It is easy to say that we live in changing times; the fact is evident. It is more difficult to try to understand it and do something about it. Among the many statements about our times, one in particular merits our attention. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the foundation of the Club of Rome, Aurelio Peccei, the founder of the Club, issued a solemn appeal to scientists to stop research for 50 years, or else humanity would be doomed. In Peccei’s opinion, scientific development had outpaced the moral and social evolution of mankind so radically that the lopsided development threatened the very existence of humanity. The idea underlying his appeal was, of course, the belief that there must exist a basic balance between the capacity to do and the ability to master this capacity, so as to prevent it from becoming a threat to the human race. What Peccei clearly realized and is of particular importance for our discussion is the fact that knowledge is not always, nor automatically harmoniously related to humanity. The development of knowledge can outrun the capacity of its makers to use it wisely and can turn them into sorcerer’s apprentices. In other words, the development of knowledge, at least of the scientific type of knowledge, does not automatically make humans wiser. Obviously, science and wisdom are not the same. There is no direct, or necessary relationship between the two. It is easier to state this fact than to comprehend all its consequences! One thing is clear, there are very good reasons indeed, to be concerned about the impressive development of science and technology.

Whether or not Peccei was realistic in his perception of a cure for the present predicament of humanity is a problem which we do not propose to discuss at this juncture. Whatever may be the opinion about Peccei’s statement, the statement itself is very revealing and throws much light on our times. First of all, it signals the end of an era, namely, the modern era with its uncritical belief in the power of reason, in the possibility of limitless material progress, in man’s inborn superiority over nature and in his right and duty to control nature and submit it to his will. On a deeper level, Peccei’s appeal expresses the failure of the demiurgic myth of man, the maker. Myths, as Levi-Strauss has shown, mediate between culture and nature, that is, between man as knower and the world as his habitat. They give meaning to humans and to their existence by telling them both what they are and what are their relation to and place in the universe. Humans have to understand themselves and their place in the world; myth serves this purpose. The two understandings are intrinsically related; and one cannot exist without the other. The demise of a myth results in a profound change in the understanding we have of ourselves. This occurs when an accepted image appears insufficient and has to be replaced by a more satisfactory one, as happens now to be the case.

The change in the prevailing myth is a very serious matter indeed, because it affects the foundations of the explanatory structure which humans so laboriously construct to satisfy their imperative need of intelligibility. It is therefore a more far reaching change than that of a scientific paradigm. The latter is an expression of conscious, overt, logically consistent reasoning, and as such is a product of attitudes and activities which intend to be strictly rational. Whether this ideal of rationality is in fact achieved is another matter which we do not intend to discuss at this point. What concerns us here is the fact that, to the extent that these attitudes and activities aim to be purely rational, they do not express the total human, ignoring or rejecting the nonanalytically rational dimensions of the human being and, thus, reducing him to the two dimensionality of a geometrical, measurable surface. The scientific paradigm presupposes the fundamental explanatory context of basic beliefs contained in and manifested through the prevailing myth. Consequently, the change of a scientific paradigm without the change of the underlying myth does not affect humans in their basic attitude concerning their lives.

In contrast to scientific paradigms, myths serve and express the fundamental involvement of humans in the world. They function on the level of humans’ existential insertion into reality and symbolize for them the meaning of their existence. Man’s insertion into reality is complex and multilevel: physical and psychological, intellectual and emotional. The global product of this insertion is culture. The complexity of culture reflects the complexity of humans’ relationship with reality. A change in the myth expressing their involvement in reality is tantamount to a change of cultural epoch. Such a change is taking place now. It already affects all of us in many ways and will continue to affect us even more in the future. It will produce substantial changes in our understanding of ourselves and of the world. Consequently, it will change our attitude towards nature and towards ourselves. This will have an important influence on our mode of life, even in its most practical, concrete, everyday aspects. But most of all, the demise of the demiurgic myth will be significant to those whose profession it is to study and/or to deal with the nature and the behavior of man. Psychologists psychiatrists, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers will be affected by the change of myth more than others. This is why a philosophical discussion of humans’ relationship with knowledge cannot overlook the fact that we are undergoing a change of cultural paradigm. This change invites us to reflect on this relationship, and at the same time, throws much light on it.

The Western cultural framework contains both myth and what has come to be known as rational knowledge. The relationship of myth to that type of knowledge may appear ambiguous. In themselves myths are not rational, if by "rational" we understand the type of rationality which is epitomized by modern science. However, in-as-much as myths express the basic conceptualization of reality, they are essential for any more explicit type of knowledge, and consequently, for science. The relationship between science and myth is not a simple, one-way dependency: myth-science. It is much more complex and can best be expressed as a two-way, feedback relation, inducing alternative, though not temporally symmetrical, changes in each of the elements.

A culture may or may not contain science in the modern sense of this word, but it always contains a myth. Culture and the basic myth form a system, the elements of which are also bound by a feedback relationship. The important fact is that the system may be either quasi-static, i.e., evolving very slowly, or more or less rapidly evolving. The difference between these two situations may be traced to two factors. The first is the presence or absence of knowledge other than that expressed by myth. The classical example of this type of knowledge is science. The second factor is the myth itself which embodies the image of mankind and suggests an attitude towards the world. Depending on the myth, the given culture either does or does not stimulate the development of knowledge in general and of science in particular: to myth corresponds the resulting knowledge.

At the origin of Western culture there was the myth of Prometheus and the biblical message extolling humans to submit the Earth to their will. It should not be surprising that this culture has produced a situation where the sum total of scientific knowledge doubles every ten years. Interestingly enough, human-centered myths produce a dynamic culture. Nature-centered myths produce more static cultures. In the first case, humans view themselves as being distinct from and superior to nature. Their unique quality has to be justified by their relationship to the supreme value, as is done in the Old Testament. From their superiority in relation to nature flow two very important consequences. Humans are not subject to the determinism of nature and they can look at nature objectively. Free agents, masters of their own fate, they are not subject to the fatalistic necessity of impersonal destiny. Moreover, the ability of the objective perception of nature makes possible the development of science with all its positive and negative consequences. In contrast, the perception of humans as an integral part of nature, which is the case in the majority of cultures, subordinates them to the rule of necessity, giving thereby little incentive for an active attitude toward the ambient world, and little desire to progress. The image which humans have of themselves is obviously decisive for their development.

The more dynamic knowledge is, the more and faster will culture change. In the situation of highly developed, dynamic knowledge, cultural changes are to a large extent results of rational activity. They are produced from within the culture, by its internal dynamism and not, as in the situation of less developed knowledge, under the impact of uncontrollable external forces, whether natural or human. The more developed and dynamic is knowledge in the given culture, the more self-induced are the changes which this culture undergoes. A dynamic culture forms a self-evolving system which is self-complexifying and self-accelerating in its evolution. If one wishes to understand cultural change in general, and in particular in the case of contemporary Western culture, one must first assess the principal factor which produces this change, namely, knowledge.

In light of the above statement, it becomes apparent that the change of the cultural paradigm which we are presently witnessing is neither an accidental nor a surprising occurrence. It is the logical result of the development of knowledge. The understanding of the role of knowledge in the development of culture is therefore essential for the understanding of cultural processes. An understanding of these processes is important in itself. But that is not all. Cultural changes, as we have tried to explain, are important existential facts which affect us deeply. From the point of view of our study of knowledge, an understanding of the role of knowledge in these changes gives us important insight into the causality of knowledge in general and into the relationship between knowledge and humans.