Chaos or cosmos?
Is the world in which we live chaos, a welter of blind forces and brutish passions?
Or is it a cooperative enterprise, through which Man and God are slowly working out an order of justice and brotherhood? That is the question men are asking, with importunity no previous age has known. We are coming to distrust Materialism. As a philosophy of life, it has been stifling moral and religious forces that are essential to progress.
It offers no hope for the future. Selfishness spells exploitation and class struggle. The idea of the survival of the strong brought our generation to the World War and its terrible aftermath. We have been passing through a period of intellectual panic. Many current theories of the world have gone into bankruptcy. What is to take their place?
The relationship of man to the Universe must be approached today in the attitude of the scientist. For the modem mind, knowledge is not something fixed and final, but a series of approximations. Some men still take their opinions on authority. Abstract philosophers continue to treat ideas as if they were the only realities. In this book, we shall make inductions from the concrete facts given us by science and human experience.