The new book Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome, by David Klinghoffer, explains in accessible form the radical Neoplatonic science of biologist Richard Sternberg. Neil Thomas, author of Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design, writes about the book:

This combatively titled volume is in essence one long argument in favor of the philosophical underpinning  pertaining to ideas of human existence bequeathed to us initially by the ancient philosopher Plato in his Timaeus some two and a half millennia ago. Lest any modern-day technocrats, exulting in our civilization’s latest gadgets and gizmos, should think ancient philosophy superannuated and entirely dispensable, Klinghoffer reminds us of A. N. Whitehead’s apt observation that modern thinkers have provided little but “a series of footnotes to Plato.” Linking Plato with cutting-edge modern science research, the author makes much of the work of Richard Sternberg who, like Plato before him, posits an immaterial force beyond physical reality. Invoking up-to-date scientific findings he observes that neither DNA nor any other known epigenetic factors can account for us in the fullest sense. Beyond genetics and epigenetics there must lie some Platonic reality all its own. 

Klinghoffer’s arguments will inevitably affront those holding to materialist presuppositions, but glib objections  will have to take into account the most outstanding desideratum of modern biological science, which the author locates in the fact that information sources beyond the material genome are required in order to answer that perennial question, What is life? This is an important contribution in that the author shows himself to be just as much at ease with modern scientific advances as he is with the still very timely thinking of Plato. The volume is to be highly recommended, and readers may be glad to hear that even the most rebarbative-sounding “hard science” is presented with an admirable lucidity.

NEIL THOMAS, READER EMERITUS, UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM, AUTHOR OF TAKING LEAVE OF DARWIN

If the genome is not wholly material, then a fully material process like Darwinian evolution cannot even gain full access to it. If Sternberg is right, that would be the end of Darwinism as a theory offering to explain all of life. Get your copy of Plato’s Revenge now from Discovery Institute Press.