About

Searching Google for the phrase "All the Light We Can See" returns search results for a pulitzer prize winning book called "All the Light We Cannot See," a 2014 war novel by American author Anthony Doerr. Doerr takes a lyrical but pessimistic view on life inevitably ending in war and death.

But, I George Stanciu, now see that every person I meet in ordinary, daily affairs -- the mailman, the bank teller, the butcher at Whole Foods, the obnoixious teenager down the street with his blaring boombox -- is part human and part divine, a storytelling self, often confused, dislikable, and in pain, but always transient, and a mysterious self, deathless, an image of God, worthy of unconditional love.

George Stanciu's Biographical Statement

I am a Romanian gypsy from a long line of chicken stealers, fortunetellers, tax evaders, and draft dodgers. That is not such a bad heritage.

I received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Michigan, and my experience teaching the Great Books at St. John’s College (Santa Fe, New Mexico) is equivalent to a Ph.D. in the humanities. This almost unique background came about because from early on in my intellectual life, I pursued relentlessly fundamental questions.

While on a postdoctoral research fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I became bewildered by the hideousness of nuclear weapons and the nice guys that built them. I could not reconcile Hiroshima and the beauty of physics, nor could anyone else at Los Alamos. So, I decided to take what I thought would be a brief excursion in the humanities. I had the good fortune to study the humanities by co-teaching seminars on the Great Books at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I left St. John’s College to accept the position of Academic Dean of Magdalen College (Warner, New Hampshire). There, I founded a program that employs primary texts and the Socratic method of instruction to explore the first principles of nature and the fundamental questions of human life.

Thus, in one way or another, my entire intellectual life has been spent trying to make sense of human existence in dark times.

I was the Academic Dean Emeritus at Magdalen College of Liberal Arts in Warner, New Hampshire, and the co-author of The New Story of Science and The New Biology.

I moved on to be the corresponding secretary of the Freedonia Academy of Science and Letters. I wrote an update to the New Story of Science entitled The Great Transformation: How Contemporary Science Harmonizes with the Spiritual Life. I also e-published three books. An autobiography: A New Life: An Outsider's Search for Meaning. A book of scientific as well as spiritual techniques to successfully negotiate the ills of modern life titled: The Human Being: A User Manual. And a story book, titled: Joey, that lampoons dumb ideas about human nature taught in Universities.