A New Model of the Universe

A New Model of the Universe P.D. Ouspensky 554pp.

Throwing this review back to 1913, P.D. Ouspensky presents a very enjoyable reaction to, among a wide variety of other topics, Darwin’s theories of evolution. But I’m getting ahead of myself slightly. A New Model of the Universe is a precursor to some of the late 20^th and early 21^st century literature on magic. Ouspensky presents his view of understanding the universe as a vast and mystical system, true meaning hiding behind the veil of the widely known sciences in a similar manner to the ancient Pythagoreans’ understanding of reality through mysticism masked in the guise of bland mathematics.

Ouspensky discusses this view of reality through a wide variety of instantiations in common culture at the time, ranging from mathematics, with an utter fascination with four-dimensional space. This thought is, frankly, really just amusing to read. Rather than spoiling the joy of his prose, I’ll let Ouspensky speak for himself,

If the fourth dimension exists, one of two things is possible. Either we ourselves possess the fourth dimension, I.e. are beings of four dimensions, or we possess only three dimensions and in that case do not exist at all.

If the fourth dimension exists while we possess only three, it means that we have no real existence, that we exist only in somebody’s imagination, and that all our thoughts, feelings and experiences take place in the mind of some other higher being, who visualises us. We are but products of his mind and the whole of our universe is but an artificial world created by his fantasy.

If we do not want to agree with this, we must recognise ourselves as beings of four dimensions.

But the mathematical fancy in which Ouspensky indulges is not nearly the greatest part of the book. No, that comes from his reading of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Ouspensky holds that Darwin was utterly correct to understand the development of organisms over time, but that he was subtly off the mark. Or, in a more charitable reading of Ouspensky’s criticism, Darwin consciously masked a mystical truth in the guise of science.

Rather than biological development through time, Ouspensky believes in a mystical development of mankind through a progressively deeper understanding of reality. It is through throwing back the veils of reality that a mind grows into a wider and wider understanding and a greater purpose and truth in his life. This philosophy is expounded at length through the course of the entire book, applying a certain form of hermeneutics best likened to literary criticism to every text and symbolic object Ouspensky can lay his narrative gaze on.

A New Model of the Universe comes dustily forward from the cusp of modernity. Just as new genres of purely scientific writing were beginning to be widely published and disseminated, there was a corresponding intellectual restlessness. Notions of humanity’s place in the universe were being shifted about and questioned, a trend whose effects we are still feeling to this day. Reacting to the weirdness of, at the time, modern science (and it is important to remember how utterly weird and unsettling evolution was to people in the late nineteenth century), by reading it in the manner of secret knowledge gained through mystical cults has a resemblance to the modern phenomenon of conspiracy theories. There is an exhilaration and a distinction to being one of the enlightened few who have pierced the mystery and see the world for what it is, unlike the unsuspecting sheep who look at contrails as merely airplane exhaust. Ultimately, however, this line of thought is at best unreliable, though mostly benign. Ouspensky clings tenaciously to a method of literary criticism and textual interaction best understood from the  late renaissance into the early Enlightenment era, twisting about the convulutions and upheavals in the wake of new science.

Would I recommend A New Model of the Universe? To read? Yes. To take seriously? Not so much.

Score: 3.2/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Difficult to say, on the one hand I really enjoyed reading it, but on the other, I don’t think I will come back to it.

-Mr. Cheddar