Error and Loss

Error and Loss digs out and exposes a fundamental assumption deeply buried both in common thought and in materialist philosophy: that reason transcends its evolutionary pedigree, allowing us to speak coherently of a reality divorced from all experience. As we have moved from a religious to a scientific explanation of our cosmos this error has led directly to a terrible loss-the disenchantment that pervades our age. Yet when we dare to stare the error in the face all variants of materialism self-destruct, and the world we live in, the world of trees and rocks and stars and animals and other human beings, receives its once unquestioned magic back. Error and Loss is a philosophical work of play and parable and paradox, a detective story that uncovers what has deadened our connection to our universe, then offers up both restoration and a reconciliation with the thought of ages past.

Ashley Curtis is the author of Error and Loss: A Licence to Enchantment (Kommode Verlag, 2017, 'O Switzerland!': Travelers' Accounts, 57 BCE to the Present (Bergli Books, 2018), and Why Do the Swiss Have Such Great Sex? (Bergli Books, 2018). He lives in the Val d'Hérens in Switzerland, where he works as a freelance writer, editor and translator.