Abstract

Virtually all of us were raised in the traditions of the nineteenth century, in which the destinies of the natural science and the humanities were separated from each other. We are the wards of the last century in another sense as well, since we recall attempts to establish separate principles of methodology for each of these two realms of human knowledge. We live in the twentieth century, in which the conflict between the natural sciences and the humanities, expressed chiefly in the opposition between culture and technology, seemed to many people insurmountable and still looks that way to them. The danger of destruction of the principal values of our culture created by the threat of war and extermination, a danger that appeared as the consequence of technological development not controlled by society, impels us to the thought that an ever more dramatic conflict must arise between natural science and the humanities