We are delighted to announce that a revised edition of Science Revealed by Reverend Danny Nemu is now available. First published in 2014 to great acclaim, Nemu’s artful and electric tour of revelatory apocalypse in science uncovers the powerful role of the unknown as a driving force in the history of science.
The book examines how many ground-breaking ideas result not from rational thinking and tapping on calculators, but from visions, dreams, psychedelics, feverish delirium and other non-rational revelations. The controversies that blow up when such insights clash with received wisdom are often resolved in a manner most unscientific, and this is just one of the ways in which what is simplistically called 'rationalism' often obscures truth in a fundamentally complex world.
Recently donning his robes for a startling new series of apocalyptic articles ‘And then came the Virus’, we caught up with the good reverend ahead of the Science Revealed reissue.
What has the Reverend been up to for the last few years?
After publishing two books on the apocalypse, or how the veil (kalyptein) falls away (apo-) I hung up my robes to found RAIN (Regenerative Agroforestry Impact Network), and spent two years developing reforestation projects and regenerative culture in the UK and Brazil, pursuing what psychiatrists call “a delusion of grandeur”. In the midst of a co-dependent delusion spanning the globe, it was the only rational choice.
I wasn’t hoping to prevent our self-obsession from progressing to self-annihilation (I’m not that deluded). The main reason was because I don’t have the courage to douse myself in biofuel in Parliament Square and strike a match while reciting psalms. Also it was because my research for the Third Book of the Apocalypse had already convinced me that apocalypses happen repeatedly in history. They approach from a blind-spot to strike and break open a given community, and they do so with a discernible pattern (watch this space for more details). RAIN was and remains about fortifying the kinds of networks that might survive such an event and catalyse regeneration when the dust settles.
Your first book Science Revealed has just been reissued with an update. Why reissue it now?
COVID-19 has given us a moment to stop and look clearly, and as the smoke clears we see the mirrors surrounding us. Our reflections, always distorted, have become gawking caricatures. Our unwillingness to take responsibility for ourselves is shot back at us in the faces of the clowns we have put in power, leading us into hell with their buffoonery, killing our loved ones, playing for time as time is running out. Our bullshit jobs, our fascination with superficial beauty and bravado and identity. There is something far more beautiful beyond infinite refractions of ourselves. My books are hammers.
The main change in Science Revealed is the chapter on Law and Disorder. I have been an anarchist for as long as I have been thinking about it, but that is not the case for some people.
In the first edition I don’t think I did the system (or the non-system) justice.
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Paperback | ISBN 9781916266704 | 194pp | 2020
Science Revealed is available now from Amazon and Psychedelic Press
Find Danny Nemu on Twitter: @RevNemu