WITH THE END OF THE MODERN AGE
-
WHAT REMAINS?
Ask today's important questions - about love, ideals, peace–
and the computers fall silent, the test tubes do not react.
For science no longer promises the certainty it once did. While
it has opened up vast new areas of comprehension and achieve–
ment - it has also revealed man's limitations. And its own.
Man cannot know all, science cannot control all. And the grow–
ing realization that this is so marks the end, in Wheelis' view, of
the modern age.
"With clarity and simplicity, [he
1
sums up the emergence of a
new era in which 'the advancing edge of science warns that
absolute truth is fiction' and the 'awe and wonder' with which
primitive men, poets and sages view the world must be ascend–
ant values."·
This is " a beguiling excursion through the labyrinths of intel–
lectual history."t It is" astonishingly jargon-free"· and written by
a novelist-philosopher-psychoanalyst who "possesses a rare gift
of synthesis elevated by vision and feeling."· $5.95
•Publishers' Weekly tThe Kirkus Reviews
THE END OF THE MODERN AGE
HOW CAN YOU TELL WHEN YOU'RE
IN DANGER IN A PUBLIC PLACE?
Strangers will tell you without saying a word.
For, in every public place, says Erving Goffman, people com–
municate with each other in thousands of different ways-flagrant
and subtle, sometimes silent, often unconscious-with body move–
ments or ritual ized conversation or even ways of dressing.
And what they "say" has become vitally important, because
public places, where safety was once taken for granted, are be–
coming increasingly dangerous, the arenas of social and psychic
collisions.
Relations in Public
provides insights on this fascinating phe–
nomenon of silent communication which is so crucial to every
citizen of the city.
The author's " inventory of observation and insight is immense;
his subtleties .. . [give] his study a breadth that approaches
classic scholarship..• . Thoroughly enjoyable as well as en–
lightening." ·
$7.95
'Publishers' Weekly
RELATIONS IN PUBLIC
