Second Thoughts About Man

SOME see it as a new Reformation, straining to meet its Luther at a yet undiscovered cathedral door. Some hail it as an evolutionary crisis, with the cells of the old humanity fairly bursting to reassemble into some more spiritual new being. To others it may be a more prosaic phenomenon, the inevitable swing of the pendulum, the return to some forgotten truths--or to dangerous superstitions.

By whatever name, there is an impending sense of change in the world of ideas. The reigning wisdom that informed and compelled the past few decades is under attack--or, at the very least, under crossexamination. That wisdom has been variously called liberalism, rationalism, scientism: concepts certainly not identical but related. But now man's confidence in his power to control his world is at a low ebb. Technology is seen as a dangerous ally, and progress is suspect. Even the evolutionists share this unease; their hope lies not in man as he is but in some mutant superman.

One of the most critical disturbances is the threat to an old and honored dichotomy. In the theocentric world of the Middle Ages, man lived in a holistic universe, with heaven above and earth below embraced in one divine economy. But the aggressive humanism of the Renaissance and the mechanistic visions of the scientific revolution shattered that unified cosmos. For more than three centuries, Western civilization has lived instead in a split-level universe conceived by the French philosopher Rene Descartes. A religious man, but also a rationalist, Descartes contended that man could demonstrate truth only about a world he could measure. The world of spirit was beyond such measurement, a matter of faith and intuition, not truth. Descartes became a self-fulfilling prophet. The spiritual world was left to philosophers and divines, many of whom shared the Cartesian bias that theirs was an ephemeral discipline. The physical world became the domain of Western science, though man sometimes seemed less the master of that world than its mechanic.

Now, with a sense that materialism is bankrupt, many men are challenging the dualistic vision. One reason for their challenge may be the new concern for ecology, which affirms John Donne's precept that the death of any life diminishes all. Another may be the lingering vision from the moon of spaceship earth. The counterculture concept of a "new consciousness" is often gut emotion, a kind of pantheism that recalls the Romanticism of the 19th century.

But there is also a difference between today's resurgent cosmological sense and the confident breadth of the romantic vision. At the heart of the ferment of the '70s is a deep, even humble perception that man and his universe are more complex than he recently thought. Thus experts are under fire (some, self-critically, have even abjured their own expertise) because their solutions have proved less certain than advertised, or because they have seemed to sacrifice the whole man to one of his parts. Optimism had bred a false enthusiasm that this method or that system was somehow the answer. Now some of the growing skepticism questions whether any system can ever fully surmount the recalcitrance and perversity of man.

The current of ideological contestation runs through every field of thought, though it takes one turn here, another there. These alternative views are not necessarily new. They may be old familiar thoughts to mankind; they may be second thoughts to any given generation. In successive issues, beginning this week, the editors of TIME will examine some of the second thoughts that seem to be occurring in four critical areas--behavior, religion, education and science.

This week our Behavior section examines some challenges to the ruling doctrines of the Freudians and behaviorists. It takes a look at the inherent qualities of man as seen by certain anthropologists and at some pessimistic views about the limits of human engineering.

One stream of yearning apparent among the questioning thinkers of the '70s is spiritual, and TIME'S Religion section next week will examine new developments in religious thought. Some of the spiritually hungry are feeding on a resurgence of the externally supplied certainties of fundamentalism. Others are seeking internal spiritual experience in Western pentecostalism, or in the unfamiliar world of Eastern mysticism.

The Education section, in its turn, will consider the premise that equal opportunity to go to good schools will make Americans equal in later life. It will review the controversy over genetic differences, especially as they affect IQs, discuss the revival of interest in vocational training and examine the continuing "stop-out" phenomenon among college students.

Finally, the Science section will examine the growing public indifference--even hostility--to technological achievements. The story will trace the mysterious course that pure science seems to be taking and reflect the realization of some scientists themselves that they have fewer answers than they once believed.

None of these ideas are as yet majority views in the Western world, and they may never be. They may provoke nothing more than bitter and fruitless confrontation, sundering consensus and paralyzing productive thought. Their critique of progress and action could well lead to a new quietism, a readiness to accept things as they are rather than to work for things as they might be. In a more hopeful vein, the interaction of the alternate views with prevailing notions may prove to be a beneficial force, leading to a re-examination and refinement of basic ideas about man and society. The ideal of progress may not, after all, be a vain one if it is based on the emerging conception of man that, if more complex, is also more realistic than the view that has been held for so long. The first report on that conception begins on the opposite page.

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