THE HUMANIST FRAME

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 3, 1961

Sir Julian, no doubt the most profound evolutionary scientist since Darwin himself, has collected 26 essays (including his own), apparently written specifically for this book, delineating a broad range of Humanist thinking on psychosocial evolution from the aspects of history, politics, law, and the arts and sciences. Humanists, according to the chapter by Francis Williams, believe their creed generates ""a sense of participation in the human story, sufficiently strong and sufficiently universal to act as a solvent to national and Meological boatility."" Humanism ""sees man in his true stature as the highest product and only agent of the evolutionary process. O.L. Reiser consolidates this point by asking for ""the conscious control of human evolution through the maximum fulfilment of the potentialities of man"". It is made quite clear that this request does not extent to ""arranged"" marriages but, as in Hence New World, the easy by H. H. Muller (who has long been intellectual kin to Aldous Huxley) again poses the concept of test-tube babies. One may learn what Humanism is against. (""all forms of political and personal authoritarianism and anarchy), but it is much more difficult to understand the precise steps (other than population limitation) that Humanists advocate. The Humanist Frame is a good place to meet fundamental Humanist doctrine head-on. If the collision does little more than stimulate a renewal of the idea that democracy is ""participation in a social purpose"", it will perhaps have served its goal.

Pub Date: Jan. 3, 1961

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1961

Categories: NONFICTION