ABSTRACT
This chapter redesigns the intellectual cosmos, the hybrid paths it has taken, and the necessary and hybrid forms it may take. Many of the criticisms of technology today remind us of Goethe, who rejected Newton’s optics on the ground that the microscope and telescope distorted the human scale and confused the mind. The point is well taken, if there is confusion of realms. As for the nineteenth-century view of society, just as the mechanistic world view of nature has been shattered by quantum physics, so the determinist theory of history has been contradicted by the twentieth-century clash of different time-bound societies. In the Newtonian world view, the idea of the heavens is detached from any ascending hierarchy of purposes as envisaged by Thomas Aquinas. In the new world view, the emphasis is on practical activity and on the role of mind; this view has two prophets: Francis Bacon and Karl Marx.
