LABYRINTH TWELVE MORE YEARS have passed since the Second Edition. This book might almost pass as a definition of my life! It has been important to me, for it was not only my first serious attempt to present these truths to the modern mind, but also, to a large extent, forms the basis of everything I have written since then.
I have felt for some time that a new title was needed. I have changed the title, accordingly, from Crises in Modern Thought to Out of the Labyrinth as a more dynamic expression of the insights it contains. I have also re-edited the last chapter to make its last pages easier to read.
In all these years, from 1962-2001, this has remained, for me, an important contribution to the quest for clarity in modern thinking. It hasn't sold particularly well, a fact I regret. My own faith in it, how-ever, has remained undiminished.
I HAVE FOUND THIS BOOK ENTHRALLING TO READ. Never before have I encountered such a clear explanation of the limitations of traditional philosophy in its relation to the advancement of science. Out of the Labyrinth presents an entirely new and liberating framework for relating to reality. It connects philosophy directly to modern science and to natural law. With great clarity J. Donald Walters offers an alternative to old forms of rationalism, which have found themselves in forced retirement owing to the advances of modern science.
Several years ago I taught a university course that included a review of Western philosophy. When the time came for a discussion of values, I was amazed to find that most of my brightest students airily dismissed the subject as "relative." Further probing on my part revealed that they equated values with dogmatism, and dogmatism with intolerance. Values, therefore, to their way of thinking, represented the antithesis of what they considered the primary contribution of modern education: open-mindedness.
These students pointed to past wars, racism, religious dogmatism, sexism, and most significantly-to the more recent developments of science which, they believed, negate the very existence of absolute values.
DURING THE PROCESS of writing this book, I paid a visit to the eminent Jewish scholar, Dr. Leon Kolb, who had been recommended to me as an expert on the history of the Jewish people. I was hoping that he would be able to endorse a point I wanted to make in my section on evolution.
As it happened, although he helped me, it was more in the negative sense: He recounted certain facts of his-tory which forced me to abandon my point.
As our conversation progressed, however, a response that was initially negative on his part ended up very positively indeed for the larger issues of the book.
I had mentioned to Dr. Kolb why I was writing this book, which I said combatted with new ideas the modern question of meaninglessness. By way of illustrating why life is so widely considered meaningless, I mentioned the claim of modern biologists that evolution is purely accidental.
"But it is accidental!" he cried indignantly, interrupting my explanation. "Completely accidental!" He went on to inform me that he was not only a Jewish scholar, but an anthropologist, and had taught physiology at Stanford University for thirty years until his recent retirement. He was solidly in the camp of the evolutionists.
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