So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events

Transaction Publishers, 1998 - Nature - 267 pages

At least until cloning becomes the order of the day, Rene Dubos contends that each human being is unique, unprecedented, unrepeatable. However, today each person faces the critical danger of losing this very humanness to his mechanized surroundings. Most people spend their days in a confusion of concrete and steel, trapped "in the midst of noise, dirt, ugliness and absurdity." So begins the essential message of the work of one of the great figures in microbiology and experimental pathology of this century.

Is the human species becoming dehumanized by the condition of his environment? So Human an Animal is an attempt to address this broad concern, and explain why so little is being done to address this issue. The book sounds both an urgent warning, and offers important policy insights into how this trend towards dehumanization can be halted and finally reversed. Dubos asserts that we are as much the product of our total environment as of our genetic endowment. In fact, the environment we live in can greatly enhance, or severely Hmit, the development of human potential. Yet we are deplorably ignorant of the effects of our surroundings on human life. We create conditions which can only thwart human nature.

So Human an Animal is a book with hope no less than alarm. As Joseph Wood Krutch noted at the time, Dubos shows convincingly "why science is indispensable, not omnipotent." Science'can change our suicidal course by learning to deal analytically with the living experience of human beings, by supplementing the knowledge of things and of the body machine with a science of human life. Only then can we give larger scope to human freedom by providing a rational basis for option and action. Timely, eloquent, and guided by a deep humanistic spirit, this new edition is graced by a succinct and careful outline of the life and work of the author.

What people are saying

Review: So Human an Animal: How We are Shaped by Surroundings and Events

User Review  - David - Goodreads

This book about human beings won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. So Human an Animal was first published in 1970. This time detail can help locate many of the ideas discussed in the book ...

Review: So Human an Animal: How We are Shaped by Surroundings and Events

User Review  - Nathaniel Weiner - Goodreads

While it seems mainstream now, all the concepts of environmentalism must have been earth shattering when it came out 40 years ago

Contents

• The Unbelievable Future: 3
• Mans Nature and Human History: 31
• Biological Remembrance of Things Past: 63
• The Living Experience: 107
• The Pursuit of Significance: 136
• The Science of Humanity: 194
• Reference Notes: 243
• Index: 259

About the author

René Dubos was professor at The Rockefeller University in New York. He was a celebrated microbiologist and experimental pathologist. He was the first to demonstrate the feasibility of obtaining germ-fighting drugs from microbes. Among his many writings are So Human an Animal, The Torch of Life, and The Unseen World.

David Mechanic is director of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research and René Dubos University Professor at Rutgers University. Among his books are Mental Health and Social Policy, The Truth About Health Care, and Policy Challenges in Modern Health Care.

Bibliographic information

• Title: So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events
• Contributor: René J. Dubos
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Transaction Publishers, 1998
• ISBN: 141283418X, 9781412834186
• Length: 267 pages
• Subjects: Nature / Ecology; Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory; Social Science / Human Geography; Social Science / Minority Studies