Here are some quotations from the contributors: Brockman maintains that there is a shift occurring in public discourse, with scientists supplanting philosophers, artists, and people of letters as the ones who render "visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are."
"We're at the stage where things change on the order of decades, and it seems to be speeding up…." (Danny Hillis)
Auguste Compte, in whose works the thought of Positivism is convincingly embodied, attracted the attention of John Stuart Mill, who wrote The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Compte (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1871). Some of Compte's early writings are reproduced in The Crisis of Industrial Civilization (Ronald Fletcher, Editor, London: Heinemann Educational, 1974).
Stefano Poggi. Introduzione al il Positivisma. Bari: Laterza, 1987.
Sybil de Acevedo. Auguste Compte: Qui êtes-vous? Lyons: La
Manufacture, 1988.
Emil Durkheim. De la division du travail social. 9e ed. Paris:
Presses univérsitaires de France, 1973. (Translated as The
Division of Labor in Society by W.D. Halls, New York: Free Press,
1984.
Durkheim applied Darwin's natural selection to labor division.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903): very well known for his essay, Progress: Its Laws and Cause (1857), attempted to conceive a theory of society based on naturalist principles. What he defined as the "super- organic," which stands for social, is subjected to evolution. In his view, societies undergo, cycles of birth- climax-death. Productive power varies from one cycle to other (cf. Principles of Sociology, 1876-1896).
Art(ifacts) and Aesthetic Processes
Art Speigelman. Maus. A Survivor's Tale. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1986; and Maus II: A Survivor's Tale-And Here My Troubles
Began. New York Pantheon Books, 1991.