Changing Images

The 1982 book, Changing Images of Man can be viewed here.* It is the commercially published version of a 1973 Stanford Research Institute study, “The Societal Consequences of Changing Images of Man,” by Joseph Campbell, Duane Elgin, Willis Harman (Project Supervisor), Arthur Hastings, Oliver Markley (Project Director), Floyd Matson, Brendan O’Regan and Leslie Schneider.

This work was the first known formal research study applying Thomas S. Kuhn’s ideas about “paradigm change” to a whole society, not just a scientific discipline. In the decade before it was possible to get the SRI study published commercially, it became something of an underground classic due to the way in which it envisioned a paradigm change from the guiding image of economic growth to something more ecologically sustainable” – a vision that seems increasingly needful, but probably not actionable until societal crises necessitate it.

 A two-part summary of the Changing Images study in The Renaissance Universal Journal can be viewed here.

Later works extending this theme include, “Changing Images 2000: Integral Approaches to Re-Imagining and Re-Making Ourselves and the World,” an essay by Thomas Hurley that you can view here; and two books by Duane Elgin: Awakening Earth: Exploring the Evolution of Human Culture & Consciousness (1993), and The Living Universe: Where are We? Who are We? Where are We Going? (1999).

Also, the other presentations in the Imaginal Visioning website carry forward this theme in various ways.

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* Gratefully acknowledgement to http://technoccult.net/library for a clean pdf copy of this work.

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