The Tao of Physics
About This Book
The Tao of Physics, first published in 1975, was a landmark work that demonstrated for the first time in accessible language the remarkable philosophical parallels between modern physics — particularly quantum theory and the theory of relativity — and the mystical traditions of Asia. Fritjof Capra, a theoretical physicist, showed that the new physics had arrived through its own rigorous empirical methods at a picture of reality that Eastern mystics had described through direct contemplative experience: a reality of dynamic interconnection, where things are fundamentally processes rather than objects, and where the observer cannot be separated from the observed.
The book opened a generation of scientifically educated readers to the intellectual validity of mystical experience by demonstrating its philosophical coherence with the findings of their own discipline. It remains one of the finest examples of genuine respectful dialogue between science and spirituality — a dialogue that honours both partners as authentic ways of knowing rather than treating either as superior or as needing to be reduced to the other.
What You'll Learn
Readers will understand the specific parallels between quantum physics and Eastern mystical traditions — particularly the concepts of non-locality, interconnectedness, the participatory nature of observation, and the dissolution of fixed boundaries between entities, learn precisely why the new physics challenges the mechanistic and materialistic world-view that dominated Western thought for three centuries, develop an intellectual framework for appreciating scientific and mystical inquiry as complementary approaches to the same underlying reality, and gain confidence in a world-view that takes both outer empirical investigation and inner contemplative experience seriously as sources of genuine knowledge.
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