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The Allure of the Compelling Genius of History: Teaching Young Humans Humanity and Hope

Philip McShane, 2015

This book intimates the movement of theology into respectable companionship with the general explanatory drive of the mature sciences. At the same time it is an invitation to seed a strange effective Han Dynasty of the well of loneliness. The first brief Han Dynasty in China (206 BCE–220 CE), spanned the Galilean time of Jesus. The new permanent Han Dynasty of global care is to be slowly and patiently weaved round the minding of the Wholly Frail that is the Unknown Real Jesus of the symphony of history.

Piketty’s Plight and the Global Future

Philip McShane, 2014

This book presents a revolutionary challenge to Thomas Piketty and others attempting to come to grips with the problem of income inequality. In his widely acclaimed Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty rightly takes contemporary economics to task for its preoccupation with “petty mathematical problems.” Yet despite his massive appeal to data, Piketty remains trapped in descriptive categories and haunted by flaws in selecting and ordering the significant data. This “is like a physicist searching data for traces of the Higgs particle without eyes laden with the standard model." This book provides an inviting glimpse of a fresh context, a new paradigm, a precise heuristic.

The Everlasting Joy of Being Human

Philip McShane, 2013

This is a sequel to Futurology Express that takes up classical questions of immortality and eschatology but addresses them in a fresh and distinctive way. “What is it to be like for me when I move out of this complex chemical wonderland that is my body?” By exploring topics including “the betweeness of death,” “time and eternity,” and “Aquinas and eschatology,” and by venturing into the works of a handful of contemporary theologians and physicists, McShane illustrates the requirements for stepping towards the mature collaborative work intimated by the method of cyclic collaboration pioneered by Bernard Lonergan.

Futurology Express

Philip McShane, 2013

This book is a hopeful invitation to assent to a collaborative care for villages, towns, and the globe. The optimism springs from a possibility of circulating the light of timely ideas in markets, schools, and town halls. Futurology Express envisages a population of humble and patient collaborators—some with a knack for recovering the story of lost or overlooked ideas; others with a knack for visioning a better future; and all bent towards radiating the light of timely ideas cyclically and spirally. The first fifteen chapters, written without footnotes, are accessible to any reader.

Method in Theology 101 AD 9011: The Road to Religious Reality

Philip McShane, 2012

This book was written to encourage those accepting the invitation of Bernard Lonergan in Method in Theology to implement functional collaboration. It points to a revolution in religious studies and practice with a focus on direct discourse that pronounces, reconciles, and communicates, and that is characteristic of theology in oratione recta. The author’s hope is that a contemplative wondering about self and universe will lead beyond the aporia of postmodernism.

Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas

Pierrot Lambert and Philip McShane, 2010

This is the story of Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), his formation as a Jesuit and sense of intellectual vocation, the development of his proposal of a new political economy, his life as a philosopher and professional theologian, the importance of physics and Maxwell’s equations in his magnum opus Insight, and his final breakthrough to the structure of collaboration. The biography recounts the startling reach of Lonergan in areas as diverse as pragmatic self-knowledge, mathematical logic and metalogic, economics, and systematic theology.

Sane Economics and Fusionism

Philip McShane, 2010

The first part of this book presents an introduction to a view of the basis of economic analysis that is absent from academic and political discourse, and thus absent from economic practice. The second part of the book adds to the first the specification of collaboration that is to increase the probabilities of sane economics becoming a part of discourse and practice. The name “Fusionism” is taken from Bernard Lonergan’s canon of explanation in hermeneutics in Insight. McShane envisages the emergence of Fusionism as something that parallels the pattern of emergence of Gauge Theory in physics.

Shaping the Future of Language Studies

John Benton, 2008

(Available on Amazon in paperback)

(Available on Amazon as ebook)

Shaping the Future of Language Studiesis a ground-breaking appeal to students and professionals either in the fields of Linguistics and Literature or in the Philosophy of Language. It presents a coherent challenge to those who are struggling with the problem of language universals and to those who seek a principle of integration in the broad field of language studies. On the basis of empirical observation, Benton arrives at a solution drawn from long-neglected achievements in Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Bernard Lonergan along with a rich panorama of linguistic specimens and performance that brings to light the two basic principles in language studies: first, a focal shift in grammatology, and secondly, a functional relating of sub-fields of language. Benton's study anticipates a future transformation of language instruction from junior kindergarten to advanced post-secondary levels of education, and ultimately, a lifting of education in the Humanities toward richer research and more adequate communication.

Lack in the Beingstalk: A Giants Causeway

Philip McShane, 2006

The "lack" in the title suggests a lack of collaboration that characterizes isolated hyper-specialized research and publications as well as descriptive philosophies and theologies. McShane proposes that a Calculus of Variations analogous to that which interested the early Husserl is to replace the isolation of individuals and disciplines and lead to genuine progress and economic justice. The reach beyond effete isolation implies that adult growth is viewed normatively as accelerating.

Thinking Woman

Alessandra Gillis Drage, 2006

Women tend to know instinctively that our thinking is an intimate inner reach in us, an inner dynamic of mind. Yet this deepest of self-assets is scarcely noticed much less analyzed or reflected upon. Thinking Woman invites women to an appreciation of themselves as thinking beings. In a personal and inspirational way, this book offers women a journey and process toward the discovery of themselves and their minding. Readers interested in women's issues will appreciate reflections on the rise of feminism as a thinking enterprise and its significance in world history.

Introducing Critical Thinking

John Benton, Alexandra Gillis, Philip McShane, 2005 (reprint 2006)

Introducing Critical Thinking reaches out to wide audience with a fresh answer to the question, “What is Critical Thinking?” Our treatment of the question brings to light a basic confusion about the topic, in both the philosophical tradition as well as the natural and human sciences. Our approach points to a new ethos in learning and teaching. Our results anticipate a more effective collaboration in the academy.

Music That Is Soundless

Philip McShane (2nd ed.), 2005

This is a new edition of McShane's beautiful book about God, originally published in the late 1960s. The title is taken from the poem "Songs Between the Soul and the Bridegroom" by John of the Cross (1542-1591). The book invites you to turn your heart and mind toward your own heart of loneliness, which is your reach for God, for "the Music Without Sound."

Pastkeynes Pastmodern Economics

Philip McShane, 2002

This book offers an introductory reach for economic wisdom. At the same time, it is an explosive, yet pragmatic, push past Keynesian theories and postmodernism. What is missing in present economic thinking is both an appreciation of the economic variables and vision that would restore true democracy. The emergence of enlightened economics will gradually replace present disorder and confusion with innovative local and global vision.

Beyond Establishment Economics

Bruce Anderson, Philip McShane, 2002

This book is a critique of Gregory Mankiw's acclaimed first year economics text, Principles of Macroeconomics, representative of the present culture of economic education. By shifting interest away from establishment notions regarding finance and stock-trading in order to highlight the centrality of local creativities and intelligent credit structures, Beyond Establishment Economics guides the reader towards a fresh understanding of the rhythms of production and an appreciation for the growing need for a re-vitalized democratic view that is beyond present economic theories.

A Brief History of Tongue

Philip McShane, 1998

As the title implies, this book is about the emergence of language, both in you and in civilization. Using Helen Keller as inspiration and illustration, the author points to how language emerges with a 'Big Bang' in each of us. Focus is on the root of that 'Big Bang' in human creativity and speech. The reader is invited to identify intricacies of adult consciousness by apreciating the trancition from babbling to talk. The result is a new and radical view of language.

Seeding the Positive Anthropocene

Philip McShane, James Duffy, Robert Henman, and Terrance Quinn, 2022

(Available on Amazon)

There is a growing interest in the character and the challenge of the Anthropocene. Although efforts to pin down beginning dates of this epoch have been debated, there is a broad consensus that humanity is facing an unprecedented challenge to surviving on Earth, a challenge which humans have created ourselves. Seeding the Positive Anthropocene asks us to reach for the deeper grounding of all such efforts. Perhaps that asking is best hinted at by pluralizing the word character in a paradoxical non-question: “What is to be the 'character' of the characters transforming the Anthropocene from its present negativity to a positive period of human flourishing.”

Randomness, Statistics, and Emergence

Philip McShane, 2021 (2nd edition)

(Available on Amazon)

Randomness, Statistics, and Emergence was written in Oxford in the late 1960s with four distinct goals in mind: (i) inaugurate dialogue between various schools of philosophy; (ii) orientate philosophy of science away from general considerations; (iii) provide a detailed account of various points treated in the works of Bernard Lonergan; (iv) establish on a wider basis of contemporary mathematics and science the position of Lonergan on the nature of randomness, statistics, and emergence. The second edition includes a second preface "The Riverrun to God,” written by McShane in the fall of 2012, and an introduction written by Terrance Quinn, author of Invitation to Generalized Empirical Method in Philosophy and Science and The (Pre-) Dawning of Functional Specialization in Physics.

Wealth of Self and Wealth of Nations: Self-Axis of the Great Ascent

Philip McShane, 2021 (2nd edition)

(Available on Amazon)

This introductory text presents exercises that are accessible to undergraduates, indeed to high school students. The book is something of a climber’s guide for those wanting to ascend and gain a viewpoint. As indicated by the subtitle, the axis of the ascent is you. In the Epilogue McShane notes that a viewpoint "can develop only slowly, and its emergence is at times more genetical, at times more dialectical, depending on one’s teacher, temperament, tribulations, and tradition." He also makes the remarkable claim that a change in viewpoint is needed for survival.

Reorienting Education and the Social Sciences: Transitioning Towards the Positive Anthropocene

Robert Henman, 2022 (2nd Edition)

(Available on Amazon)

This second edition of a book on human curiosity expands the original edition to include the relationship between curiosity and psychology, mental health and the role of art in the development of human feeling. The basic thesis of the book remains unchanged, that the present problems associated with research in education and the social sciences and their application regard us all as test subjects. Revisions offered by reviewers have led to minor changes and in the final chapter a more significant one regarding the example for a discussion of functional specialization. An Appendix on intervention in history ends the book.

The Observer

Sally McShane, 2020

(Available on Amazon)

The Observer is a mystery novel and a love story. It’s also a novel about the meanness of ego and hate. With compassion, sensitivity and humour, it will lift the reader towards our human struggle for humility and openness, and the deep desire to be understood and loved. With its vital and engaging characters, this novel will pull you gently into the graciousness of this world and the mystery of the Other.

Interpretation from A to Z

Philip McShane, 2020

(Available on Amazon)

In The Future: Core Precepts in Supramolecular Method and Nanochemistry, McShane expresses what he considers the effective road forward. The present book enlarges on that reach. The effective road involves a clear operative distinction between the negative Anthropocene, in which we presently live shabbily and destructively, and the positive Anthropocene towards which we must work slowly and democratically, against empires of idiocy, by tuning into the chemistry of our desires. This little book moves along with many twists and turns, but it is also a straightforward help to begin to read properly the two main treatments by Bernard Lonergan of the topic of interpretation: section 3 of chapter 17 of Insight, and chapter 7 of Method in Theology.

The Future: Core Precepts in Supramolecular Method and Nanochemistry

Philip McShane, 2019

(Available on Amazon)

An invitation to a chemical revolution, one that lifts us towards the positive Anthropocene, leaving behind the dying days of the negative Anthropocene so neatly identified in 1940 by Charlie Chaplin at the conclusion of The Great Dictator: “Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.” For those familiar with Lonergan’s Method in Theology, The Future aims at a new, creative reading. The author’s central message is to focus on theology ASAFACT—to come to our senses and ASsemble our AFfirmed ACTing to change history. Assembly includes self-assembly, an assembly of a piece of a lonely cosmic chemistry, a supermolecule whose reality in history is weaved round a complex W-enzyme.

The Perfume Beyond the Veil

Sally McShane, 2018

(Available on Amazon)

A well-known stage actress, Genia O’Donovan, has bought an old manor house on the edge of the Irish Sea. Surrounded by the beauty and the mystical secrets of the Irish countryside, she begins to sense her new home has its own secrets. She fears she has bought a home with a grim history. She is kept sane by the presence of her dear friend Dimitri of Greek opera fame and a visit from a few of her stage friends. Her angry, jealous sister and an accomplished nephew, who is grieving the cruel death of his parents, have also joined her. In the background are the surprising revelations about an ancestor who left Ireland during the Great Famine. The scene has been set for a mysterious and frightening summer in the southeast corner of Ireland.

Economics for Everyone: Das Jus Kapital

Philip McShane, 2017 (3rd Edition)

(Available on Amazon)

This book aims both to identify the abusive arrogance of an "economic theory has hung around our little-incomed necks for more than three centuries" (i) and to offer a hopeful, long-term view that has at its heart the economic well-being of all people. McShane claims that in good time an educated public will identify good and bad “driving” of the economy the way we identify good and bad driving of a car nowadays. The Preface to the 3rd edition adds a simple exercise for understanding sane economics.

Profit: The Stupid View of President Donald Trump

Philip McShane, 2016

(Available on Amazon)

The problem of profit and its distribution lurked behind debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This book is a blunt attack on the president of the United States and his perspective on its economy. McShane identifies a massive needed shift in economic theory and practice, a shift generally recognized even though little clues to it are present in the present culture of politics or economics, financial analyses or public discourse.

Seeding Global Collaboration

Patrick Brown and James Duffy, editors, 2016

(Available on Amazon)

A collection of twelve essays written for "Functional Collaboration in the Academy," a conference held at the University of British Columbia, in July, 2014. The essays explore and advance a revolutionary method for collaborative inquiry relevant to both the natural sciences and the human sciences. As they range from research in neuroscience to interpreting space and time, from forging new housing policies and communicating macroeconomic dynamics to performing distinct collaborative tasks as part of a unified process of caring for ecosystems, they seek to seed a new ethos of efficient collaboration and effective meaning.

Global Collaboration: Neuroscience as Paradigmatic

Robert Henman, 2016

(Available on Amazon)

The three articles printed here point towards the need for a form of collaboration that is presently inoperative in neuroscience and is not functioning in the current sciences at all. The New Science is a division of labour and tasks that has the potential to increase the probabilities of cumulative and progressive results. Bernard Lonergan made this discovery in 1965 and called it functional specialization.