Abstract

This study attempts to compare three apparently distinct but related areas: physical reality, political society, and human mentality. The significance of this comparison brings out the crucial interdependence among physis, polis, skepsis, which determines not only the perennial human condition but the eventual global evolution.

The present juncture of history is characterized by increasing anachronisms and discrepancies between the relatively slow evolution of nature and the fast development of culture. The social impacts of technology and the environmental symptoms of industry raise grave problems which presently test the limits of our planetary habitat. In this critical situation, human minds and social groups experience increasing difficulty in comprehending, let alone controlling, the complex dynamics of large chaotic systems.

This essay discusses this global problem in a systemic and systematic way based on the recent theory of Sociophysics. Assuming that social progress and environmental evolution are correlated, the thesis here proposes that a dynamic equilibrium between nature and culture is the prerequisite for the sustained development of both. To effect such homeostasis, our argument concludes that political morality, economic efficiency and skeptical mentality are the necessary and sufficient conditions of planetary survival.

In order to manage such large subject matter, the study will proceed by a brief outline of the physical conditions within which all activity must take place, the political contradictions which presently threaten the global system, and the new skeptic attitude required to reestablish the desired holistic balance.