PASSAGES ABOUT EARTH
By William Irwin Thompson
205 pages. Harper & Row. $6.95.
Yes, Cultural Historian William Irwin Thompson is off again, hot on the scent of the future. Readers of his At the Edge of History (1971) know what to expect: a wizardry with words, continuous trips to the well of personal experience (Irish-Californian-Catholic), unlikely linkages of ideas, polarizations (technology v. mysticism) all united by the play of an original, restless, tendentious Intelligence.
Because Thompson does not believe in straight lines of logic, his thought is often hard to untangle. Yet a theme runs through his...