Jack Scott

Jack Scott

About

Jack Scott was born on a British army base in Canterbury, England in 1960 and spent part of his childhood in Malaysia as a 'forces brat.' A fondness for men in uniforms quickly developed. At the age of eighteen and determined to dodge further education, Jack became a shop boy on Chelsea's trendy King's Road. Days on the tills and nights on the tiles were the best probation for a young gay man about town. After two carefree years, Jack swapped sales for security and got a proper job with a pension attached. By his late forties, passionately dissatisfied with suburban life and middle management, he and his Civil Partner, Liam, abandoned the sanctuary of liberal London for an uncertain future in Turkey.

In 2010, Jack started an irreverent narrative about his new life and Perking the Pansies quickly became one of the most popular English language blogs in Turkey. Within a year, he had been featured in the Turkish national press, had published numerous essays and articles in expat and travel magazines and had contributed to the Huffington Post Union of Bloggers. As the blog developed a head of steam, a growing worldwide audience clamoured for a book. Jack duly obliged and his hilarious (well, he thinks so) memoir, Perking the Pansies, Jack and Liam move to Turkey was released through Summertime Publishing in 2011. Receiving critical acclaim, Jack's debut book won a Rainbow Book Award in two categories, made the top ten for the prestigious Polari First Book Prize and featured in a double page spread in Time Out, Istanbul. The book's success opened up a whole new career for Jack as an author. Jack and Liam ended their Anatolian affair and paddled back to Britain on the evening tide. They currently live in Norwich, a surprising cathedral city in eastern England.

Jack hasn't rested on his laurels. He's finished the sequel to tie up the fraying loose ends and bring Jack and Liam's story crashing to its surprising conclusion. Turkey Street, Jack and Liam move to Bodrum was published in May 2015.

Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God

Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God

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<p>“<em>We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”(</em>Teilhard de Chardin<em>)</em></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;"><em>Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God </em> is as layered as a French cassoulet, as diverting, satisfying and as rich. Each reader will spoon this book differently. On the surface it seems to be a simple and light-hearted poetic journey through the history of Western thought, dominantly scientific, but enriched with painting and music. Beneath that surface is the sauce of a new evolutionary idea, involution; the informing of all matter by consciousness, encoded and communicating throughout the natural world. A book about the cathedral of consciousness could have used any language to paint it, but science is perhaps most in need of new vision, and its chronology is already familiar.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The author offers a bold alternative vision of both science and creation: she suggests that science has been incrementally the recovery of memory, the memory of evolution/involution</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">.</em></p><p>“<em> Involution proposes that humans carry within them the history of the universe, which is (re)discovered by the individual genius when the time is ripe. All is stored within our DNA and awaits revelation. Such piecemeal revelations set our finite lives in an eternal chain of co-creation and these new leaps of discovery are compared to mystical experience</em>” (From a reviewer)</p><p>Each unique contributor served the collective and universal return to holism and unity. Thus the geniuses of the scientific journey, like the spiritual visionaries alongside, have threaded the rosary of science with the beads of inspiration, and through them returned Man to his spiritual nature and origin.</p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The separation between experience and the rational intellect of science has, by modelling memory as theory, separated its understanding from the consciousness of all, and perceives mind and matter as separate, God and Man as distinct. This work is a dance towards their re-unification: Saints and scientists break the same bread.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">All of time and all the disciplines of science are needed for the evidence. Through swift (and sometimes sparring) Cantos of dialogue between Reason and Soul, Philippa Rees takes the reader on a monumental journey through the history of everything – with the evolution of man as one side of the coin and involution the other.  The poetic narrative is augmented by learned and extensive footnotes offering background knowledge which in themselves are fascinating. In effect there are two books, offering a right and left brain approach. The twin spirals of a DNA shaped book intertwine external and internal and find, between them, one journey, Man’s recovery of Himself., and (hopefully) the Creation’s recovery of a nobler Man.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">From the same review “</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">The reader who finishes the book will not be the same as the one who began it. New ideas will expand the mind but more profoundly, the deep, moving power of the verse will affect the heart.</em></p><p><em>(Marianne Rankin: Director of Communications, Alister Hardy Trust)</em></p><p> </p>

Story Behind The Book

Jack Scott became an accidental writer. When he and his partner, Liam, jumped the good ship Blighty and waded ashore to Turkey, they had planned to put their feet up and watch the pansies grow. But so much happened around them that Jack was compelled to write it all down. First came the blog, then came book, next comes the sequel.

Reviews

<p>Empathetic, respectful and pretty acute. Hugh Pope. Author and Journalist.</p> <p>Jack Scott is something of a miracle worker in that he's persuaded a non-Turkish publisher that there's a market for a story about life abroad that's neither Tuscany nor Provence. Time Out, Istanbul.</p> <p>An entertaining story, told with wit and insight. Paul Burston, Author.</p> <p>A really excellent book. Funny and insightful and poignant all at once. Rainbow Book Awards.</p> <p> </p>