From the author of the global bestseller The Secret History of the World comes an epic new history of the relationship between spiritual belief and cutting-edge science.



Jonathan Black shows that from Marie Curie to today's architects of AI, many of our greatest scientists have been guided by secret, mystical and 'higher' teachings towards an understanding of the universe familiar to the builders of the pyramids of Giza or the Temple at Jerusalem. He explores how these discoveries, foreshadowed and paralleled by geniuses including Carl Gustav Jung and Hilma af Klint, raise deep and urgent questions about our understanding of the universe.



Is the material universe we perceive with our senses an illusion?

Is a higher intelligence directing it?

Are events in the future already fixed?

How does modern physics show we are all connected in ways old science said were impossible?

Are different kinds of intelligence - divine and less benevolent - emerging around us?



This is the science hardline atheists don't want you to know about.



Jonathan Black was educated at Ipswich School and Oriel College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy and Theology. After a long career in publishing, he now writes full time. He is the author of the global bestseller The Secret History of the World, The Secret History of Dante and The Sacred History of the World. His books are the result of a lifetime spent reading literature in this area, publishing many of the leading authors in the field and hanging around antiquarian bookshops.