- All major social forces have precursors, precedents, analogs, and sources in the past.
- One of the most problematic legacies of grand Western social science (Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Ferdinand Toennies, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim) is that it has steadily reinforced the sense of some single moment–call it the modern moment–that by its appearance creates a dramatic and unprecedented break between past and present.
- For in the past century, there has been a technological explosion…we have entered into an altogether new condition of neighborliness, even with those most distant from ourselves
