Book Summary

When Galileo proved that the sun was the center of our solar system he created, for the first time in history, Doubt among a crucial minority of Earthlings about blind faith beliefs they had carried with them for millennia. This unleashed the potential for truthful knowledge to be contemplated by individuals who were able to throw everything they knew into doubt, bringing with them the seeds of free thinking, where all philosophical exploration begins.

Free thinkers were successful when it came to the search for truth related to the material world, giving birth to empirical science. They were not as successful when it came to the understanding and explaining the inner world of intellect and emotion, or the world beyond matter, known as Metaphysics. Discovering the truth about the outside world was done slowly but effectively, and many of the lies about the material world that had been created by blind belief have been discarded over time. Thus doubt became a vital component of the process of science. A reasoned understanding of the material world led to technological advances that have given us great power over matter—from the ability to split an atom to the ability to send the resulting bomb anywhere in the world in a matter of hours.

However, when it comes to understanding how our brains’ reactions are the result of our biological evolutionary process, our learning has been much slower. The gap between our inner knowledge and our outer knowledge has widened, creating such an enormous breach between our technological know-how and our underdeveloped humanity, that we are very likely to destroy ourselves if we don’t find equilibrium soon.

Emotions begotten by ignorance and superstition about the inner world inhibit reason as well as the correct use of science. In order to attain peace, individuals and society have to agree on an outer and inner Truth.

Doubt, the second book in the Beyond Homo Sapiens trilogy, highlights important events in history from the 13th Century to the 19th Century, demonstrating how the correct ideas philosophers gave us can help us change gears from biological automatism to spiritual automatism. The thinking of the best of our species can sound sterile and abstract, with no relevance in the process of living, but the social changes philosophers gestated with their ideas--Truth, Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Equality, Emancipation and Independence--began the Age of Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the international struggle for human rights.

The desire of philosophers to free mankind’s thinking from our automatic reactions has been a difficult task. Progressives have sided with philosophers in their struggle to model society around the Truth that all men are created equal. The reactionaries have fought them at every step. The struggle between these two forces has been at the center of the last 500 years of history.

Philosophy for all has been the most important need of humankind since the Enlightenment, because the goal to transform the species into Homo Spiritus has no better ally than philosophy. By the end of the 19th Century we were already late in understanding and promoting the need to liberate all individuals from the egotistical struggle for survival. Once thus liberated, we can give ourselves the necessary education to help us find our common original Center. Only then will we be able to integrate different levels of reality and become true free thinkers.