In the Shadow of Progress

Readers of First Things will thoroughly enjoy Eric Cohen’s new book, In the Shadow of Progress , released this month from Encounter Books. Last week, Leon Kass introduced the book at an event put on by The New Atlantis at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC (audio available here ). According to Kass, “it’s a wonderful book: wise, deep, and beautifully written,” and although “we cannot, we are warned, tell a book by its cover, . . . here the title and cover have been carefully selected to telegraph the message, [and] it behooves us to pay attention.”

The cover borrows its image from the frontispiece designed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau for his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences :

“the god Prometheus , descending on a cloud to bring fire and light to the exemplary men of genius while warning us ordinary mortals to stand clear of the dangerous gifts of knowledge and transformative power . . . . As Rousseau would later explain . . . the pictured Promethean god, simultaneously bringer of light to geniuses and prophet of shadowy danger to humankind, is none other than the Citizen of Geneva himself.”

But exceeding the insightful beauty of the cover, is what the book contains inside—as Kass describes it, “reasoned and sober speech, rather than the fiery and self-indulgent polemic of J.J. Rousseau,” you’ll find in this book thoughtful, well-written commentary on pertinent issues of modern technology and its burdens and blessings on humanity.