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trsr's review
3.0
More a long essay than a book, The mind as nature, carries Eiseley's personal reflection of his own transformation from a childhood of social isolation to a leading scientist and teacher. He writes sensitively about students and teachers and the role of the latter in sculpting the former. He writes about the latent genius that lies in almost anyone: "Mathematical theory, science, the glories of art lurked hidden as the potential seeds of the universe itself, in the minds of children rocked to sleep by cave fires in Ice Age Europe." Yet, it may be some situation, crisis or anxiety that triggers a release of character or creativity. "Sometimes the rare, the beautiful can only emerge or survive in isolation. In a similar manner, some degree of withdrawal serves to nurture man's creative powers. The artist and scientist bring out of the dark void, like the mysterious universe itself, the unique, the strange, the unexpected." His words are strangely reminiscent of Steinbeck's words on creativity in East of Eden, a book that appeared a decade earlier.
Eiseley also talks about students and the dilemmas of being a teacher--a person who is supposed to foster the rounded growth of a student. He says: "It is just here, however--in our search for what we might call the able, all-purpose, success-modeled student--that I feel it so necessary not to lose sight of those darker, more uncertain, late-maturing, sometimes painfully abstracted youths who may represent the Darwins, Thoreaus, and Hawthornes of the next generation.
Eiseley also talks about students and the dilemmas of being a teacher--a person who is supposed to foster the rounded growth of a student. He says: "It is just here, however--in our search for what we might call the able, all-purpose, success-modeled student--that I feel it so necessary not to lose sight of those darker, more uncertain, late-maturing, sometimes painfully abstracted youths who may represent the Darwins, Thoreaus, and Hawthornes of the next generation.
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