ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the danger derives from the excessive dimensions of the scientific-technological-industrial civilization. It explores the danger of disaster attending the Baconian ideal of power over nature through scientific technology arises not so much from any shortcomings of its performance as from the magnitude of its success. The chapter also examines the task for political science, with the help of psychology, to examine the chances presented here by Marxism - in its reality, not merely by its doctrine - and to compare them to the chances offered by other sociopolitical systems. It contends an imaginative-anticipatory heuristics of fear to lead us to the discovery of the duties, even the ethical principles, with which to meet the challenge of coming events. The chapter discusses the practical rule in which that principle issues, namely, to give in matters of a certain magnitude - those with apocalyptic potential - greater weight to the prognosis of doom than to that of bliss.
