BOOKSTORE | REVIEWS
The Overweight Brain
by Lois Holzman
The current human predicament is precariously paradoxical. We live in a mass culture obsessed with the need to know at a time of such instability and unpredictability that knowing is of little good. If there is a way out of this predicament—and there is—then people need to hear about it and take part in what is no less a conceptual revolution than the Scientific Revolution, which is what gave us the knowing paradigm in the first place.
Lois Holzman’s The Overweight Brain is available in print and Kindle editions at Amazon Books.
The reviews are in on Lois Holzman’s The Overweight Brain!
“What will happen when move beyond knowing? We won’t be catapulted back into the stone age. Religion didn’t disappear when we grew into our scientific mindset. Similarly, engineering manuals won’t dissolve into thin air when we move into a new developmental space. Bridges will continue to be built. Only we won’t continue to equate knowing with progress. Instead we will relearn to relish the experience of “creativity that surprises itself.‘” READ MORE
Philippe Vandenbroeck
Facilitator, Post-disciplinary Researcher, Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland
—
“Bloody brilliant!”
Irshad Manji, Ph.D.
NY Times bestselling author, Don’t Label Me! An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times; recipient of Oprah Winfrey’s Chutzpah Award; founder, Moral Courage Academy
—
“Lois’s book is about knowledge and knowing – and what is wrong with them. She lays down a theoretical framework to what I have observed in my experimental work over several decades. She examines what ‘I know’ or ‘I don’t know’ mean in the environment of our times. This may worry you, the reader, and perhaps it should. Our civilisation is based on knowledge. But does it have to continue that way? Does growth necessarily need knowledge in a time where ‘knowing’ is increasingly obsolete? This book may disorient you – be stirred, not shaken.”
Sugata Mitra, Ph.D.
Professor Emerituis of Educational Technology, Newcastle University; founder, School in the Cloud global community; author, The School in the Cloud: The Emerging Future of Learning
—
“Schools are obsessed with knowing…But there’s an important shift underway. In her bold and accessible book, Lois Holzman offers an approach to education in which ‘knowing’ is part of something much bigger — part of the human capacity to grow and evolve. When we as educators shift our focus from ‘knowing’ and onto ‘growing,’ we help young people be all they can be — accessing all the resources in their lives (including all they know) to develop.”
David J. Chard, Ph.D.
Dean, Boston University, Wheelock College of Education and Human Development
—
“Holzman asks an incredibly compelling question: Given we’re awash in a world of knowledge, testing and diagnoses, are we any closer to peace?…to bridging “the achievement gap” between white middle class children and minority and poor children?…to eliminating poverty and hunger?…to ending violence?…or to stopping the destruction of the planet?”
Don Waisanen, Ph.D.
Assoc. Professor of Communication, Baruch College, School of Public & International Affairs
—
Holzman offers the most riveting and sophisticated attack on epistemology in this extraordinarily accessible book. It is a masterpiece of practical philosophy to savour and play with in our moment-to-moment lives and required reading for all of our incoming students.
Omar H. Ali, Ph.D.