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Let me try to put this book in the context of its appearance at this particular time in the history of our civilization. Seeing it in this context may help you to perceive its significance–and I view this as a most significant book. Prescient observers of our civilization–HG Wells, Aldous and Julian Huxley, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Bertrand de Jouvenal, George Orwell, Edgar Faure, Donald Schon, Alvin Toffler, to mention some of the most outstanding–have been trying to prepare us during much of this century for the emergence of a drastically different kind of civilization in the next century. They have convinced me that as we approach the 21st century we are facing a major turning point in human history. The assumptions and ideologies–about the nature of man, the distribution of power and wealth, the stability of knowledge and technology, and about many other things–on which past and present civilizations have been …