ABSTRACT
The myth of the global village assumes that modern man's place in the world has little relevance to his identity. Today, in the technological society, the tendency is to homogenize the globe with one artificial culture, the place becoming immaterial and the assumption being that the job defines a man's identity. Man would remember that the beginnings of science were rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, which desacralized the world without desecrating it. Biblical views of "place" and "land" seem light-years removed from modern secular man; for mankind has taken two great leaps in its history concerning nature: from nature as magic to nature as profane, and from nature as profane to nature as commodity. Beyond the topographical interest in place, diverse disciplines are pointing people toward taking the significance of place more humanly. In the primitive world of magic, all reality is consubstantial, sharing the same plane of being, with no distinction between idea and actuality, word and thing.
