Is science going soft? At the American Association for the Advancement of Science convention in San Francisco in February, 750 scientists, the second biggest crowd of the meeting, turned out to hear Dr. Robert Ornstein, 32, discourse on the "psychology of consciousness." For Ornstein, a researcher at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco, crowds are nothing new. Not only scientists but philosophy students and yoga practitioners are drawn to hear him because of his venturesome effort to reunite science and spirit, reason and intuition.
Western man's step-by-step, linear, analytic mode of...