So Human an Animal

"Each human being," says René Dubos, "is unique, unprecedented, unrepeatable." Yet today each of us faces the critical danger of losing this very "humanness" to his mechanized surroundings. Most of us spend our days in "a confusion of concrete and steel," trapped "in the midst of noise, dirt, ugliness, and absurdity."

Is this the best man can hope for? Is he becoming dehumanized by the conditions of his life? One of the world's most distinguished biologists, Dr. Dubos is deeply troubled by these questions, and concerned that so little is being done to answer them. In So Human an Animal, he not only sounds an urgent warning but offers original, important insights into how this trend towards dehumanization can be reversed.

Dr. 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 limit- the development of human potential. Yet we are deplorably ignorant of the effects of our surroundings on human life. We are thoughtlessly creating conditions which can only thwart human nature.

Dr. Dubos is disturbed but he is not angry. Nor is he without hope. He affirms most convincingly that we can change our suicidal course by learning to deal scientifically with the living experience of man, 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 deeply humanistic spirit, So Human an Animal is one of René Dubos's finest books.