[from the book's cover:]
In this arresting essay in the history of ideas, Flord W. Matson synthesizes ideas and developments from the full range of modern thought -- physical, biological and social science; philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis and political science -- as he probes the history of modern man in search of himself. The "broken image" is man's understanding of himself, which was fractured by the adoption of classical, Newtonian physics (the Mechanist view) as the model for the interpretation of the biological, social and behavioral sciences, and which today, with the revolution in physics and subsequent change in the fundamental methodology of science, can once again be integrated into a new, human view of indivisible man. Matson't unified view of the modern experience suggests new connections between the various fields and leads the reader with astonishing clarity through the maze of modern science to its essential meaning.