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E. J. Applewhite is a remarkable man. A
longtime collaborator of Buckminster Fuller (and the co-author
of Fuller's magnum opus, Synergetics), he was also
for twenty-five years one of the chief sifters of intelligence
for the CIA, retiring as Deputy Inspector General.
A man with a quintessentially inquiring
mind, Applewhite was struck by a passing note that there
was no scientific definition of life, and, conversely, death.
This seemed remarkable, and casual research led to a passionate
inquiry into disciplines as diverse as molecular biology,
entomology, crystallography, theology, and robotics.
Applewhite says of his study: "I spent
five years as a wandering minstrel among the learned journals
of science foraging for an insight to the processes of our
mortality only to come to the conclusion that living and
dying are easier to describe in common everyday terms --
in the vernacular -- than in the disciplined language of
the evolutionary and molecular biologists."
Challenging, provocative, and consistently
thought-provoking, Paradise Mislaid is both disturbing
and enlightening. All in all, it is a dazzling intellectual
performance.
E. J. Applewhite lives in Washington,
D.C.
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