Volume 37, Number 7 · April 26, 1990
Tripping Over the Future
By Robert M. Adams
The Farther Shore: A Natural History of Perception, 1798–1984
by Don Gifford
Atlantic Monthly Press, 257 pp., $19.95
Disappearing Through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century
by O.B. Hardison Jr.
Viking, 389 pp., $22.95
Are we drifting anywhere in particular? How can we know where we're going when we aren't even sure where we are? Where, for that matter, are we coming from? And, to pay our respects to the ultimate question—who the devil is we? These are large and busy questions, much mooted at the present time, though by no means new. When the bomb blew up the idea of scientific progress, when Auschwitz revealed the pit of savagery smoldering just under so-called civilization, when (most recently) the dialectic of history went gurgling down the drain with the demise of scientific socialism—then finding new bearings became a matter of urgent general concern.
Review, 3784 words
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