John Horgan

Draws on interviews with many of the world's leading scientists to discuss the possibility that humankind has reached the limits of scientific knowledge

Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age

The End Of Science

Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for Enlightenment

Rational Mysticism

A respected journalist explores the fields of science that try to explain the mysteries of the human mind, arguing that science has done little to plumb the depths of our minds and cannot ever rationally explain all of human behavior. 50,000 first printing.

How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation

The Undiscovered Mind

Max Taylor

These papers from a meeting on terrorism in Cork in 1999 include: the effects of changing geo-politics on terrorism; strategic and tactical responses to innovations in terrorism; the changing nature of terrorism; the threat of weapons of mass destruction; and single-issue terrorism.

The Future of Terrorism

Covering all principal media forms, print and electronic, on both sides of the border, Horgan shows how Irish history and politics have shaped the media of Ireland and, in turn, been shaped by them.

A Critical History Since 1922

Irish Media

Universal truths

In the tradition of his bestselling, critically acclaimed "The End of Science, " award-winning journalist John Horgan exposes an insidious myth--the belief that science can ever fully explain the mystery of the human mind.

The Price of Power

Labour

Director International Center for the Study of Terrorism and Associate Professor of Psychology John Horgan, JR

This accessible new book looks at how and why individuals leave terrorist movements, and considers the lessons and implications that emerge from this process. Focusing on the tipping points for disengagement from groups such as Al Qaeda, the IRA and the UVF, this volume is informed by the dramatic and sometimes extraordinary accounts that the terrorists themselves offered to the author about why they left terrorism behind. The book examines three major issues: what we currently know about de-radicalisation and disengagement how discussions with terrorists about their experiences of disengagement can show how exit routes come about, and how they then fare as ‘ex-terrorists’ away from the structures that protected them what the implications of these findings are for law-enforcement officers, policy-makers and civil society on a global scale. Concluding with a series of thought-provoking yet controversial suggestions for future efforts at controlling terrorist behaviour, Walking Away From Terrorism provides an comprehensive introduction to disengagement and de-radicalisation and offers policymakers a series of considerations for the development of counter-radicalization and de-radicalisation processes. This book will be essential reading for students of terrorism and political violence, war and conflict studies, security studies and political psychology. John Horgan is Director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at the Pennsylvania State University. He is one of the world's leading experts on terrorist psychology, and has authored over 50 publications in this field; recent books include the The Psychology of Terrorism (Routledge 2005) and Leaving Terrorism Behind (co-edited, Routledge 2008)

Accounts of Disengagement from Radical and Extremist Movements

Walking Away from Terrorism

A day in the inner and outer lives of a college professor, blogger, divorced father, thinker, and yearner. What would it feel like to wake up inside the head of someone who writes about science for a living? John Horgan, acclaimed author of the bestseller The End of Science, answers that question in his genre-bending new book Pay Attention, a stream-of-consciousness account of a day in the life of his alter ego, Eamon Toole--a blogger, college professor, and divorced father. This work of fact-based fiction, or "faction," follows Toole as he wakes up in his rented apartment in upstate New York, meditates with the mantra "Duh," commutes via train and subway to an engineering school in New Jersey, teaches a William James essay on consciousness to freshmen, squabbles about Thomas Kuhn with colleagues over lunch, takes a ferry to Manhattan and spends the evening with his bossy, Tarot-reading girlfriend, Emily, on whom he plans to spring a big question. Throughout the day, Toole struggles to be rational while buffeted by fears and yearnings. Thoughts of sex and death keep intruding on his ruminations over quantum spookiness, the neural code, the Singularity, and free will. Pay Attention is a profane, profound meditation on the entanglements of our inner and outer worlds and the elusiveness of truth.

Sex, Death, and Science

Pay Attention

"In an age when there is more written about terrorism than anyone can possibly read in a lifetime, it has become increasingly difficult for students and scholars to navigate the literature. At the same time, courses and modules on terrorism studies are developing at a rapid rate. To meet this challenge, this comprehensive new Reader in Terrorism Studies seeks to equip the aspiring student, based anywhere in the world, with a comprehensive introduction to the study of terrorism. Containing many of the most influential and groundbreaking studies from the worlds leading authorities on terrorism, drawn from several disciplines, and edited by one of the worlds leading experts, John Horgan, this book is the essential companion for the student of terrorism and political violence.Terrorism Studies, which starts with a detailed Introduction on 'Studying Terrorism', is divided into nine sub-sections, each of which has an introduction and guide to further reading. It will be essential reading for undergraduate students of terrorism and political violence, and recommended reading for students of security studies, international relations and political science in general"--

A Reader

Terrorism Studies

Tore Bjorgo

This new edited volume expands our understanding of the processes by which individuals and groups disengage from terrorism. While there has been a growing awareness of the need to understand and prevent processes of radicalization into terrorism, disengagement and deradicalization from terrorism have long been neglected areas in research on terrorism. This book uses empirical data to explore how and why individuals and groups disengage from terrorism, and what can be done to facilitate it. The work also presents a series of case studies of disengagement programmes, from Colombia, northern Europe, Italy, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, comparing and assessing their various strengths and weaknesses. In light of the lessons learned from these cases, this book describes and explains the potential for new developments in counter-terrorism. This book will be of great interest to all students of terrorism studies, war and conflict studies, international security and politics in general, as well as professionals in the field of counter-terrorism.

Individual and Collective Disengagement

Leaving Terrorism Behind

The author of The End of Science offers an intriguing investigation into the latest research into the mechanics and meaning of mystical experience, looking at such fields as chemistry, physics, theology, and psychology to narrow the division between reason and enlightenment.

Dispatches from the Border Between Science and Spirituality

The author of The End of Science chronicles the most advanced research into such experiences as prayer, fasting, and trances in this “great read” (The Washington Post). How do trances, visions, prayer, satori, and other mystical experiences “work”? What induces and defines them? Is there a scientific explanation for religious mysteries and transcendent meditation? John Horgan investigates a wide range of fields—chemistry, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, theology, and more—to narrow the gap between reason and mystical phenomena. As both a seeker and an award-winning journalist, Horgan consulted a wide range of experts, including theologian Huston Smith, spiritual heir to Joseph Campbell; Andrew Newberg, the scientist whose quest for the “God module” was the focus of a Newsweek cover story; Ken Wilber, prominent transpersonal psychologist; Alexander Shulgin, legendary psychedelic drug chemist; and Susan Blackmore, Oxford-educated psychologist, parapsychology debunker, and Zen practitioner. Horgan explores the striking similarities between “mystical technologies” like sensory deprivation, prayer, fasting, trance, dancing, meditation, and drug trips. He participates in experiments that seek the neurological underpinnings of mystical experiences. And, finally, he recounts his own search for enlightenment—adventurous, poignant, and sometimes surprisingly comic. Horgan’s conclusions resonate with the controversial climax of The End of Science, because, as he argues, the most enlightened mystics and the most enlightened scientists end up in the same place—confronting the imponderable depth of the universe.

Science journalist John Horgan presents a radical new perspective on the mind-body problem and related issues such as consciousness, free will, morality and the meaning of life. Horgan argues that science will never discover an objectively true solution to the mind-body problem because such a solution does not exist. Horgan explores his thesis by delving into the professional and personal lives of nine mind-body experts, including neuroscientist Christof Koch, cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, child psychologist Alison Gopnik, complexologist Stuart Kauffman, legal scholar and psychoanalyst Elyn Saks, philosopher Owen Flanagan, novelist Rebecca Goldstein, evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, and economist Deirdre McCloskey.

Science, Subjectivity & Who We Really Are

Mind-Body Problems

War is a fact of human nature. As long as we exist, it exists. That's how the argument goes. But longtime Scientific American writer John Horgan disagrees. Applying the scientific method to war leads Horgan to a radical conclusion: biologically speaking, we are just as likely to be peaceful as violent. War is not preordained, and furthermore, it should be thought of as a solvable, scientific problem—like curing cancer. But war and cancer differ in at least one crucial way: whereas cancer is a stubborn aspect of nature, war is our creation. It’s our choice whether to unmake it or not. In this compact, methodical treatise, Horgan examines dozens of examples and counterexamples—discussing chimpanzees and bonobos, warring and peaceful indigenous people, the World War I and Vietnam, Margaret Mead and General Sherman—as he finds his way to war’s complicated origins. Horgan argues for a far-reaching paradigm shift with profound implications for policy students, ethicists, military men and women, teachers, philosophers, or really, any engaged citizen.

The End of War

As staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, "are rarely so human . . . so at there mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge."This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx's view of progress, Kuhn's view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindless Horgan's smart, contrarian argument for "endism" with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise. Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.

John Horgan

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