The question to be answered is how prevailing habits of think-
ing can be freed from latent Newtonian presuppositions and
brought into line with the contemporary scientific conceptual
outlook. If we call the historical period since the Renaissance
"modern," in contrast to the Middle Ages, then we may legiti-
mately use the term "postmodern" as applying to the present,
post-Einsteinian era. What are the best and most efficient means
to the postmodernization of public and political consciousness?

If the twentieth-century scientific paradigm is to permeate
the thought of civilized communities throughout the world,
and if it takes as long as did that of the Copernican revolution,
it would not have spread its influence significantly until the
twenty-third century. By that time, if the nations have not yet
blown themselves to bits with nuclear bombs or exterminated
one another with chemical and biological weapons, the dete-
rioration of the environment would have progressed so far that
the conditions sustaining human and other life on the planet
would have long ceased to exist.

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