The Next Development in Man

The Next Development in Man, published in 1944, is Lancelot Law Whyte's attempt at a single framework for physics, biology and human affairs. Whyte was a Scottish theoretical physicist, philosopher and historian of science, and the book argues that European thought had been built on a dualism between mind and matter that had exhausted itself, and that what should replace it is an account of nature in terms of process and of a tendency towards order, which he called the unitary principle. He reads the disorders of modern societies as consequences of the split he is diagnosing, and presents the unitary view as the development the title refers to. The book was widely read at the time and the framework is not one in current scientific use, so it is a document in the history of ideas rather than a source of findings.

Written from the public record for the book.

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