary Zukav

Howard Jones is the author of The Tao of Holism

The difficulty of making comparisons between modern physics and Eastern mysticism involves the need to separate distinctly science from religion. The methods employed are not the same, and it is worth emphasizing the differences so as to keep them separate. If there is a flaw in the book, it is the misapprehension that the reader may take away - that, for example, the koan-meditating Zen practitioners are doing essentially the same thing as the physicists who are studying the puzzling phenomenon of quantum mechanics. In the conjectures that the author makes toward the end of the book concerning the S-matrix and the bootstrap theory, there seems to be (in the relating of physics with consciousness in the final chapter) something of a blurring of science and religion. But on the whole the author is careful to point out the differences in method and approach, and important comparisons are made. Those comparisons involve cosmology - the nature of the physical universe, and in my opinion are worth considering.

One such comparison seems particularly illuminating to me. Our senses tell us that the world contains solid material, and science as a result of carefully planned and executed experiments verifies what Democritus posited long ago: that solid material is composed of atoms. Science through its efforts also gives us a sense of dimension: if one atom occupied St Peter's Cathedral in Rome, its nucleus would be the size of a grain of salt and its electrons would be the size of dust particles. That enormous relative amount of empty space indicates to me that our sense of solidity is not on account of there being composite material but on the energy of the electrons that whirl about in an orderly fashion in space. Furthermore, in the subatomic realm, as the author explains through many diagrams and some repetition, the units described behave more like processes or "dynamic energy patterns" than particles. Protons and neutrons do not break down into constituent parts; they tend to break down according to the energy applied. All of this suggests to me that material substance is a fleeting quality and that energy is fundamental to the universe; and this idea correlates with the Buddhist denial of material substance, that nothing is static, everything is constantly changing and evolving in energetic patterns, as metaphorically depicted in the dance of Shiva.

It has become rather trendy to chide this work for its alleged New Age naivete (the book was written in the 70's, and adopted by a host of pseudo-scientists to justify any and every "scientific theory" their intuition could muster), but the work itself is well-intentioned and thorough. Any western student of Taoism will recognize the similarities between Lao Tzu's axioms and the tenets of Quantum Mechanics. In this work, Capra seeks to illuminate further parallels between the threads of science and the threads of Eastern thought, and he does a solid (albeit, as one other reviewer mentioned, repetitive) job.

My only issue with the book would be its rather light treatment of those western traditions that parallel (and in some cases, pre-date) their eastern counterparts. Capra briefly (very briefly) mentions Heraclitus and Parmenides, but is more concerned with skipping quickly to Platonic thought, which is, I think, a mistake. Perhaps it is too much to ask for a book to do more than its title implies (this is, after all, a comparison between western physics and eastern thought, rather than western thought and eastern thought), but the parallels between the eastern thought and ancient Greco-Roman thought (Not simply Heraclitus, but the Roman concept of numen and the pre-Platonic logos) are much greater than classical Greco-Roman thought. An examination of these areas would have been a better preface to the other content then his present treatment of western philosophy.

Those who enjoyed this book should also consider taking a look at John C.H. Wu's translation of the Tao Teh Ching, "Mathematics for the Non-Mathematician," Richard Feynman's "Lectures on Physics" (or "Six Easy Pieces," an abridged version of those lectures), and Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace." All of these works point to a cosmology worthy of proper awe and wonder, in the spirit of Capra's work.

In 1975, physicist Fritjof Capra wrote an unusual book about physics and Eastern mysticism entitled "The Tao Physics". Though some of Mr. Capra's colleagues were offended that any physicist would compare the science of modern physics with the religious practices of Eastern mystics (primarily the beliefs & practices of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism), the reality is that there are some very striking similarities with the intuitively Eastern mystical view of reality and the experimentally rational view of quantum theory. Part of the reason for this is that both physicists and Eastern mystics find it very difficult to explain their observations in language (including the language of mathematics) because each of their experiences is not encountered in our everyday, mechanistic macro world. Up until the time of Einstein, physicists were comfortable with explaining the world using Newton's mechanistic theories. However, Einstein realized that there was a fatal flaw with the Newtonian view that presumed that gravity is felt instantaneously regardless of distance. Also, Newton's law of gravity really didn't explain exactly what gravity is. With a stroke of insight, Einstein realized that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light, including gravity; and several years later was able to explain gravity as being the consequence of the curvature of four-dimensional space-time due to mass. These discoveries through the world of Newtonian physics upside-down, but as Einstein's theories demonstrated, the Newtonian view was still valid for objects whose speeds come nowhere near the speed of light. Hence, Newton's laws of motion and gravity were still valuable, but in actuality, are only good approximations that can be used to explain movement in our frame of reference. Einstein, however, could not accept the views being developed by his contemporaries in the field of subatomic particles because Einstein maintained that elegant simplicity and orderliness existed at all levels of the physical Universe. Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, on the other hand, discovered that the subatomic world was anything but simple and orderly. Instead, they, and the physicists who followed them, discovered that the subatomic world is not comprised of hard, independent and quantifiable particles; but of highly unpredictable and interconnected packets of energy that display characteristics both as particles with mass and waves of energy that can only be partially explained through the use of probabilities.

It was the discovery of quantum theory that modern physics has come to some strikingly similar conclusions that Eastern mystics came to over 2500 years earlier: namely, that everything in the Universe is interconnected, there are no completely independent parts, and that human consciousness is not independent of the Universe either. By entering deeply meditative states of consciousness, Eastern mystics for centuries have experienced intuitively the interconnected wholeness of reality (referred to the Tao in Taoism, the Brahman in Hinduism and the Dharmakaya in Buddhism) once they are able to set aside all other conscious thought and language. To Eastern mystics, language, which attempts to distinguish between various things, creates the illusion of separateness and independence that is the hallmark of Western science and philosophy as culminating in Newtonian physics. The notion that objects could be broken down into independent and mutually exclusive, lifeless parts was the philosophy embraced by many early Greek philosophers, such as Leucippus, Democritus and Aristotle; in contrast to the Greek philosophers of Parmenides and Heraclitus who were hylozoists and Eastern mystics. The popular Western view of separateness is also part of the driving patriarchal, anthropocentric view of Christianity ("yang" in Taoists terms); as opposed to the intuitive, interconnected and interpenetrative view of Eastern mysticism ("yin" in Taoists terms) that is also part of quantum theory.

Some portions of "The Tao of Physics" may be quite difficult for someone with very little background in physics to fully understand, but Mr. Capra avoided use of complex mathematics in his very accurate explanations of observations made in subatomic physics. He also did a superb job of explaining the views of three different Eastern religions that many readers may be introduced to for the first time in this book. Though there was a time when physicists and Western philosophers believed the Universe and inorganic matter are static that could be easily explained with simple equations, modern physics has come to the same conclusion that Eastern mystics did 2500 years ago: the Universe is an extremely dynamic and ever-changing reality governed not by abstract fundamental laws, but by interactions of all matter and energy throughout and that matter itself is pure energy, impermanent, ever-changing and ever-transforming just as the Hindu's explained by the always-dancing Shiva. Further, modern science cannot explain everything; it can only provide approximate explanations for particular situations: the Universe in its totality could never be fully explained, just as the Tao cannot be fully explained. Overall, I rate "The Tao of Physics" with a resounding 5 out of 5 stars and highly recommend it.

This book weaves a magical spell over the reader who is fascinated by both science and mysticism. It covers both in great depth and detail. The essential teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Zen are carefully distilled and the unifying principles of these paths are identified. The one characteristic all these '-isms' share is the awareness of unity of the connectedness of the whole. Capra compares and contrasts classical and modern physics while integrating the mystical truths as discovered in these religions. It is a daunting undertaking but he succeeds with aplomb! The close parallels between Eastern mysticism and modern physics (quantum physics) is amazing - each approaches reality from a different starting point but arrives at the same place. Capra writes about the cosmic dance of particle, energy, and consciousness - highly complex topics, in a very readable manner. He touches upon Geoffrey Chew's S-matrix theory (bootstrap philosophy) and Bohm's theory of Implicate Order. He calls the paradigm shift we are experiencing "a crisis of perception" from which all problems in the world arise. The manner in which scientific ideas are interspersed with mystical concepts is truly astonishing! Fritjof Capra manages to precipitate the essential kernal of truth from apparent divergent viewpoints ...This is a great book for anyone exploring the relationship of the rational scientific view and mysticism, i.e., the spiritual journey. This is a very valuable book for the modern world. Erika Borsos (erikab93)

From the back cover:

"A brilliant best-seller... Lucidly analyzes the tenets of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism to show their striking parallels with the latest discoveries in cyclotrons."
--New York magazine

"Fritjof Capra, in The Tao of Physics, seeks...an integration of the mathematical world view of modern physics and the mystical visions of Buddha and Krishna. Where others have failed miserably in trying to unite these seemingly different world views, Capra, a high-energy theorist, has succeeded admirably...I strongly recommend the book to both layman and scientist."
--V.N. Mansfield, Physics Today

Truly a worthwhile book. The man who wrote the Foreword to my own book, THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS, John Cantwell Kiley, M.D., Ph.D., attempted a similar feat in his doctoral dissertation, which did not have the popular circulation of Capra's book, of course, and was far more abstruse.

Kiley's book, EINSTEIN AND AQUINAS: A RAPPROCHEMENT, is an attempt to compare Albert Einstein, the theoretical physicist, with Saint Thomas Aquinas, although they would seem to have little in common. Kiley studied at Princeton when Einstein was there, and so had a close up view of him, and he knew Aquinas from his studies of the Saint. He found the rapprochement he sought in their respective epistemologies.

Kiley says he is seeking to bring his book back into print, but it is a harder read than Capra's. I recommend Capra's book.

Joseph Pierre,
author of THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

I have a very good background in science, psychology and Eastern thought. I took Quantum Physics as a course in graduate school and have studied Eastern Religious thought for the last 25 years. I read this book several years after it game out and picked it up again recently.

I think the two spotlight reviews cover a lot of ground and I don't want to repeat the same ideas. However, I feel this book needs to be framed in terms of when it first came out. It is historically significant because it put quantum physics on a lot of people's radar and got them thinking in new ways.

Since this book came out, many other good books have also been written and now maybe this isn't the best book for everyone. However, it is still a solid, thought provoking introduction. While it is repetitive in places, much of this repetition is useful and at the time was probably a contributor to helping bust an old paradigm.

I still like this book very much and think it is a good one for someone who is a layperson with an interest in this topic. The ideas are fascinating and they are presented in an easy to understand manner. I also think they do a good job of providing a short introduction to Eastern thought.

Much was written about the 'Tao of Physics', and it is almost always considered as a synthetic and holistic vision of modern physics seen through the glasses of ancient mysticism! But more importantly, let us ask how the author made his point?

Capra made his point by assembling a number of small points, one after the other, for finally proving the whole of his thesis or theory. Overall, the Tao could be seen as a passionate philippic to overcome our scientific dualism by showing that upon a deeper look a synthesis between Western scientific thought and Eastern philosophy is the only intelligent way out of the dilemma.

What I call in my writings the schizoid split in the internal setup of our culture, Capra called it the division between spirit and matter. And the next step, then, in the building of that cultural paranoia was the turn of events starting with the reductionist science philosophy of French philosophers La Mettrie and René Descartes.

What Capra was showing here is the missing link between our modern-day separative and highly individualistic worldview, and its historical origins. And it explains conclusively why we are torn up, fragmented and unwhole (unholy).

The danger of fragmentation, Capra explains conclusively, is that we try to find absolute points of reference behind each of our fragmented concepts, and we do this probably unconsciously in an attempt to heal our inner split. Yet ultimately by doing so we bring about a distorted perception of reality, by taking the map for the landscape.

Looking at the paradoxical behavior of electrons in the quantum world, Capra asked the question why Westerners are so terribly confused, and even shocked, when encountering a paradox, or simply an illogical behavior? He found the answer in comparing Western thought with Eastern philosophy.

I think this difference between Indian thinking and Chinese and Japanese philosophical traditions is important, as Joseph Campbell has emphasized it as well in his book Oriental Mythology. The Zen tradition, derived from its original Chinese root philosophy (where it was called Chan Buddhism), is very fond of putting the stress on the paradox for a simple reason: the paradox teaches us the limitations of rational thinking and thereby shows us the relativity of a merely rational worldview.

The result of that worldview was namely that we discarded nature out of science and by doing so, we created a fundamentally nature-hostile science, a science that destroys us by destroying our planet. This science reflected exactly the distorted view prevalent since patriarchal times in our culture that says the male is superior to the female. This cult of male supremacy led straight to a never-ending course of violence that slowly but definitely suffocates us today.

And the same biased perception of reality, distorting the harmony between the male and the female principle, is to be seen throughout Western philosophy, in its abysmal dualism, which lacks the fundamental ability to find the synthesis that Oriental thought is so apt to establish. Capra conforms with the Eastern worldview that says all opposites are complementary and ‘merely different aspects of the same phenomenon.’

Capra wistfully remarks that in the East, ‘a virtuous person is therefore not one who undertakes the impossible task of striving for the good and eliminating the bad, but rather one who is able to maintain a dynamic balance between good and bad.’

When you look at the Tao of Physics from this perspective, from the big picture behind the details of quantum physics, you will see that Capra’s deeper message in this revolutionary book goes way beyond a redefinition of modern physics. Capra has prepared the ground in this earliest of his books for the giants to come.

This book attacks the most fundamental notions of reality and then redirects the reader to particle accelerators and Tibetan temples to find it anew. Capra sometimes overstates his case, but then again, asserting "parallels" is a more modest endeavor than one might think -- the book expounds on similarities rather than congruence between the two different ontological modes. Capra's general thesis is that modern physicists at the atomic, subatomic, and cosmological scale have empirically discerned a portrait of reality that controverts cognitive conventions and scientific orthodoxy: a vision of the universe so radical and inconsistent with entrenched apprehensions of the world outside our skin that it has only precedent in the ancient religions of eastern mysticism.

Capra begins his story by describing the revolution of Newtonian mechanics. The Newtonian cosmos is a familiar one -- a deterministic machine with gravity (among other causal forces) pulling the strings of matter according to "predictable" laws of motion. This model depicts the universe as a mechanical system reducible to elementary material and causal processes operating in kinetic symmetry. Most importantly, space and time are absolute phenomena independent of causal processes and experimental observations: ten feet is ten feet; one minute is one minute -- always and everywhere. This conceptualization of the universe comports with human cognition, in that pieces of matter, space, and energy are understood as discrete phenomena, connected by occasion through local laws of motion. So long as an observer could understand "the position of all things of which the world consists," the material events of the universe could be predicted a priori with near omniscience -- leading famed French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace to boast that the universe "had no need for God" in its grand cosmic procession.

However, in the last century Einstein's relativity theory and quantum physics displaced the notion of a mechanical world directed by coherent laws of motion. And while the Newtonian vision of the world coincided with our cognitive observation of matter and time, quantum reality is an LSD trip that reveals the universe to be one endless idiom. The astrophysical and sub-atomic world simply does not translate -- constituted by a litany of non-sequiturs: the confluence of mass and energy, wave-particle duality, referential space and time relative to the subject and gravity, the creation and destruction of space and matter, non-Euclidean geometry where triangles exceed 180 degrees, and -- this is really weird -- the notion that elementary particles do not have a certain location until actually measured, i.e., an object cannot be understood distinct from its subject.Take the concept of "time" for example. What is it? What if material changes at the quantum level occur akin to a cosmic "flip book" and human cognition contrives temporality to account for such changes? What then when the time-traveling twin returns from his peregrination 30 years younger than his brother? What has actually happened?

Ultimately, the quantum universe presents an ineffable reality incomprehensible to human ideation. The reason for this is that the mind evolved on earth in the "zone of middle dimensions" -- and therefore our sensory faculties and cognition are meant to apprehend material phenomena at certain cosmological scales and dimensions. It is therefore unsurprising that scientists have trouble explaining that sub-atomic particles are not solid material objects but rather "probability waves." Schrodinger's Cat got your tongue? Good. Don't try to wrap your head around it. You can't. That's the point -- quantum mechanics describes a universe of probabilities rather than certainties, in which reality is relative -- and this is meant in the most literal sense. Every material phenomena exists only 'as it relates' to other material objects and processes. Most importantly, as Capra identifies, a glimpse at the sub-atomic world debunks the reductionist account of reality that the universe can be understood by "breaking it down" to elementary material objects and causal forces. For at the sub atomic scale, the observed phenomena reflect probabilities and processes --NOT material reality.

The point of this book is that Eastern religious thought has been the only ontological school to appreciate the above paradoxes discerned by quantum mechanics. In support, Capra notes that Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism describe the observed universe as a material farce -- a grand illusion labeled "maya" by Buddhists that dissemble the underlying reality of the absolute. In addition, modern physics now corroborate eastern mysticism's monistic conceptualization of reality -- in which people, planets, and particles are not isolated material objects but rather components of an integrated web of processes. Eastern religion labels the absolute a "a basic oneness," the "Godhead," the "Absolute," or "The Way (Tao)." This epistemology towards discerning the basic oneness requires spiritual contemplation, in contrast to the empirical rigor of modern physicists. But heed the words of physicist David Bohm in articulating the idea of quantum nonlocality: the notion that material phenomena do not occupy discrete spaces or identities:

"One is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the classical idea of analyzability of the world into separately and existing parts ... We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent `elementary parts' of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole "

Again, if this description sounds like sophistic nonsense -- that is to be expected when detailing a reality that is putatively beyond language and thought. While it has taken centuries for modern physicists to discover this material paradox by entering a laboratory and opening their eyes, Eastern mystics had to only close theirs. What has taken so long? The problem is that the human mind insists on not only categorizing observed phenomena into discrete identities, but then also categorizing the very relationships between such identities as independent forces as well. Our quotidian classifications of the world around us, therefore, are a mistaken depiction of reality. Quite frankly, human cognition is phenomologically handicapped -- evolutionarily programmed to experience the world in a local, terrestrial way. As a result, when modern physics has waded from the empirical into the ineffable -- the result has been confusion. The idea that the material universe consists of a spiritual "Godhead" is not necessarily the proper inference from this confusion, but neither is the idea that all phenomena can be reduced to a material object, process, or identity.

The point is that there is room for the silly superstition of "God" or "oneness" in the new cosmos. Science cannot conquer religion when it gradually realizes there is not always an "objective reality" or coherent phenomena to observe, measure, and explain. So discard the Godless narrative of big bang -> stellar formation and nucleosynthesis -> abiogenesis -> evolution -> death. The story is not so simple. It's a mad world out there, and perhaps a spiritual essence can explain and unify us with the madness, or perhaps the madness will make Mersaults of us all. If Capra's thesis appears an intrepid reconciliation of religion and science, it's because the revolution he suggests is fundamental -- touching mind, matter, space, and time. Perhaps Capra accentuates the similarities between Eastern religion and modern physics by liberally cherrypicking quotes of Eastern mystics that line up with laboratory observations. But frankly, I think Capra makes a decent case: both Eastern religion and modern physics recognize a reality that is beyond conventional comprehension, where space, time, and matter cannot be understood without reference to the observer (subject = object), and without reference to a dynamic, interconnected matrix of processes and relationships that comprise the universe.

Meditation and Metaphysics meet the West, redone in the form of High Energy Physics and what it means when the observer collapses the nondual into duality.

You will understand your mind, eventually if you read this book now and search for its source the rest of your life. You will become nondual as you absorb the All, reinterpret it in a quantum Universe of modern physics and look inside yourself to see it was all there the whole time.

If you want to understand where quantum physics and the eight fold path has taken us, read this book. If you want to understand yourself as Self, read this book. You may not get it the first time or the second (not reading, but encounters with Self), but eventually if you stick with it and keep searching and asking questions (only questions that will come to you from reading a book like this, learning its meaning inside you and meditating to calm and discipline the mind), then one day you will wake up Enlightened.

Despite the fact that this book was written more than a decade ago..it still continues to be the the most sought after book for anyone who in intrested in the intrincically interwoven relationship between Modern Science and Mysticism. This is primarily so because over the ages ,as science advanced bringing forth the most sophisticated tools to observe and explore the physical world,mankind not only became aware of the complexity of the physical world but also of the limitations of the scientific method itself as one approaches some of the deep and fundamental questions of our very existence!This is so because we observe the universe through the eyes of what is known..which eventually leads us to the realm of the unknown!Here the scientest stands baffled at the marvel of creation...and it is this feeling of awe and wonder(as Einstein put it)that eventually leads to deep contemplation of metaphysical reality...which can only be perceived at the experiential level.No wonder the Nobel Prize winning Physicist John Wheeler coined the term"The Participatory Universe"!This forms the very foundation of Dr.Capra's work! Delving deep into the latest advances of modern Physics and ancient Eastern scriptures/Mysticism Dr.Capra brings forth startling parallels between the revelations of the Sage rooted in the Realization of the underlying reality of our physical universe and the the Scientest's rationalisation of the obsevable universe!This is the point where Physics gets metamorphosised into Metaphysics..."What the Scientest experiments outside...the Sage experiences within....Both encounter the same reality criscrossed"! Religions of the east were rooted more in Spirituality...and precisely because of this reason the Sages of the yore realised the Universe within as well!They saw the Universe as a Whole.. in it's entiriety!..Modern Physics now talks of the "Systems world view,Chaos theory,Bootstrap theory"..and a whole lot of so called new theories which are nothing but the limited verbal expressions of the Vision of reality experienced by the Sages!This is clearly reflected in a beautiful Vedic hymn chanted honouring one's master..one's Spiritual Perceptor(Guru): "The vision of the truth an indivisible whole encompassing the static and the dynamic living and the nonliving... to that master my Salutations"! The Tao(way)of Physics this vision of Life as seen from the Scientific perspective!

This book is a masterpiece - a gem for anyone interested in metaphysics.Perhaps one of the best written over the last several decades.

The author has done a brilliant job on 3 dimensions:

1. Research: Evidently he has a deep grasp of modern physics and the evolution of physics overall. What is even more impressive is how well articulated the key tenets of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism (to the extent relevant to the topic) are
2. Assimilation: The clarity with which key principles are enunciated shows a genuine understanding of the subject which can be had only once someone "chews" over the material several times. Modern physics is no "abc" but the author has done a beautiful job simplyfying the material without giving up much on the accuracy of what he posits
3. Integration: This is worth calling out about this book. He blends the different schools of thought at the right places in the text ensuring the reader does not lose her train of thought

The book starts off by recognizing the key tents of Eastern spiritual thought for key schools of philosophy and also the evolution of physics over time. Then the following chapters explore what concepts like quantum theory/relativity really mean, how they have evolved, what their broader significance is and how they can be related to the philosophies of eastern spiritual thought.

Writing a text like this is an achievement of a lifetime - Kudos Mr. Capra!!!

This is a very useful comparison of eastern thought and ideas in modern physics. That's all the author promised. Really. It will probably not convince physicists of parallels, as they are as fundamentalist as Billy Graham, in their way. Eastern thinkers might enjoy the comparisons. Those who pay attention to patterns will find this book fascinating. Interesting book, and for its time, revolutionary.

This book attacks the most fundamental notions of reality and then redirects the reader to particle accelerators and Tibetan temples to find it anew. Capra sometimes overstates his case, but then again, asserting "parallels" is a more modest endeavor than one might think -- the book expounds on similarities rather than congruence between the two different ontological modes. Capra's general thesis is that modern physicists at the atomic, subatomic, and cosmological scale have empirically discerned a portrait of reality that controverts cognitive conventions and scientific orthodoxy: a vision of the universe so radical and inconsistent with entrenched apprehensions of the world outside our skin that it has only precedent in the ancient religions of eastern mysticism.

Capra begins his story by describing the revolution of Newtonian mechanics. The Newtonian cosmos is a familiar one -- a deterministic machine with gravity (among other causal forces) pulling the strings of matter according to "predictable" laws of motion. This model depicts the universe as a mechanical system reducible to elementary material and causal processes operating in kinetic symmetry. Most importantly, space and time are absolute phenomena independent of causal processes and experimental observations: ten feet is ten feet; one minute is one minute -- always and everywhere. This conceptualization of the universe comports with human cognition, in that pieces of matter, space, and energy are understood as discrete phenomena, connected by occasion through local laws of motion. So long as an observer could understand "the position of all things of which the world consists," the material events of the universe could be predicted a priori with near omniscience -- leading famed French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace to boast that the universe "had no need for God" in its grand cosmic procession.

However, in the last century Einstein's relativity theory and quantum physics displaced the notion of a mechanical world directed by coherent laws of motion. And while the Newtonian vision of the world coincided with our cognitive observation of matter and time, quantum reality is an LSD trip that reveals the universe to be one endless idiom. The astrophysical and sub-atomic world simply does not translate -- constituted by a litany of non-sequiturs: the confluence of mass and energy, wave-particle duality, referential space and time relative to the subject and gravity, the creation and destruction of space and matter, non-Euclidean geometry where triangles exceed 180 degrees, and -- this is really weird -- the notion that elementary particles do not have a certain location until actually measured, i.e., an object cannot be understood distinct from its subject.Take the concept of "time" for example. What is it? What if material changes at the quantum level occur akin to a cosmic "flip book" and human cognition contrives temporality to account for such changes? What then when the time-traveling twin returns from his peregrination 30 years younger than his brother? What has actually happened?

Ultimately, the quantum universe presents an ineffable reality incomprehensible to human ideation. The reason for this is that the mind evolved on earth in the "zone of middle dimensions" -- and therefore our sensory faculties and cognition are meant to apprehend material phenomena at certain cosmological scales and dimensions. It is therefore unsurprising that scientists have trouble explaining that sub-atomic particles are not solid material objects but rather "probability waves." Schrodinger's Cat got your tongue? Good. Don't try to wrap your head around it. You can't. That's the point -- quantum mechanics describes a universe of probabilities rather than certainties, in which reality is relative -- and this is meant in the most literal sense. Every material phenomena exists only 'as it relates' to other material objects and processes. Most importantly, as Capra identifies, a glimpse at the sub-atomic world debunks the reductionist account of reality that the universe can be understood by "breaking it down" to elementary material objects and causal forces. For at the sub atomic scale, the observed phenomena reflect probabilities and processes --NOT material reality.

The point of this book is that Eastern religious thought has been the only ontological school to appreciate the above paradoxes discerned by quantum mechanics. In support, Capra notes that Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism describe the observed universe as a material farce -- a grand illusion labeled "maya" by Buddhists that dissemble the underlying reality of the absolute. In addition, modern physics now corroborate eastern mysticism's monistic conceptualization of reality -- in which people, planets, and particles are not isolated material objects but rather components of an integrated web of processes. Eastern religion labels the absolute a "a basic oneness," the "Godhead," the "Absolute," or "The Way (Tao)." This epistemology towards discerning the basic oneness requires spiritual contemplation, in contrast to the empirical rigor of modern physicists. But heed the words of physicist David Bohm in articulating the idea of quantum nonlocality: the notion that material phenomena do not occupy discrete spaces or identities:

"One is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the classical idea of analyzability of the world into separately and existing parts ... We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent `elementary parts' of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole "

Again, if this description sounds like sophistic nonsense -- that is to be expected when detailing a reality that is putatively beyond language and thought. While it has taken centuries for modern physicists to discover this material paradox by entering a laboratory and opening their eyes, Eastern mystics had to only close theirs. What has taken so long? The problem is that the human mind insists on not only categorizing observed phenomena into discrete identities, but then also categorizing the very relationships between such identities as independent forces as well. Our quotidian classifications of the world around us, therefore, are a mistaken depiction of reality. Quite frankly, human cognition is phenomologically handicapped -- evolutionarily programmed to experience the world in a local, terrestrial way. As a result, when modern physics has waded from the empirical into the ineffable -- the result has been confusion. The idea that the material universe consists of a spiritual "Godhead" is not necessarily the proper inference from this confusion, but neither is the idea that all phenomena can be reduced to a material object, process, or identity.

The point is that there is room for the silly superstition of "God" or "oneness" in the new cosmos. Science cannot conquer religion when it gradually realizes there is not always an "objective reality" or coherent phenomena to observe, measure, and explain. So discard the Godless narrative of big bang -> stellar formation and nucleosynthesis -> abiogenesis -> evolution -> death. The story is not so simple. It's a mad world out there, and perhaps a spiritual essence can explain and unify us with the madness, or perhaps the madness will make Mersaults of us all. If Capra's thesis appears an intrepid reconciliation of religion and science, it's because the revolution he suggests is fundamental -- touching mind, matter, space, and time. Perhaps Capra accentuates the similarities between Eastern religion and modern physics by liberally cherrypicking quotes of Eastern mystics that line up with laboratory observations. But frankly, I think Capra makes a decent case: both Eastern religion and modern physics recognize a reality that is beyond conventional comprehension, where space, time, and matter cannot be understood without reference to the observer (subject = object), and without reference to a dynamic, interconnected matrix of processes and relationships that comprise the universe.

Meditation and Metaphysics meet the West, redone in the form of High Energy Physics and what it means when the observer collapses the nondual into duality.

You will understand your mind, eventually if you read this book now and search for its source the rest of your life. You will become nondual as you absorb the All, reinterpret it in a quantum Universe of modern physics and look inside yourself to see it was all there the whole time.

If you want to understand where quantum physics and the eight fold path has taken us, read this book. If you want to understand yourself as Self, read this book. You may not get it the first time or the second (not reading, but encounters with Self), but eventually if you stick with it and keep searching and asking questions (only questions that will come to you from reading a book like this, learning its meaning inside you and meditating to calm and discipline the mind), then one day you will wake up Enlightened.

Despite the fact that this book was written more than a decade ago..it still continues to be the the most sought after book for anyone who in intrested in the intrincically interwoven relationship between Modern Science and Mysticism. This is primarily so because over the ages ,as science advanced bringing forth the most sophisticated tools to observe and explore the physical world,mankind not only became aware of the complexity of the physical world but also of the limitations of the scientific method itself as one approaches some of the deep and fundamental questions of our very existence!This is so because we observe the universe through the eyes of what is known..which eventually leads us to the realm of the unknown!Here the scientest stands baffled at the marvel of creation...and it is this feeling of awe and wonder(as Einstein put it)that eventually leads to deep contemplation of metaphysical reality...which can only be perceived at the experiential level.No wonder the Nobel Prize winning Physicist John Wheeler coined the term"The Participatory Universe"!This forms the very foundation of Dr.Capra's work! Delving deep into the latest advances of modern Physics and ancient Eastern scriptures/Mysticism Dr.Capra brings forth startling parallels between the revelations of the Sage rooted in the Realization of the underlying reality of our physical universe and the the Scientest's rationalisation of the obsevable universe!This is the point where Physics gets metamorphosised into Metaphysics..."What the Scientest experiments outside...the Sage experiences within....Both encounter the same reality criscrossed"! Religions of the east were rooted more in Spirituality...and precisely because of this reason the Sages of the yore realised the Universe within as well!They saw the Universe as a Whole.. in it's entiriety!..Modern Physics now talks of the "Systems world view,Chaos theory,Bootstrap theory"..and a whole lot of so called new theories which are nothing but the limited verbal expressions of the Vision of reality experienced by the Sages!This is clearly reflected in a beautiful Vedic hymn chanted honouring one's master..one's Spiritual Perceptor(Guru): "The vision of the truth an indivisible whole encompassing the static and the dynamic living and the nonliving... to that master my Salutations"! The Tao(way)of Physics this vision of Life as seen from the Scientific perspective!

This book is a masterpiece - a gem for anyone interested in metaphysics.Perhaps one of the best written over the last several decades.

The author has done a brilliant job on 3 dimensions:

1. Research: Evidently he has a deep grasp of modern physics and the evolution of physics overall. What is even more impressive is how well articulated the key tenets of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism (to the extent relevant to the topic) are
2. Assimilation: The clarity with which key principles are enunciated shows a genuine understanding of the subject which can be had only once someone "chews" over the material several times. Modern physics is no "abc" but the author has done a beautiful job simplyfying the material without giving up much on the accuracy of what he posits
3. Integration: This is worth calling out about this book. He blends the different schools of thought at the right places in the text ensuring the reader does not lose her train of thought

The book starts off by recognizing the key tents of Eastern spiritual thought for key schools of philosophy and also the evolution of physics over time. Then the following chapters explore what concepts like quantum theory/relativity really mean, how they have evolved, what their broader significance is and how they can be related to the philosophies of eastern spiritual thought.

Writing a text like this is an achievement of a lifetime - Kudos Mr. Capra!!!

This is a very useful comparison of eastern thought and ideas in modern physics. That's all the author promised. Really. It will probably not convince physicists of parallels, as they are as fundamentalist as Billy Graham, in their way. Eastern thinkers might enjoy the comparisons. Those who pay attention to patterns will find this book fascinating. Interesting book, and for its time, revolutionary.

Fritjof Capra has delivered a remarkable piece of work in this book. Though the scientific study in this book may not be for everyone, it is a pleasure if one can persevere with it. I must admit that The Tao of Physics goes into more science than mysticism, but it has to be that way considering that most people who read this book will probably not be spiritually inclined. In saying that, I got a lot out of this book.

I don't have a scientific background, so this book was a struggle for me. There were many aspects of the similarities between Eastern Mysticism and Quantum Physics that I found to be quite interesting, but I have to admit that some of the scientific discussion was over my head. I think the author did an excellent job of explaining a series of difficult subjects. Mystic experiences are difficult enough to put into words, but I don't even think a language exists to explain recent developments in physics. In any event, there is something to be gained from reading this book, even if you don't have "a scientific mind."

From reading Fritjof Capra's remarkable book, I have gained much more respect for physics while also strengthening my understanding of Eastern philosophy.

In his book, Capra urges that physicists realize nature's organic processes instead of explaining these processes in vague and mechanical terms. According to Capra, by Greek definition, "'physics' meant therefore, originally, the endeavor of seeing the essential nature of all things" (p.20). We must create an inner harmony with nature. Indeed, until recently have physicists adopted a more holistic physics rather than the mechanically dense physics of the past. Through their similarities, Capra beautifully demonstrates that science, mathematics, and mysticism are not completely different.

A brief note on the book itself: Capra's style of writing is wonderful and he explains throughly and effectively (he is also very well-researched). Some may find his explanations of physics or Eastern philosophy dense or cumbersome. Nevertheless, Capra makes each chapter intriguing and exciting, especially considering how he demonstrates that each concept is interrelated. Aside from these musings, both the text is in large type face and the diagrams are pleasing to the eyes.

For those who have little background to the subject of modern physics (much like me), do not try to completely and absolutley understand each topic mentioned. You will only become more confused and frustrated. Rather, read each chapter synthetically and with an open mind. The knowledge will build gradually. That is what Capra would want. For those who (especially) have a background in modern physics, allow the book to merely supplement your practice. Approach the book as if you have never explored the topic and you will perhaps gain a refreshed perspective.

Altogether, I highly recommend the book. It appeals to all who wish to learn about topics so unique and relevant. You may also benefit intellectually. Who knows?

In the words of Joseph Campbell on praising the book,
"I think Capra has done a magnificent and extremely important job".

I can understand why this enlightening book achieved cult status as it is an excellent exposition of some real correspondences that had probably never before been pointed out. Having known very little on the physics side, it has certainly taught me a lot and I am sure these parallels will become even more obvious with advances in the studey of quantum physics. Tao was a great pleasure to read as the author takes pains to be clear and understandable, and the book is lavishly illustrated with plates and drawings. I fround the section on the I Ching hexagrams of particular interest. Dana Zohar's The Quantum Self is a good choice to read at the same time, whilst "Tao" also further stimulated my interest in sacred geometry.

This is a great book. My husband is an Engineering student. This book helped me understand a lot of the things he was learning about and trying to talk to me about from his day in class. It covers basic concepts like Newtonian/Classical Physics very clearly to help prepare the reader for the leaps away from classical physics and into the much more abstract concepts of unity and movement in the universe that come into play after Einstein. This book was very helpful to me in that I find the mathematical approach to the sciences tedious so I never got into this that much... I have a much more organic way of approaching learning. I was an art history major in collage and am used to learning about large concepts then exploring how they relate to things. The mathematical approach just never appealed to me. So I missed out a lot on just how cool physics is! I'm grateful to have a book that takes a comprehensive approach and made this information so accessible. I have a background in Zen, Buddhism, Budo, Christianity, and some Native American spirituality and have felt a connection between them all. I also grew up, oddly enough, rather synical so a book that takes a scientific approach to mystical understanding is just a phenomenal idea to me! This book along with "The Portable world Bible", and actively taking part in art, meditation, martial arts training, and ceremony really helped me find those connections and come to a much fuller level of appreciation for life and the physics within it. I got a great deal out of this book, not only in understanding science and my husband a bit better but in understanding the unity and movement of the nonphysical universe as well. All in all I give this book two big thumbs up!

Capra's discussion of physics is interesting reading, as are the "parallels" with Eastern Mysticism (though I follow a reviewer below in evaluating the arguments as hazy). Where Capra sells his reader short is in the criticism of the western mentality.
According to Capra, the western mind is not acclimated to mystical thought of the kind described in Tao of Physics. Serious students will detect a problem with this assertion: Heraclitus, Plotinus, Augustine, John of the Cross, and even the empiricist Francis Bacon evade Capra's criticism--but one must go to the actual writings, not generalizations about them, in order to discover this. In more recent philosophy, I'm reminded of Paul Tillich's notion of "historical realism," which would provide any reader with material for a re-critique of Capra's critique.
You might notice I still give this book a 6, despite these major flaws. This is because it is an accessible introduction to a major premise in modern thought: the compulsion toward extramaterial/extratechnological worlds. My fear is that some (note reviews below) might consider it the last word on a subject that merits extensive study.
As an analogy, take the seemingly common opinion that the film "Contact" is the last word on the science-religion question.

Shows interesting parallels between Taoist philosophy and western science. I've read three different sources in Taoist thought and I have to say that Mr. Capra has done a great job in making this book readable to the average "joe". Although I've long given-up my "eastern philosophy phase", I would still recommend this book. To put it simply, it's poetry in motion. Whatever your thoughts, I would suggest you read Lao Tzu's TAOISM first, then after reading this book make-up your own mind.

A Profoundly Important Book

I am aware of the much resistance of the ideas purported in this book, both from the scientist/skeptic league and mystic/philosopher league for diametrically opposed reasons. I will try to address them (please visit my website for a complete review) and highlight the biases of these people. Before I go further, I would like to comment on one of the reviewers here from Detroit who referred to quantum physics as objective and Eastern mysticism as subjective. This is an extremely, unbelievably inane comment from someone who apparently hasn't read the book thoroughly which in the first place talks about why physics or science can't be considered objective truth anymore. Capra, throughout the book, clearly and repeatedly speaks of cases and solid arguments in which science falls short of being called objective in the classic way. Today, no body can deny that science, with its strict boundaries and fragmented world-view, could merely talk about approximate descriptions instead of reality or truth.
One of the prominent critics of this book form the mystic/philosopher league happens to be Ken Wilber, whose genius is a source of my inspiration. It needs to be taken into account that Wilber's background is science (biochemistry), which he left because of its extreme limitation for an intense, scholarly study of consciousness. Let me quote what he said in Grace and Grit, "I disagreed entirely with books such as "The Tao of Physics" and "The Dancing Wu Li Masters," which had claimed that modern physics supported or even proved Eastern mysticism. This is a colossal error. Physics is a limited, finite, relative, and partial endeavor, dealing with a very limited aspect of reality. It does not, for example, deal with biological, psychological, economic, literary, or historical truths; whereas mysticism deals with all of that, with the Whole. To say physics process mysticism is like saying the tail proved the dog......Simply imagine what would happen if we indeed said that modern physics support mysticism. What happens, for example, if we say that today's physics is in perfect agreement with Buddha's enlightenment? What happens when tomorrow's physics supplants or replaces today's physics (which it most definitely will)? Does poor Buddha then lose his enlightenment? You see the problem. If you hook your God to today's physics, then when that physics slips, that God slips with it."
It's clear that Wilber's objection is based on his adoration of mysticism, especially Buddhism, over science and motivated by his unnecessary "paranoia" that the dynamics of science will adversely affect the "reputation" of the "object of his fixation." Like Wilber, I am a number one fan of the Buddha but I don't see this observable fact -not a mere idea-- of parallelism as a threat to his unblemished integrity; nothing could be as 2500 years of his Dharma have proven its timelessness and sensibility beyond the shadow of a doubt. As Capra pointed out in his answer to this particular criticism, much of his concern is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of scientific research that it could arbitrarily change the results of previous researches (which is not the case at all). Nobody is trying to prove anything with anything else here, what Capra does is simply bringing to a coherent, systematic erudition something that many people could see for themselves the way they couldn't mistake the blaring morning sun. What I naturally object from these instant critics is that after someone has dedicated years of research and carefully transferred the results in over 350 pages, then out of nowhere, these people, with a modest one or two sentences, vehemently rejects his work. Excuse me? You need a whole bloody book in itself, or at least a thesis with a decent amount of pages, to refute it. You need to elaborate which points/parts of his book that are distorted and why and please provide the likely alternative explanation or argument to them.
What is rather perplexing is the fact that in "No Boundary," Wilber basically purports the same parallels between modern physics and eastern mysticism so I wonder why he sort of changed his mind.
I didn't know anything about this book when I was in High School and trying to explain the Buddhist concept Anatta (without "I" or without soul) to a non-Buddhist friend. The interesting part was I, inevitably, always ended up using the analogy of the ever- divisible atom to describe this most profound concept because, even as a 16 year old who knew very little about physics or chemistry, I could see the striking parallel between the atomic principle and Anatta and knew no other more accessible way to describe the latter. In fact in the Buddhist metaphysics book, the Abhidhamma, Buddha talked about the smallest substance of matter that he termed paramanu, which he said didn't exist independently but composed of interdependent elements. And he, in relation to this no-basic-building-block-of-the-self-and everything-else-in-the-universe concept, further postulated that "all compounded things are impermanent, " the same exact conclusion that physicists reached 2500 years later to describe the dynamic nature of quantum phenomena. And are you going to just dismiss it by saying that both are mere coincidence? I don't think so. And for Wilber to have such a fragmented world-view -something that he through his books is very much critical of- that the world that modern physics talks about is entirely different than the world of mystics is most ironic. As Capra wrote and I very much agree with, there is only one world -this awesome and mysterious world. One might deal with the world infinitely small, and the other infinitely vast but both are different aspects of one and the same reality and that's why both speak in the same language. Remember, all parts have an intimate, harmonious and interdependent correlation with the whole. The fact that someone of Wilber's calibre -who is aware that opposites, in both scientific and mystical point of view, are the product of mind construct or abstraction that has little substance- could have missed it is mind-boggling.

Beautiful. Poetically written. A fabulous introduction to the subject. I say ignore the negative reviews, because the writers are missing the point of this book. This is not intended to teach you the intricacies of physics. It is also not intended to preach eastern religion. It's an examination of the movement of science toward faith, and how the two are inseparable. If you're not opposed to such a view, then I think this is the book for you. If you can't handle the notion that the two go hand in hand, then yes, you will hate this. As for me...it was fantastic.

Are you wondering if you should read this book? This book translates abstract physics into something enjoyable, approachable and full of meaning of what life is in its essence as motion and transformation. In fact, I gained more of an intuitive understanding about quantum (really absolute) reality from reading this book than I did from my physics classes at the University of Chicago. Having also studied eastern mysticism in the Tao te Ching and other works, I was interested in a book that demonstrated the similarities. I didn't learn very much new about Eastern mysticism, but having physics taught in this way was remarkable, as if the science was transcending the intellect and speaking directly to the soul about life's mysteries.

The book is a well organized presentaion of the simple observation that science, religion, and philosophy are all trying to describe the same reality in different terms and from different perspectives. Taoism and modern physics both take a minimally subjective approach to the task of realizing what life is and are both extremely helpful to anyone searching for the source of true spirituality. The first review in this set refers to Taoism as a branch of metaphysics, which it certainly is not. Although the book deals with various major Eastern religions, it is a good introduction to Taoism and, for those searching, should be preceded by, concurrently read with, and perpetually followed by reference to the Tao Te Ching. Most importantly, awareness of ones own life and its relationship with the rest of the universe is the key; the answers can not be found in any book.

This book offers a compelling and accessible description of our relational universe - one in which the relationship between entities is more important than the entities themselves, in fact, one in which there are no entities, just energy and relationships.

By the end of the book (especially if you read the afterword of the 4th edition) you reach a point of understanding that the future of our world depends on us achieving in every day life the paradigm shift that has occurred in the new sciences, that of deep ecology. Deep ecology understands that everything in this universe is a system and that all systems are interconnected. In our everyday lives we don't possess the sensory capacity to perceive how deeply this interconnectedness goes.

This book encourages us to strive for ways to broaden, deepen and awaken our sensory capacities in order that we might personally glimpse the interconnectedness of everything. While we continue to operate according to a paradigm of mechanical parts that can be isolated, fixed and (if need be) eradicated we will fail to see the extent of the effects of our actions on each other and our world.

Descriptions of the scientific facts that support this world view make a challenging read at times, but give the book depth and credibility. The real artistry in this work is the weaving of dry scientific fact with compelling quotes and passages from the writings of both modern scientists and eastern mystics from many traditions.

Fritjof Capra wrote this book 30 years ago and what struck me most is how long it has taken for us to shift our thinking and our language to reflect the relational nature of well ... nature. Even physicists - those working with these concepts on a daily basis still cling to a world of "things". I am left with the question of when we will reach the tipping point where more of us than not are striving for connection with and understanding of the very systems on which all life depends.

This book has had a profound effect on my beliefs-set. Very interesting parallels in this book between science and philosophy have forced me to look at eastern philosophy and thought in new light.
The only drawback in this book is that, at times, it delves too deep into quantum physics.
At any rate, a book worth reading.

Fritjof Capra in the Tao of Physics, seeks to reveal his perspective in relation to physics and mystical Eastern belief. He tries to unite these two opposites' fields that seem to have been in disagreement during the previous centuries. He analyzes Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Zen and tires to show it's parallel to the new trend of thought in physics. The book overview on Eastern philosophy is a good introduction to anyone who has little knowledge on the subject. Although, Capra tries to explain physics in simple terms by omitting mathematical complexities in explaining physics, it is not easy for the novice or for the average person to understand the physic theories that Capra tries to explain in his book.
The overemphasis on parallel between language of the mystics and that of the new physicists tends to get confusing and often times, redundant. For instance, in describing the comparison of the Hadron Bootstrap Theory and that of the Mahayana Buddhism belief of space and time can be viewed as Capra forcing his desire to explain physics in a new way. Overall, I found the book interesting, witted, and entertaining, especially, in his realization of Tantrism in Hindu mythology. An interesting perspective.

Fritjof Capra eloquently displays the striking similarities between the ancient arts of enlightenment and the modern discoveries in Physics. If you read this book you're eyes will open wide, whether you're beginning to explore Physics or you're 30 years deep in Physics.

Man has two components: his essence and his social/cultural context. What the author tries to convey is, no matter the surroundings, the nature of his thoughts are always the same. It is unescapable. Simply put, regardless of when and where, his substance remains unchanged.

I continue to recommend and give this book to anyone that I suspect might enjoy an adventure of the mind. It is a wonderful read. If you took physics in college and have ever read about world religions, you should be fine with the material. This is a book you'll read and give away, and then buy yourself another copy... Enjoy!

This book thought me that there is an another point of view to our life. We should learn it if we are interested in real life. Life is not only the living. My life has changed after this book.
Thank you dear Mr. F.Capra.

From a Hindu perspective I found this book a great read , written in the 70's words like Spiritualism, mysticism, New Age, paganism he should really refer to Hinduism , after all Hindus gave the world Maths and the very concept of "Zero" which is at the heart of Hindu Dharma and modern science. Tao philosophy is rooted in the worship of the ancient Hindu deity of Ganesh (Elephant god) he has one broken tusk representing life beyond two equal opposites. Also read Orientalism to make good my perspective. Hindus have to truck with science.

In this book Fritjof Capra dwells on the parallels between modern physics and traditional Eastern thought. In classical physics and in most Western thought, the tendency is to break down the universe into smaller and smaller objects and systems that are supposedly self-contained and only interact in a linear cause-and-effect pattern. These views started to break down with Einstein's relativity, which shows the duality (or inseparability) of space and time, and even more so with quantum mechanics. The key aspect of QM used here is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which basically states that you can't observe a subatomic particle (or possibly any part of the universe) without interacting with it. It turns out that these new physical concepts of duality and interconnectedness, while a major shock to Western minds, are right in line with what has been thought in the East for thousands of years. In fact, many modern theoretical physicists have become interested in Eastern mysticism to help interpret their seemingly strange findings.
With that aside, this book is not quite convincing as Capra attempts to draw these parallels into an overall unified theory, and unfortunately he is quite a dry and repetitive writer. The book starts usefully with an intro to modern physics, then intros to the main schools of Eastern mysticism (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism). Things start to break down however, in the third part of the book as Capra begins to analyze the parallels between the two worlds. Capra tends to explain the same concepts again and again is slightly different ways, in an attempt to beef up the book, only to reveal the shaky foundation on which these concepts stand. Alas, while there are certainly intriguing parallels, the grand connection fails to materialize as the book drags on. When this book first appeared in the 70's, it kicked off a new mini-revolution of deep thoughts, and Capra is surely on to something big here. Unfortunately this book doesn't quite bring home the true revolution in Western thinking. Perhaps the last 30 years of deep thoughts that this book inspired will lead to a true manifesto by Capra or one of his followers, but this book can only be seen as a good start.

Having enjoyed both physics and philosophy, I thought this volume might give a group of connections and parallels, a new lens. It doesn't work out that way, and I just couldn't get into the book. The analogies were too reaching and the tendency of reductionism in physics clashes with the tendency of expansionism in mysticism. Didn't like the way all Eastern philosophies were lumped together, and didn't like the way early western philosophy was presented.

Dealbreaker for me though, was the existence of quarks (experimentally confirmed by particle accelerators) were still questioned in this edition. That felt too much like denying reality for my taste; the idea behind my reading of this book was expanding my concept of the real, not arguing with it.

So in the end, I didn't like the book and cannot recommend it.

Scientific fundamentalists have all sorts of bad things to say about this and similar books. Hey, guys, you don't like it, do a better job. While I'm waiting for that better job, which I doubt you are capable of doing, since criticism is so much easier, and you are too lazy to do a better job, I will enjoy this book and books like it. I read it when it first came out, and I still read it. THis is an exercise in fascination.

As a beginner to both eastern philosophy and quantumphysics, I am very glad to see a book that not only explains the parallels between those, but also uses straight-forward language.
I was able to grasp the basics of qhantumphysics without being treated to dull charts and formulae. Capra masters the art of explaining perfectly. As a result of reading this book, my interest in both subjects has been stimulated greatly. I will certainly read more of his work.

This book is marvellous of beauty. One of my source of enIightment is gotten from this book. Since before I was hard to believe about God, because of our rational and immanent thinking. But this book is giving a bridge between those two. But not only that, if you have the basic (knowing the theory of Taoism), it will give you an inspiration of the other perspective of reality found useful in the practical living.

I'm one of those who believe that Eastern philosophies and religions are, in many respects, superior to Western scientific knowledge and values. Although this is a very interesting book, the author appears to have tried too hard to find analogies for modern physical concepts about the universe in Eastern philosophies.

Essentially the trailhead for me on my best and happiest path to an understanding of life. After reading the "Tao of...", I knew I wanted a consilience between all religions, science and philosophical thought. Now after more than a decade, thanks to Capra I have found that joy and peace. With my understanding now, there are no conflicts, no frustrations, even with the bipolar hypocracies of Christian beliefs. I highly recommend that all begin their Tao and as with Joseph Campbell, "find their Bliss."

The subject matter is fine, but _The Tao of Physics_ is dull, repetitive, and superficial. Many of the physicists who developed quantum mechanics had their own highly developed views on metaphysics; it's ironic that so few readers are aware of their writings and that a lightweight book like Capra's is so popular. Read _Quantum Questions_, edited by Ken Wilber, and you'll understand why _The Tao of Physics_ is a weak book.

So much food for thought, truly a worthwhile read. The artwork is also delightful. As another reviewer said, this book is for people with open minds. Capra gives the reader many different things to consider.

Physics is interesting and often profound--so much so that I got a Ph.D. in physics. Taoism is interesting and often profound. But they are not related to each other, despite some loose parallels. Ever watch Wizard of Oz while listening to Dark Side of the Moon? Interesting parallels. But not profound. Do yourself a favor and skip this tedious exercise in self-delusion.