Secular Mind

Does the business of daily living distance us from life's mysteries? Do most Americans value spiritual thinking more as a hobby than as an all-encompassing approach to life? Will the concept of the soul be defunct after the next few generations? Child psychiatrist and author Robert Coles offers a meditation on how secular culture has settled into the hearts and minds of Americans. This book is an essay on the shift from religious control over Western society to the scientific dominance of the mind. Interwoven into the story is Coles's personal quest for understanding how the sense of the sacred has stood firm in the lives of individuals - both the famous and everyday people whom he has known - even as they have struggled with doubt.

Review: Coles ... is one of those rare writers who can gracefully combine intellectual rigor with the idiom of spiritual quest... [T]his is a potent and powerful work readers will think about and return to again and again. Publishers Weekly The Secular Mind is part meditation, part autobiography, part literary and moral commentary... [Coles] meditates on the possibility of belief in the sacred in the midst of an increasingly secular society. -- Robert Kiely The Boston Book Review A clear-eyed, deeply informed and admirably cool measure of the heritage and impetus of the forces that have guided our daily actions. -- Reynolds Price The New York Times Book Review By now most people know Robert Coles. Or for their own sake they ought to... To read his books ... is to make him a lasting friend. The New York Times Book Review Indeed, Coles writes that the idea of even looking for knowledge--comprehension of the world--is a hallmark of the secular, scientific mind. Flannery O'Connor once remarked that 'mystery is a great embarrassment to the modern mind.' Science seeks explanations for everything, from the history of the universe to the history of the tapeworm."...The Secular Mind, happily, does not live up to its title: it is not a secular, scientific study but a porous, open reflection--with answers that are incomplete. But the answers are satisfying and refreshing because they are incomplete. -- David Grayson San Francisco Bay Guardian Coles is tough-mindedly open to inspiration wherever it may be found. He begins by addressing the secular mind's relationship with its opposite-the sacred-and finishes with a turn toward self-exploration. Throughout, Coles is admirably alert to the costs of both worldviews. -- Bob Reeder Boston Review The Secular Mind offers many small gems... Demanding, but definitely worth the effort. Booklist This book poses gripping existential questions elegantly. The writing invites general readers... The Virginia Quarterly Review This book is well written and quite readable at all levels... Reading it is a delightful and stimulating experience. Choice Coles is one of the best story-tellers in social science ... The Secular Mind is a book for the unhurried reader ... [We learn] to become deeper participants in a respectful yet distancing reflection on our culture and times. -- James R. Kelly Cross Currents This work is the product of a wise man sincerely asking up to rethink our basic values. Coles' style is casual and meditative; his book almost reads like a journal. Readers from a variety of disciplines will appreciate Coles' work. -- Laju M. Balani Journal of Church and State