Tradition and Innovation: The Idea of Civilization as Culture and Its Significance

Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Hardcover. Good/Good. Hardcover. 8 3/4" X 5 1/2". x, 260pp. Mild rubbing, toning, and creasing to covers, corners, and edges of unclipped dust jacket. Small tear to top of jacket and front flap of jacket. Bound in purple cloth over boards with spine lettered in gilt. Gentle bumps to head and tail of spine and edges of boards. Non-sticky sticker residue to front free end paper. Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is sound.

ABOUT THIS BOOK:
By viewing Western civilization as a culture, this study puts the common perspectives of our major Western institutions in bolder relief. The author shows how the institutionalization of central modes of Western rationality - found in capitalism, industrialization, science, science-based technology, bureaucracy, the rule of law, the soical and behavioral sciences - has created a culturally and historically unique form of collective life: advanced industrial society.
Professor Wilson argues that this rationality is becoming traditionalized as a central artifact of our form of life, one which believes in the independent existence of 'facts of life'. This is borne out by the increasing autonomy of what Professor Wilson calls 'disembodied disciplined observation', determined as it is to annihilate contemplation and reflection in its effort to reconstitute practice in its own image.(Publisher).