The Cosmic Serpent has ratings and reviews. D.M. said: Jeremy Narby’s Cosmic Serpent is a densely academic book that is 50% footnotes. This not. Swiss-Canadian anthropologist Dr Jeremy Narby argues in his book, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, that the twin. This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald “a Copernican revolution for the life sciences,” leads the reader.
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I initially thought of the writings of Carlos Castaneda, but there is a scientific and intellectual rigor in Narby’s book that I can not find in Castaneda’s works.
Narby spent several years living with the Ashaninca in the Peruvian Amazon cataloging indigenous uses of rainforest resources to help combat ecological destruction. From the snake in the Garden of Eden to the twin snakes of the cadacus and of Hinduism, snakes and dualism are all around us.
In addition, the falsifiability of evolution has been satisfactorily addressed by numerous scientists and philosophers and it is indeed a “theory” in the classic sense. While in this hallucinogenic state, a person can communicate with their own DNA through images and music.
Instead it is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking books I have ever read! As the plot thickens, he hypothesizes that the shamans are perceiving reality at a sub-molecular level, and research carries him beyond his field into the realm of biology.
You explain how different scientific schools keep to themselves, and in doing so, their discoveries and knowledge become limited.
For the first half of the book, I was strongly in the former camp. Oct 30, Jenny rated it liked it Shelves: His investigations into comparative mythology and the preponderance therein of snakes and twins across cultures is interesting, if not already rather well known. Sep 06, Jamie rated it really liked it Shelves: This is often filed under the cosimc New Age. Each strand of DNA is made up of just four molecules in various regular combinations.
The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
I love Narby’s cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, “big picture” approach. So we are moving towards a test of the hypothesis.
He goes to great lengths to provide evidence for the very extraordinary claims made here, but the evidence is so fraught with confirmation bias, simple misunderstandings of science, and giant leaps in logical thinking that by the point I gave up on it, I felt like I should have been keeping track of all the faulty evidence and logic throughout just to try and keep away from the later conclusions that rested on those early problems.
Reading Narby’s experience of taking hallucinogens was eerie, but I could relate to some of his sensations. Narby then extends this idea out further. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. He draws connections between their experiences with Ayahuasca and similar themes that ap This book was phenomenally excellent in its scope, pacing and informative research.
View all 4 comments. Jeremy Narby is obviously intelligent. It was clear that Narby had done a great deal of research on his hypothesis. It brings together so many of the issues that interest me: This book radically pushes boundaries set in our understanding of reality, and the materialism that stunts our growth as a society.
This means somewhere in the seas these four nucleobases were formed, linked together in a way that encoded information, found a way into cells, found a handy enzyme to split the coils into identical halves once in a while to reproduce, and gradually came to inhabit the earth with living descendants. I like how he tries to find evidentiary support for all of his claims. The book starts off all right.
I found this book very inspiring from a creative perspective, and tore through it in about 3 days. The reflex reaction towards non-western thinking is pejorative, and the repeated testimonies of indigenous experts are scorned or disbelieved, even though they are, in effect, graduates of “indigenous universities” some 5, years old.
It was a similar process when a Catholic priest first suggested the “big bang” as first cause of the universe. As you can see, there are a lot of positive things about this book! Narby suggests how closely DNA corresponds to this description.
But did I write a breathless book about it and pretend that non Look, the first time I took a hallucinogen, I too saw all of the natural world break apart and twist together and reveal to me its interlinked workings, its fundamental connectedness to me and every other living and non-living entity in the universe entire, I too saw into the deeper reality of the unified cosmic consciousness, and I alone?
I realize this was published two decades ago and the study of biology doesn’t stand still, so evidence used by Narby e. But ayahuasca, sacred plant-teacher to so many societies for thousands of years, was patented in by Loren Miller, director of the California-based International Plant Medicine Corporation.
Jul 24, Nadine May rated it really liked it Shelves: The author is quite brave to make some gutsy and creative claims but in my humble serpentt he committed two cognitive fallacies in the elaboration of his theory: Interesting concept serpwnt hallucinogenic drugs giving insight into molecular biology, but little in substance other than comparative mythology coincidences. Don’t believe or disbelieve it – but do think about it. His journey starts with his experience in the Western Amazon basin where he was invited to try powerful hallucinogen called “ayahuasca”.
The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby | : Books
The Cosmic Serpent has much to say about the possible nature of a universal knowledge, the limits of scientific rationalism and the importance of respecting and listening to the ‘science’ of so called ‘primitive people’. Retrieved from ” https: The snakes, he writes, communicate, or “teach” him.
He has a thesis that ayahuasca allows shamans to communicate with nature via DNA. His book is a fascinating depiction of a scientist prepared to commit professional suicide in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, wherever it may lead him. Proteins and enzymes were described as ‘miniature robots,’ ribosomes were ‘molecular computers,’ cells were ‘factories,’ DNA itself was a ‘text,’ a ‘program,’ a ‘language,’ or ‘data.
Why were you drawn to the Amazon? Read our privacy policy. For a time he lives with Peruvian Indians and his account of his own experience of drug induced trance and an encounter with two giant talking snakes is spell binding.
The book has a promising start but it goes downhill from there.