King Charles the III, the new monarch
bbc.com
bbc.com
It is called “Harmony: a new way of looking at our world” [1] and it is a genuinely novel work that integrates a few thousand years of philosophy. I recently wrote a review paper on the concept of harmony [2]— it was during that work that I came across his.
I’m kind of stoked we will have a philosopher king.
[1] http://library.lol/main/3440AE49041B63EB2CD03AF53201428B
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240587262...
The book references sacred geometry. It talks about inscribing an equilateral triangle on Chartres cathedral to draw a diagram of a vulva.
It's full of literal errors about the locations of real world objects and the nature of physics. He references the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.
If "philosopher king" means the old guy in the corner apartment who thinks "everything's quantum, man, it's all about balance and vibrations," then I think we can do without one.
Everything true in the book is just the obvious stuff... don't poison the planet, don't let species go extinct, it's going to be bad. Ok.
It's a stupid, stupid book for shallow thinkers who are impressed by hand-waving gestures at the concept of depth.
I’ve read it closely and followed the references. Calling it a “stupid, stupid book” betrays your ignorance.
It's trite, stupid, and surprisingly short. Very little in it is actively wrong (except for the weird mysticism) but absolutely nothing is novel.
It might be passable as a couple of chapters in a high-school textbook about environmental sustainability written by an entry-level copywriting intern. Oh, wait! It was written by two Harper-Collins textbook staffers and Charles' involvement was... well, who knows.
The chapter on the Fibonacci sequence in particular is disappointing and effectively plagiarized from countless "science for the masses" sources that we've all been exposed to before. The whole Fibonacci/nature connection has of course been debunked for about two decades.
I'm interested in your argument "if you dislike this book, you can't possibly have read it," but not very interested.
There isn't a single thing in this book that I and every moderately bright student of my acquaintance didn't already know at the age of 14, bar the details of Charles' own land-holdings and the few events in that have happened in the last three decades.
Oddly few events in the book happened in the last three decades, though.
To call him a "philosopher King" on the basis of this text is absolutely laughable and verges on shameful.
Edit: Perhaps my favorite gaffe in the whole book is the inclusion of a picture of the marbled cone snail (conus marmoreus) in a different chapter than the Fibonacci sequence nonsense.
Charles isn't even sufficiently up to date on his numerological woo to have gone on about the remarkable connection between the marbled and textile snails and cellular automata. Instead the caption just says "Marbled cone shell. The deadly poisons produced by this and other cone shells could provide major medical benefits, but only if we prevent the extinction of these remarkable creatures."
Further edit: I have been too hard on Charles. After reviewing the credits and references, as you recommended, I must conclude the book was ghost-written by two professional textbook authors employed by Harper-Collins and Charles' involvement was at most editorial. It is therefore indeed the creation of a "philosopher king" in that kings must be good at delegation.
What? No. Wrong.
You are just seeking to trash him. You are looking for anything. These little petty critiques. Why?
Also, it isn’t ghost writing when you credit the authors. If I was a prince, I’d be getting help to write my book too. Nice to credit his collaborators. Obviously the topic is his choice, he obviously cares a lot about it.
I’m telling you — after reviewing hundreds of scientific journal papers and books in this topic area, his book has a lot to offer! It is deeply theoretical but also practical — eg his community centered development approach.
Under the Constitution, before a bill can enter into law it must be passed by Parliament and then signed by the Monarch and countersigned by the responsible minister or state secretary.
“Let me point out that I don’t go around criticizing other people’s private artworks. I may not like some of them very much, but it is their business what they choose to put in their houses. However, as I have said before, architecture and the built environment affect us all. Architecture defines the public realm, and it should help to define us as human beings, and to symbolize the way we look at the world; it affects our psychological well-being, and it can either enhance or detract from a sense of community. As such, we are profoundly influenced by it: by the presence, or absence, of beauty and harmony. I don’t think it is too much to say that beauty and harmony lie at the heart of genuine sustainability. I believe that precisely because the built environment defines the public, or civic, realm it should express itself through the fundamental ingredients that define a genuine civilization – in other words, those civic virtues such as courtesy, consideration and good manners.
It was when I was a teenager in the 1960s that I became profoundly aware of the brutal destruction that was being wrought on so many of our towns and cities, let alone on our countryside, and that much of the urban realm was becoming de-personalized and defaced. The loss was immense, incalculable – an insane “Reformation” that, I believe, went too far, particularly when so much could have been restored, converted or re-used, with a bit of extra thought, rather than knocked down.
I suspect that there are few among you here this evening who would now try to defend such things as the soulless housing estates that characterized that time. Albeit that they were pursued with the best possible motive. One of the problems that I think needs to be acknowledged is that so often we find the kinds of communities that work best cannot be built, due to the specialised and reductive nature of the modern planning process. The design standards imposed by the highway engineering profession, for instance, are particularly damaging to community as they ensure the dominance of the motor vehicle over the pedestrian, even within the neighbourhood. If I may say so, your profession could be of great help with this challenge of converting the planning and engineering professions, as surely you have noticed that the well-proportioned neighbourhoods of the Georgian and Victorian era hold their value far better than the monocultural housing estates of the past 50 years.”