The Thought at the Back of the Mind

“This is the most engaging, indeed inspiring, justificatory defense of the humanities I have yet encountered. Rather than being content to marshal the usual theoretical arguments, Annette Aronowicz shows us in practice how a subtle interpretive reading of richly suggestive texts buttresses our capacity to remain fully human in an age dominated by the techno-scientific paradigm. Hers is humanities scholarship of the highest order, helping us to think seriously about our human destiny.”


—Bruce K. Ward, professor emeritus of religious studies, Thorneloe University





“The Thought at the Back of the Mind is incisive and elegantly written. . . . Aronowicz turns to novelists, essayists, a poet, and—not least—a physicist to explore how to express the distinctively human within and beyond what is generated by an at once reductive and expansive account of science, giving a generous hearing to the humanities and to the irreducible multiplicity of human life. It is an important book, and strongly recommended.”


—Matthew W. Maguire, associate professor in history and Catholic studies, DePaul University





“This is a delightful book, at once absorbing and insistent, meditative and a call to action. An expert guide through the difficult writings of five elegant modern writers, Aronowicz invites her readers to take up the good fight, reading carefully and thinking boldly, not only for their own sakes, but because everything is at stake—the possibility of our being human today beyond what she calls the religion of science. Intuition, metaphor, the ability to imagine the whole, subjectivity, glimpses of the Real, the ethical, interiority, poetry, and more; it is these things that make us human and that remain a bulwark against the technologization of our lives.”


—Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, provost professor, Indiana University Bloomington