Brief Authority

A novel that continues to explore the one of the great issues of our time: the conflict between materialistic and spiritual world views.

Brief Authority gives an insider’s perspective of one of the great issues of our time: the conflict between established materialism embraced by standard science, ‘Dress’d in a little brief authority,’ and the growing holistic, spiritual view. The novel follows the struggles of a retired medically-trained psychiatrist as he becomes caught in this conflict through encounters with a cluster of gifted young people. How may a conventionally trained psychiatrist react when his fixed materialism is challenged? Could he even begin to think the unthinkable, that his entrenched world-view is unsustainable?
 

About the Author

John Poynton is Professor Emeritus of biology at the University of Natal, South Africa, a research associate of the Natural History Museum, London, and a scientific fellow of the Zoological Society of London.  His main research has been in African zoology and biogeography; he has also published in the philosophy of science and in psychical research.  He served on the council of the South African Society for Psychical Research, and subsequently served on the council of the Society for Psychical Research in London, where he was the Hon. Secretary.

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