ENVIRONMENTAL MAN

by William Kuhns ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 26, 1969

Mr. Kuhns' book is based on the by now self-evident premise that man's relationship to his environment and man's consciousness of that relationship have changed radically within the last few decades. That relationship now is characterized, at least in some of its manifestations, by what the author calls ""interface""--a facie ad faciem confrontation from which the two systems emerge in a synergetic relationship. Environmental Man is, therefore, an approach to interface, focusing specifically on man's evolving relationship to his technological environment. Under the latter aspect, it examines a few of the most common contemporary interfaces: toys, nuclear weapons, motor vehicles, the cinema, architecture, noise (organized and otherwise), television, the computer, and the Church. Indeed, the latter theme occurs again and again throughout the book by virtue of Kuhns' absorption in the idea that man's approach to his spiritual destiny must evolve from the three-dimensional cycle of oneself-one's fellow men-God to the four-dimensional oneself-one's fellow men-environments-God, since there necessarily must be an interface, a communicative interaction, between humans and the human environment which is destined to unite the two in an unguessed-at tertium quid. An interesting bit of interpretive speculation on the mode of human adaptation to a technological environment, aimed at a ""special"" audience of modest size.

Pub Date: March 26, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION