Man in Search of Himself
by Jean Charon
(Translated by J E Anderson)
Please note that although almost certainly "out of print" in 2008, this book is still technically subject to copyright. It is published here only for purposes of private study by readers of the Ardue Web Site, and particularly for the additional light it throws on the topics offered for study in the Ardue "University".
Jean-Emile Charon was a physicist and engineer at the l'École Supérieur de Physique et Chimie in France and a specialist in nuclear research at the Commissariat L'Energie Atomique de Saclay.
In other words, he was a nuclear scientist. In 1959, he moved into metaphysics while continuing to do his nuclear research, trying to extend the ideas of Albert Einstein as he searched for a unified theory to encompass the description of all physical phenomena.
Published in an English translation by the Rev. J E Anderson in 1967, Man in Search of Himself develops the theory that in the study of man's make-up, we shall find a better understanding of man's true vocation in the cosmos; and that by modelling ourselves upon Einstein's methods of General Relativity, we can produce a field language for the study of the mechanisms of life.
Charon discusses Newton, Descartes, Teilhard de Chardin, Kurt Gödel, Max Planck, Einstein, Heisenberg, and Jung. He delves into psychoanalysis and compares the languages of religion, science, and art. Embracing the past, present, and future, he traces the processes of evolution till he sees "a new humanity already on the horizon".
Charon is a specialist who has broken out of his shell. As he burst into this new world, he declared: "I have seen landscapes often new to me, that filled me with wonder"; and like a flare lighting the night, his search of the Universe illumines man.