Northrop, F. S. C. Man, Nature, and God. New York: Trident Press/Simon and Schuster, 1962.

Abstract

Man, Nature, and God combines the personal labors of a lifetime. As the title suggests, F. S. C. Northrop covers a broad range of human activities, including science, literature, politics, communication, and religion. He sees a relationship among these activities and resists the common inclination to deal eith experience in sharply defined categories, unrelated to the self. He seeks, for example, to identify the dynamic connection between poetry and scientific theory. Formal science is needed to understand and control the basic facts of life but, Professor Northrop believes, the poet can make us feel and enjoy what the scientist makes known in theory. Until science and poetry are brought together, our knowledge and feeling  will be at odds. The work must be related to the man, and the man to his work, as this intellectual autobiography by Mr. Northrop shows. The author searches for the balance between the individual, self-sustaining culture and one which participates in the world community. The speed of today's communication makes it impossible to believe that one's nation and its own, exclusive cultural philosophy and religion are enough. Professor Northrop suggests that we must develop sensitivity to other cultures and that in so doing we will create a thesis in which unity that respects diversity will be achieved, and man reconciled with mankind and thereby with himself.