Overview

Ethnological studies show that man made himself dependent on his creations from the very first artifact. As a result, he became increasingly entangled in their variety of forms and complexity, only to gradually lose control over them. Therefore, it is not evolution but devolution that determines the course of cultural history. Enlightenment and industrialization led to the conviction in Europe that cultural development was progressive overall. Klaus E. Müller can prove through detailed ethnological-cultural-historical analyzes that the opposite is the case. Deprived of his original instinctual security, man was dependent on artificial aids from the very beginning - on material equipment, practices of acquiring food and social institutions as well as worldview concepts to justify both his own existence and natural phenomena. With the progressive multiplication of the artefacts, the dependency on them grew, and through their combinations into ever more complex systems, their susceptibility to failure, so that a collapse seems inevitable.

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9783412509583

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Dr. Klaus E. MA ller war Professor fA r Ethnologie an der UniversitAt Frankfurt am Main. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Verhaltens-, Religions- und Kognitionsethnologie.Dr. Klaus E. MA ller was Professor for Ethnology at the University of Frankfurt-am-Main. His research specialities are behavioural, religious and cognitive ethnology.

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