Notes

  1. . The debate on the relative importance of the biological and sociocultural factors in human life emerged earlier in the history of Western thought, and it has continued to the present day. In The Republic Plato opted for the predominant importance of heredity, and he proposed an elaborate eugenics plan. In Politics and Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle emphasized the importance of the environment and proposed to focus on the sustaining environment to cultivate good habits leading to virtue. In various forms the debate is still carried on today. Some will emphasize one factor but may not eliminate the other, blunting the sharpness of the debate. If it is held that both factors are inextricably and interrelatedly involved in human experience, as it is held here, the debate will be interpreted as an endless one.
  2. . This volitional emphasis relates this point of view to the strand of social scientific theory rooted in the tradition of Max Weber and some nineteenth‐century English liberals (see, e.g., Max Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization. trans. A. R. Henderson and Talcott Parsons [New York: Oxford University Press, 1947], and John Stuart Mill, On Liberty [Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., n.d.1]. It contrasts with the causal strand of social scientific theory rooted in the traditions of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Emile Durkheim (see, e.g., Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feuer [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 19591; A. A. Brill, ed., The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud [New York: Random House, 1938]; and Émile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method [Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1938[).
  3. . In some portions of the world, political leaders must engage in a substantial consensus‐formation process to modify existing life patterns; in other portions, elitists–at least in the short run–formulate policy with much less concern about a public consensus. In the short run political leaders in democracies must try to cultivate substantial domestic support for their foreign policy. Leaders in nondemocratic countries are not under such direct, short‐run pressures.
  4. . The informing perspective shaping the discussion in secs. 1 and 2 is rooted in process philosophy. See esp. Alfred North Whitehead's Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan Co., 1933) and Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan Co., 1929). See also Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (LaSalle, III.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1970), and William Christian, An Interpretation of Whitehead's Metaphysics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959).
  5. . Whether a sequence of entirely living occasions can exist without an inorganic support system is a moot question. Certainly there is no metaphysical necessity for an underlying support system. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore this issue. Problems of telepathy and the persistence of the sequence of events constituting the “soul” after the demise of the “body” are of special interest (see, e.g., William A. Beardslee, A Home for Hope [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972]).
  6. . See, e.g., Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953), and Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1939).
  7. . See, e.g., William Cecil Dampier, A History of Science (New York: Macmillan Co., 1944); E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1954); and Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1930).
  8. . Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1962) and Barry Commoner's The Closing Circle (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1972) reflect these concerns. Some may hold that the arguments in these volumes are exaggerated and polemical, but they do point toward legitimate and authentic concerns.
  9. . Max Weber's Protestant Ethic is the classic study exploring the relationship between Calvinism and capitalism. For a neo‐Lutheran critique of the mind‐set overemphasizing mastery, see Paul Tillich's intellectual autobiography in Charles W. Kegley and Robert W. Bretall, eds., The Theology of Paul Tillich (New York: Macmillan Co., 1952) and Paul Tillich, The Protestant Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948). For a discussion of the saliency of technical reason and the vision of the human mastery of nature in contemporary American society, see Robin Williams, American Society: A Sociological Interpretation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1970). For an analysis and critique of technocracy, see Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1969).
  10. . See, e.g., Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pt. 2: “Religion in the Modernization Process,” and Wilbert E. Moore, Social Change (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1963).
  11. . For a trenchant critique of Western efforts to facilitate the “development” of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, see Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1973).
  12. . See, e.g., S. J. Behrman et al., eds., Fertility and Family Planning: A World View (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970); Daniel Callahan, ed., The American Population Debate (New York: Anchor Books, 1971); Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, rev. ed. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971); George R. Lucas, Jr., and Thomas W. Ogletree, eds., Lifeboat Ethics (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).
  13. . For four contrasting views of the emerging future, see Daniel Bell, The Coming of Postindustrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973), and The Cultural Contradiction of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1976); Victor Ferkiss, The Future of Technological Civilization (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1974); Robert L. Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974); and Donnella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972). For two suggestive discussions and summaries of this literature, see Robert Benne's “Values, Technology and the American Future” and J. Ronald Engel's “The ‘New Primitivism”” in Belonging and Alienation, ed. Philip Hefner and W. Widick Schroeder (Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1976).
  14. . For two suggestive discussions of symbolism, see Paul Tillich's Love, Power, and Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954) and Alfred North Whitehead's Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect (New York: Macmillan Co., 1927).
  15. . For a discussion of this situation, see W. Widick Schroeder et al., Suburban Religion: Churches and Synagogues in the American Experience (Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1974).
  16. . See, e.g., Herbert Marcuse's One‐Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964) and Gibson Winter's “Symbol and Society” in Hefner and Schroeder, pp. 219–48.
  17. . Alvin Toffler elaborates this theme in Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970).
  18. . For two differing but complementary interpretations of this situation, see my “Religious Institutions and Human Society” in Hefner and Schroeder, pp. 181–218, and Tillich's Love, Power, and Justice.
  19. . For two analyses of this problem from different but complementary perspectives, see Ernest Barker's Reflections on Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958) and Reinhold Niebuhr's The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944).
  20. . See e.g., Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1948); Reinhold Niebuhr, The Structure of Nations and Empires (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959); Frederick L. Schuman, International Politics (New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Co. 1969).
  21. . Broadly viewed, no social institution should be larger than is necessary to enable it to fulfill its functions effectively (see, e.g., Pope John XXIII's “Mater et Magistra,” in Seven Great Encyclicals [Glen Rock, N.J.: Paulist Press, 19631 and E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful [New York: Harper & Row, 1973]).
  22. . See, e.g., Moore and Bellah (n. 10 above).
  23. . For a volume offering a balanced assessment of the impact of corporations and governments of industrialized powers on economic affairs in other areas, see Kenneth E. Boulding and Tapan Mukerjee, eds., Economic Imperialism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972).
  24. . The most significant movement in contemporary theology seeking to reformulate classical views is process theology, rooted in the seminal work of Alfred North Whitehead. The following representative texts illustrate various dimensions of this mode of thought: Beardslee, A House for Hope (n. 5 above); Delwin Brown, Ralph E. James, Jr. and Gene peeves, eds., Process Philosophy and Christian Thought (Indianapolis: Bobbs‐Merrill Co. 1971); John B. Cobb, Jr., and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976); Ewert Cousins, ed., Process Theology (New York: Newman Press, 1971); Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948); Schubert M. Ogden, The Reality of God and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1966); Daniel D. Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).