The Study of Comparative Civilizations

Extract

Scientific thought today is dominated by the spirit of synthesis, in contrast with eighteenth and nineteenth century works which were characterized by their analytical impulse. However, this movement is still lurking in the collective unconscious, and not having achieved as yet its complete flowering, it remains ignored by most of the intellectual élite. Not only because it is impossible to see the forest for the trees, but especially because, influenced by an academic tradition inherited from the great masters of past centuries, the élite today is loathe to open its eyes to the reality of our own times. Official science, most universities and specialists have been trained to feel a horror for general ideas. It would, therefore, seem that this intellectual tendency is not likely to favor the creation of vast conceptions, were it not for the fact, as we shall see later, that despite themselves, scholars and researchers are carried along by the same movement of ideas. For, in order to advance into the most varied domains of scientific thought in our time, it is sometimes necessary to establish such intimate relationships among special fields, widely separated from each other in terms of their subject matter, that actually the sketching out of veritable syntheses is taking place to some degree everywhere. It is really very simple; in the absence of such generalizations, one would be pawing the ground.