Links to the files of
which follow the remarks below:–
Dating from 1988–9,
this work investigates the significance of the four basic elements, viz. fire, water, earth and air, with regard to a variety of different disciplinary
contexts, including science, politics, economics and religion, and then seeks
to draw ideological and moral lessons from the apperceived correlations.Of additional significance in relation to the
Elements are the relationships between being and doing, awareness and emotion,
mind and brain, nature and artifice, individualism and collectivism.There is also, within Elemental Spectra,
a critique of Arthur Koestler's tripartite theories,
as developed in books like The Act of Creation and Janus – A Summing Up, as well as
a refutation of the theory underlying his psychological pessimism concerning
the dichotomous relationship between what he calls the 'old brain' and the 'new
brain', roughly corresponding to the cerebellum and the cerebrum.In fact, Koestler
is no less the principal philosophical target of this work than Schopenhauer
was of the previous one (Towards the Supernoumenon),
and although I acknowledge my debt to him as an influence on my thought, I was
able to move beyond him at this point and accordingly dispense with a number of
his theories. – John O’Loughlin.
John O’Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic
of Ireland,
of mixed Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split partly due to his mother's Aldershot origins (her father, a Presbyterian from Donegal, had served in the British Army),
he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who upon the premature death of her husband had initially returned to Ireland after a lengthy marital absence from Athenry) in the mid-50s and, having had the benefit of private tuition from a Catholic priest, subsequently attended St. Joseph's and St. George's schools in
Aldershot, Hants, and, with an enforced change of
denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been sent to a children's home
by his mother upon the death and repatriation of his ethnically-protective grandmother, he went on to attend first Barrow Hedges Primary School in Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, and then Carshalton High School for Boys. Upon leaving the latter in ptr-GCSE era 1970 with an
assortment of CSEs
(Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCEs
(General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved up to London proper and went on, via two short-lived
jobs, to work at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford
Square, where he eventually became responsible for booking examination venues throughout Britain and Ireland.
After a brief flirtation with further education at Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, he returned to his former job in the West End
but, due to a combination of personal factors, quit the ABRSM in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which,
despite a brief spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey Management Agency within the local YMCA in the late '80s and
early '90s, he has steadfastly continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), An Interview
Reviewed (1979), Secret
Exchanges (1980), Deceptive Motives(1981), and False Pretences (1982). Since the mid-80s John O'Loughlin has dedicated himself almost exclusively to
philosophy, which he regards as his true literary vocation, and has penned several titles of a
philosophical nature, including Devil and
God (1985–6), Towards
the Supernoumenon(1987), Philosophical Truth (1991–2) and,
more recently, The Best
of All Possible Worlds (2008), The Centre of Truth
(2009), Insane but not Mad (2011) and Philosophic Flights of Poetic Fancy (2012).
