Shut up, Norman

Geoffrey D. Falk is a former admirer of Ken Wilber turned critic and sceptic. Judging by both this book and his blog, Falk is somehow associated with CSICOP alias CSI. Thus, his criticism of Wilber is written from an atheist and materialist perspective.

Unfortunately, "Norman Einstein" is poorly edited, badly written and contains too long quotations from works by other authors. The main source for Falk's criticisms is Frank Visser's website Integral World. Essentially, "Norman Einstein" is an attempted summary of the critical articles on Wilber found on that site.

The entire book feels extremely in-house, more in-house in fact than Integral World. The causal reader may want to know why it's so important to criticize this Ken Wilber character in the first place? Falk's friend James Randi apparently never heard of Wilber until Falk approached him on the matter (Wilber claims to have paranormal abilities, something Falk wanted Randi to test and debunk).

Apart from the chapter on Adi Da and the appendix on David Bohm, "Norman Einstein" just isn't good enough, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the concrete criticisms made. Jeff Meyerhoff's "Bald ambition" is somewhat better, but the best critiques of Wilber can be found on Integral World.

Incidentally, Falk's book is available free on-line, so you don't even have to buy it, unless you collect Wilberiana or anti-Wilberiana, for no good reason at all...