Quest for Meaning

This survey of the history and development of science shows how science has grown to fill one's consciousness in the late 1990s to the point where every person feels him- or herself to be a scientist of some sort. The author argues that science has become the "instrument for the callous disregard of man, beasts, plants, and the air we breathe. It has released untold greed for power". Examining the origins of science in a world permeated by disinterested inquiry, mathematical reason, and the view of nature as a rational whole, the text takes the reader through 500 years, surveying the achievements of Copernicus, Galilieo, Harvey, Newton, Goethe and Einstein. The author points out how science has vastly enabled humanity to gain its control of outer nature while at the same time has diminished inner vision and moral certainty. He argues that people need to wrest their sense of identity away from the cold, mechanistic, computerized world where they are merely another part of nature to be engineered and manipulated.