Wim Van Binsbergen

Sangoma Science Wim Van Binsbergen

Black Thought Matters. This is the cult book for the 2020s! Starting out as a poet, the author became an anthropologist of African religion, then an adopted African prince, then a practising African diviner / healer (sangoma), then a professor of intercultural philosophy. The book testifies to the unique knowledge, authority and wisdom thus accumulated. In a passionate and deeply personal way, the author traces his steps over half a century and across most continents; critically discusses theory, method, and tacit presuppositions, of religious anthropology and of the philosophy of science; shows how close the African life world is to the New Physics; and presents an ontology according to which reality constantly oscillates between Being and Non-Being. Thus this book accounts for religion, God, evolution, thought, time, the paranormal, the world-creating nature of science, and the time-warping / event-creating potential of divination. The argument is set against the background of the integrated long-range perspective on global cultural history, which the writer has helped develop over the past decades.