I’m currently reading The Sublime Engine.
Now here’s the deal. This is a fairly well written book. And
there are some scenes that could be outtakes from yet-to-be-made action adventure films. PBS should turn this book into a mini-series on NOVA.
And I hate to sum it up this way, but the focus is waaaaay too narrow. And with that in mind I wish to strike the subtitle: A Biography of the Human Heart, from this book’s future printings. With that subtitle I expected to have a tome on my hands. Something exhaustive. And I would’ve created (or at least found) the time in my life and spent days and nights poring over the actual Biography of the Human Heart. Instead what I’ve encountered is an interesting take from the white, male Judeo-Christian perspective.
Where are the Arabs and the ancient Chinese views? The
Chinese were doing things with medicine (and gun powder and global exploration)
thousands of years before the Europeans.The couple of references to ancient Egyptians just didn’t add
enough layers.
Since the book has rankled me in this way, I decided to
worry the surface.
Not for nothing but this little excerpt from another book (read here) is about equal to half the weight of The Sublime Engine. “The
ruler as the “heart” of the country leads his nation while guided by his own
heart as the “ruler” of his body. It is argued that the two-way metaphorical
mappings are based on the overarching beliefs of ancient Chinese philosophy in
the unity and correspondence between the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of
universe. It is suggested that the conceptualization of the heart in ancient
Chinese philosophy, which is basically metaphorical in nature, is still spread
widely across Chinese culture today.”
Please don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed reading The Sublime Engine,
I just wish the author had expanded his survey of the landscape of the human
heart so that it would've been more encompassing.
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