Capra, Fritjof 1939-

PERSONAL:

Born February 1, 1939, in Vienna, Austria; son of Heinz (a lawyer) and Ingeborg (a poet) Capra; married Elizabeth Hawk (a designer), September 27, 1985; children: one daughter. Education: University of Vienna, Ph.D., 1966. Politics: Green Party. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis, jazz.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Berkeley, CA. Agent—John Brockman, 5 E. 59th St., New York, NY 10024.

CAREER:

Physicist, educator, and writer. Researcher at the University of Paris, France, 1966-68, University of California—Santa Cruz, 1968-70, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford, CA, 1970, Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, England, 1971-74, and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California, 1975-88; Schumacher College, England, faculty member; Center for Ecoliteracy, Berkeley, CA, founding director, 1995—. Taught at colleges, including the University of California—Santa Cruz, University of California—Berkeley, and San Francisco State University.

MEMBER:

International Transpersonal Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1992, for Belonging to the Universe: Explorations on the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality; Bioneers Award, 1999, New Dimensions Broadcaster Award, 1998; inductee into the Leonardo da Vinci Society for the Study of Thinking, 2007.

WRITINGS:

The Tao of Physics, Shambhala (Boulder, CO), 1975, published as The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, 1983.

The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1982.

(With Jacqueline Capra) Die Seele Indiens: Tamil Nadu (title means "Tamil Nadu: The Soul of India"), Ellert & Richter (Hamburg, Germany), 1984.

(With Charlene Spretnak and Rudiger Lutz) Green Politics, Dutton (New York, NY), 1984, revised edition, Bear (Santa Fe, NM), 1986.

Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with Remarkable People, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1988.

(With David Steindl-Rast and Thomas Matus) Belonging to the Universe: Explorations on the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 1991.

(With Ernest Callenbach, Lenore Goldman, Ruediger Lutz, and Sandra Marburg) EcoManagement, Aktuell (Stuttgart, Germany), 1992, Berrett-Koehler (San Francisco, CA), 1993.

Fritjof Capra in Conversation with Michael Toms, Aslan Publishing (Lower Lake, CA), 1994.

(Editor, with Gunter Pauli) Steering Business toward Sustainability, United Nations University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 1996.

Die Capra Synthese (title means "The Capra Synthesis"), Scherz (Bern, Switzerland), 1998.

The Hidden Connections: Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainability, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2002.

The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2007.

(Editor, with others) Reframing Complexity: Perspectives from the North and South, ISCE Pub. (Mansfield, MA), 2007.

Wrote screenplay for Mindwalk, 1990, a film based on the author's books, directed by his brother, Bernt Capra, and starring Liv Ullmann, Sam Waterston, and John Heard; contributor to numerous journals and periodicals, including American Journal of Physics, Human Dimensions, Saturday Review, Zero, American Theosophist, Journal of Social and Biological Structures, and Science Digest.

SIDELIGHTS:

Fritjof Capra's first book, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, promotes a school of thought that combines aspects of Eastern mysticism and physics. "The new physics proves that what we call objects and events are really patterns in a cosmic process," Capra explained in Newsweek. "The Eastern mystics knew that. They called the separation of objects maya, an illusion which comes from our categorizing intellect." Newsweek contributors Kenneth L. Woodward and Gerald C. Lubenow noted that the new movement has appealed more to mysticists than scientists, but added that Capra and others have "developed a heady sense of daring plus the taste of eventual triumph." The Tao of Physics became a classic, first as an underground book that sold through word of mouth, then as a mainstream publication. It eventually was published in more than forty editions in twenty-three languages.

In an interview with Renee Weber in ReVISION, Capra defended his merging of mysticism with physics. "People who really study mysticism, who experience it, who practice it, and also who write about it know very well that mystical experience has nothing to do with nebulous and unclear thinking…. It can be very clear, very precise, and very reliable." He also declared: "Mysticism, or the perennial philosophy, provides the most consistent philosophical background to our modern scientific theories."

Capra followed with The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture, an expansion of the theories he puts forth in his first book, and in which he explores paradigm shifts in medicine, biology, economics, and psychology. He writes about the people who influenced him in the writing of the book in Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with Remarkable People. Both volumes have also been widely published in sixteen and eleven languages respectively. He also authored Green Politics, the first of a number of books in which he emphasizes the necessity of respecting and preserving the earth and its natural resources, and in which he studies political parties that have been founded on these principles.

Capra is a coauthor of Belonging to the Universe: Explorations on the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality, which draws parallels between modern science and Christian theology. Richard J. Hauser wrote in the Catholic World that "the book, coming at [the] beginning of an emerging new paradigm in the sciences and humanities, draws together strands of experience and thinking and presents them in a stimulating and creative manner."

Steering Business toward Sustainability is a collection of essays collected by Capra and coeditor Gunter Pauli from economists, business executives, ecologists, and others who propose approaches to ecological sustainability.

Capra's other earlier books include Die Seele Indiens: Tamil Nadu ("Tamil Nadu: The Soul of India"), written with Jacqueline Capra, and EcoManagement, written with Ernest Callenbach, Lenore Goldman, Ruediger Lutz, and Sandra Marburg. Die Seele Indiens is a photo essay on life in the cities and rural villages of Tamil Nadu in southern India. EcoManagement focuses on ecologically conscious management and provides a framework for making it work.

The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems was reviewed by the London Guardian reviewer Jay Griffiths, who wrote that the book "is a retelling and combining of recent scientific discoveries, including the theory of complexity, Gaia theory, and Chaos theory. It is a compendium of ‘systems thinking.’ The basic cultural tension, [Capra] says ‘is one between the parts and the whole.’ The emphasis on the parts has been called mechanistic, reductionist, or atomistic; the emphasis on the whole has been called holistic, organismic, or ecological. In twentieth-century science, the latter has become known as ‘systems thinking.’" Griffiths commented that "ever since Bacon and Newton, science has, supposedly, opposed spirituality, and particularly earth-based spirituality. What Capra shows is how theoretical physics (of all things) can give this experience an academically sophisticated legitimacy." Griffiths called Capra's "a Renaissance mind at home in the disciplines of medicine and psychology as much as economics, biology, and physics."

In The Hidden Connections: Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainability, Capra demonstrates the conflicting goals of the two networks that will dominate society going forward. One is expanding capitalism, based on finance and communications, which aims to expand power and the flow of goods. The other is ecology-based, with a purpose of maximizing the quality and sustainability of life and the planet. Capra demonstrates that humanity should adopt values that are not solely driven by economics, but those that are holistic and foster the survival of humanity. He uses as an example the issue of genetically modified crops. Although this technology is said to enhance food production, writes Capra, the possible outcomes of such experimentation are not yet known.

Capra notes that the power of money dominates with the acceleration of trade deregulation, resulting in profit being the only consideration. A consequence is that checks against pollution have been dramatically reduced, one of the issues of protesters opposing globalism. As John McCrone noted in the Guardian: "Intelligence needs to be put back into the system. And this demands grassroots activism." McCrone also commented that "Capra's is a cool and rational analysis rather than the work of a firebrand. But for those feeling a bit confused or helpless in the face of an unpredictable future, this is a great introduction both to the nature of the problem and the logic of the response. A book that could make a difference, if anyone is listening."

Capra followed up The Hidden Connections with The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance, which was called a "carefully considered portrait of a true Renaissance man" by a contributor to Kirkus Reviews. "I have been fascinated by the genius of Leonardo for a long time," Capra noted in an interview on the Powell's Books Web site. The author added: "In my … book, I present a coherent account of Leonardo's tremendous scientific achievements and evaluate them from the perspective of 21st-century scientific and philosophical thought. Leonardo's science is a science of living forms, a science of quality, which can be seen as a distant forerunner of today's complexity and systems theory."

In The Science of Leonardo the author draws largely on secondary sources, Leonardo's notebooks (which included 6,000 pages and 100,000 drawings), and secondary material. He presents a view of Leonardo that fits in with his reductive approach to science with an emphasis on the need for integrative, systematic thinking. In Capra's view, Leonardo is the epitome of this approach, which combines a scientific intellect with artistic sensitivity and skill. In his exploration of Leonardo's life and science, the author presents his case that Leonardo predated Galileo by a century and Newton by two centuries in using a new integrative approach to science that considered how natural phenomena were fundamentally interdependent. "In Leonardo's studies of anatomy, optics, mechanics, and fluids, Capra detects precursors of the scientific spirit," noted Gilbert Taylor in Booklist.

In the process of telling Leonardo's life story, the author uses numerous quotations and illustrations from Leonardo's notebook. These quotations and illustrations ultimately help make the case that Leonardo had vast empirical knowledge of numerous natural phenomena that would not be discovered by others for years. Capra shows how phenomenal this accomplishment was and attributes it partly to Leonardo's lack of a classical education, which freed him from conventional classical thinking.

Reviewers had high praise for The Science of Leonardo. Sara Hurter, writing in the Library Journal, noted that the author "has an engaging style and a thorough understanding of the science behind Leonardo's inventions and thinking." Referring to the book as a "fascinating intellectual biography," a Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that the author "expresses his own intellectual kinship with Leonardo's ‘multidisciplinary perspective’ on science."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 1996, Donna Seaman, review of The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, p. 192; October 15, 2007, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance, p. 14.

Catholic World, November, 1993, Richard J. Hauser, review of Belonging to the Universe: Explorations on the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality, p. 279.

CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal, February 15, 2005, Sonal Singh, "The Stone Circle," p. 522.

Earth Island Journal, summer, 2002, "Green Press Initiative."

Emergence: Complexity and Organization, October, 2004, Bill Godfrey, review of The Hidden Connections: Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainability, p. 81.

Guardian (London, England), November 6, 1996, Jay Griffiths, review of The Web of Life, p. 4; August 3, 2002, John McCrone, review of The Hidden Connections, p. 12.

Journal of the Community Development Society, July, 2004, Bonnie Wichtner-Zoia, review of Steering Business toward Sustainability, p. 133.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2007, review of The Science of Leonardo.

Kliatt, July, 2004, Katherine Gillen, review of The Hidden Connections, p. 44.

Library Journal, September 1, 2007, Sara Hurter, review of The Science of Leonardo, p. 161.

Nature, November 14, 2002, Crispin Tickel, "Living with Capitalism," review of The Hidden Connections, p. 12.

New Scientist, December 7, 1996, review of The Web of Life, p. 46; November 22, 2003, review of The Web of Life, p. 55.

New Statesman, November 22, 1996, Steven Rose, review of The Web of Life, p. 46.

Newsweek, July 23, 1979, Kenneth L. Woodward and Gerald C. Lubenow, "Physics and Mysticism" p. 85.

Nonwovens Industry, May, 2003, Scott Sneed, "The Tao of Nonwovens: Eight Simple Rules for Getting a Purchase Order from a Disposable Products Buyer," p. 82.

Organisations & People, May, 2003, Bruce Nixon, review of The Hidden Connections, p. 46.

Publishers Weekly, September 2, 2002, review of The Hidden Connections, p. 71; August 20, 2007, review of The Science of Leonardo, p. 62.

ReVISION, spring, 1981, Renee Weber, "The Tao of Physics Revisited: A Conversation with Fritjof Capra Conducted by Renee Weber," pp. 36-52.

San Francisco Chronicle, December 15, 1996, Keith Thompson, review of The Web of Life, p. 4.

Skeptical Inquirer, July 1, 2005, Burton S. Guttman, "How Do You Solve a Problem like a Capra? Fritjof Capra's Popular Books Purport to Expound Modern Thinking in Science by Promoting ‘System Thinking.’ Really, They Are Naive and Misleading, Ignoring the Success of Detailed ‘Mechanistic’ Explanations, Especially in Biology," p. 38; November 1, 2005, Lawrence S. Lerner and Bruce Byfield, "Fritjof Capra's Worldview," p. 67.

Tikkun, Siri Steiner, March 1, 2004, "The (Un)natural Order," review of The Hidden Connections, p. 69.

Whole Earth, fall, 2002, Randy Hayes, "Ecology, Capitalism, and Sustainability," fall, 2002, review of The Hidden Connections.

ONLINE

Fritjof Capra Home Page,http://www.fritjofcapra.net (April 7, 2004).

Grace Cathedral,http://www.gracecathedral.org/ (January 6, 2008), profile of author.

Intuition Network,http://www.intuition.org/ (January 6, 2008), "The Emerging New Culture with Fritjof Capra, Ph.D."

MarketWire,http://www.marketwire.com/ (September 22, 2006), "The University of Advancing Technology Announces Dr. Fritjof Capra as the 2007 Inductee into the Leonardo da Vinci Society for the Study of Thinking."

On Truth & Reality,http://www.spaceandmotion.com/ (January 6, 2008), "Fritjof Capra—The Tao of Physics."

Powell's Books,http://www.powells.com/ (January 6, 2008), brief interview with author.

OTHER

Beautiful Minds (television series; episode one), British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 2002.