The Ghost in the Machine by Arthur Koestler

The Ghost in the Machine by Arthur Koestler

In The Sleepwalkers and The Act of Creation Arthur Koestler provided pioneering studies of scientific discovery and artistic inspiration, the twin pinnacles of human achievement. The Ghost in the Machine looks at the dark side of the coin: our terrible urge to self-destruction...

Could the human species be a gigantic evolutionary mistake? To answer that startling question Koestler examines how experts on evolution and psychology all too often write about people with an 'antiquated slot-machine model based on the naively mechanistic world-view of the nineteenth century. His brilliant polemic helped to instigate a major revolution in the life sciences, yet its 'glimpses of an alternative world-view' form only the background to an even more challenging analysis of the human predicament. Perhaps, he suggests, we are a species in which ancient and recent brain structures - or reason and emotion - are not fully co-ordinated. Such in-built deficiencies may explain the paranoia, violence and insanity that are central strands of human history. And however disturbing we find such issues, Koestler contends, it is only when we face our limitations head-on that we can hope to find a remedy.

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), a Hungarian-British author and journalist, was deeply involved in the great ideological and social disputes of his era. In 1931, Koestler joined the German Communist Party, which he left in 1938 after becoming disillusioned with Stalinism. He garnered international acclaim for his anti-totalitarian novel Darkness at Noon, which he published in 1940. Koestler advocated for a variety of political causes throughout his life. His novels, reporting, autobiographies, and political and cultural essays positioned him as a key commentator on the twentieth-century's difficulties.