Man the slave & master / by Mark Graubard.

  • Graubard, Mark, 1904-1992.
Date:
1939
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Man the slave & master / by Mark Graubard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    for the French and American Revolutions, and ushered in the age of free thought and critical observation. 'Knowledge is power,' cried Francis Bacon, with the triumphant joy of a man who is suddenly cured of blind ness, or, to change the metaphor, who after years of de pressing labour discovers the solution to a very significant problem. This message became an obsession with him. On the one hand, Bacon saw that slavish authority to Aristotle was retarding man's intellect; on the other, he visualized the power of the scientific method, capable of pushing the human intellect immensely forward. With keen philosophic insight and* courage which springs from clarity and conviction, he began his battle for science, for a materialist philosophy of nature designed to overthrow the dogmas fostered by the Church. This battle involved at the time much more immediate danger than the defence of elementary principles of democracy involves in fascist countries to-day. The expression 'knowledge is power' summarizes the relationship between man and nature in a way that provides a solution to the complex and difficult interaction between these two forces. In order to understand its full meaning, it is necessary to study man's position in nature, his origins, biological functions and mode of adaptation to the forces with which he comes in contact. It is also necessary to investigate the dynamic features of this relationship and the weapons man had at his service in crossing the vast road which separates him to-day from the condition in which he found himself at the dawn of his existence as a distinct species. Whatever opinions we may have of man, whether we choose to regard him as sensitive, creative, and godlike, or cruel, stupid, and hopeless, we must always bear in mind that man started on his evolutionary course as an animal scarcely differing from the higher apes or other mammals