Can a Technical Civilization Sustain Human Life?

Harrison, P. , The Third Revolution: Population. Environment and a Sustainable World , London: Penguin, 1992, 1993.

Jacobs, Michael , The Green Economy: Environment. Sustainable Development and the Politics of the Future, Vancouver: UBC Press , 1993.

Vanderburg, W.H. , ed., Perspectives on Our Age: Jacques Ellul Speaks on His Life and Work, 2nd printing, Toronto: General Publishing, 1986 , p. 82.

Galbraith, John Kenneth , The New Industrial State, New York: New American Library, 1971, p. vii.

To interpret Ellul's concept of the autonomy of technique in a philosophical manner is to have completely misunderstood its meaning.

Vanderburg, W.H. , Technique and Culture. Vol. 3, in preparation.

In the pages that follow, I will extensively draw from my examination of the role of culture in human life, which I developed during my five years of post-doctoral work with Jacques Ellul. In this paper, my summaries of some of its aspects will be very brief and the reader is referred to my work for full details. W.H. Vanderburg , Technique and Culture, Vol. 1, The Growth of Minds and Cultures: A Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Experience, University of Toronto Press, 1985.

Kuhn, T.S. , The Structur of Scientific Revolutions, second edition, University of Chicago Press, 1970.

I am using the concept in the sense of Arnold Toynbee's A Study Of History, New York: Oxford University Press, 1946.

I refer the reader to my detailed analysis of how and why each culture creates a cultural unity which gives meaning, direction and purpose to the lives of millions of people, and how this cultural unity is implicitly transmitted from generation to generation during the process of socialization. For details, see Vanderburg, op.cit.

Ellul, Jacques , The New Demons, Tr. C. Edward Hopkin, New York: Seabury, 1975 .

Ellul, Jacques , L'empire du non-sens: L'Art et la societe technicienne , Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980.

Ellul, Jacques , The Ethics of Freedom. Tr. and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley , Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976.

Vanderburg, W.H. , ed., Perspectives on Our Age: Jacques Ellul Speaks On His Life and Work, 2nd printing, Toronto: General Publishing , 1986 .