The impact of science and technology on culture raises a number of questions about the ways in which people relate to each other and to their environment. Such questions cannot be answered by traditional approaches. Thus another level of analysis is needed to complement the traditional approaches and to address future challenges.

The first step in creating this new analysis was taken by Willem H. Vanderburg in 1985 with his pioneering work The Growth of Minds and Cultures. In this book, the first of a multi-volume series that includes Our Battle for the Human Spirit (2016), Vanderburg shows how the culture of a society underlies its science, technology, economy, social structure, political institutions, morality, religion, and art. As such, he seeks to build bridges not only between the ‘two cultures’ but between all the sciences in order to gain a deeper understanding of our age. This expanded second edition makes the author’s ground-breaking analysis available to a generation of digital natives.

Willem H. Vanderburg is a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, where he was the founding director of the Centre for Technology and Social Development. He was a NATO post-doctoral fellow under Jacques Ellul from 1973 to 1978 at the University of Bordeaux.

Willem H. Vanderburg's profile page

“…the very ambition of this book commends it to the attention of anyone interested in the complex relation between modern science and technology, on the one hand, and the traditional notions of culture, society, and history, on the other.”

ISIS: A Journal of the History of Science Society

“The book is meticulously researched, using extensively the work of Piaget, Kuhn, Toynbee, and Jung among others, as well as the ideas related to open systems theory.”

Canadian Book Review Annual