Professor Radhakamal Mukerjee, a celebrated thinker of our era, in the present work, The Oneness of Mankind, has referred to the epochal crisis both in social science and the life of modern mankind. He feels that the crisis must be resolved in order that the species may survive the threat of the third world war. For this the knowledge of man, values and culture has to be released from the grips of its present narrow frame of reference. A rethinking of the goals of the social sciences in a universal perspective become imperative. Dr. Mukerjee has denounced the compartmentalization of the social sciences and has formulated the theory of the oneness of mankind embodying a new dimension of social analysis. To Dr. Mukerjee the idea is not a utopian fancy but the faith of our age.
The author has discussed the topics like the bio-psychological unity of mankind, unities and universals of culture, the economic integration and welfare of mankind and the imbalance of mankind's population and resources. As a consequence of the role of the UNO and its various agencies, there has emerged a universal structure of human relations and values irrespective of social institutions, cultural patterns and historical circumstances. Both the ancient vision of metaphysics and the modern understanding of the natural sciences reveal the unity of mankind.
Dr. Radhakamal Mukerjee (1889-1968) was one of the greatest social scientists of India. He was Professor of Economics and Sociology at Lucknow University and later on Vice-Chancellor at the same University. He played an important and constructive role in country's freedom struggle. He was invited to deliver lectures at many Indian universities and also abroad including U.K., Europe, U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. He was a highly original philosopher of history, a penetrating interpreter of civilization and a gifted art theorist. He wrote more than 50 books covering these and other subjects. He held important positions in some national and international bodies. An American reviewer has considered him to have written "some of the most important works of our century".
The plan of the book was conceived during a Conference on Cultural Values, East and West, under the auspices of the UNESCO three years ago in Calcutta. Here assembled a number of experts representing the various social sciences and belonging to the various continents. The panel and public discussions soon revealed that although One World, One Mankind, was the governing idea of the Conference and its multi-disciplinary interchange, focussed on tinc basic problems of contemporary life, the stifling encrustation of economic, sociological, anthropological and cultural assumptions and theories militated against a broad view of the common humanness and development of mankind. Over these were unsuspectingly superposed the excessive rigidities of thinking and feeling, associated with the dual hostile social and economic systerns and ideologies of Democracy and Communism, that disrupt the world tradition and destroy world stability and peace today. The impasse in the Conference, indeed, reflected vividly the epochal crisis both in social science and the life of modern mankind.
Such crisis must be resolved in order that the species may survive the threat of an atomic var, and the knowledge of man, values and culture may be released from the grips of its present narrow and rigid frame of reference.
A rethinking of the goals of the social sciences in a humanist, universalist perspective has now become imperative for mankind's survival itself. Only a philosophy of man can harmonize and integrate human goals and social purposes. Such co-ordination can only be achieved by philosophy in terms of the unity, wholeness and transcendence of human personality, values and community.
The present contradiction and chaos of goals and values of man are in no small measure due to the compartmentalization of the social sciences; each is concerned with its own fractional values for the human individual, and has little relevance to the goals and methods of the other social sciences or to the broad common aim and purpose of mankind. We have formulated the theory of the oneness and solidarity of mankind as embodying a new dimension of social analysis as well as an empirical and normative standard of human conduct, congruent with an age when homo sapiens must have to understand his evolutionary future in terms of the species and of his global environment.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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