The human dimension of civilisation...

The human dimension of civilisation, the spirit of civilisation, grows out of just such uniquely human feelings and desires. The Touchstone of Man's Distinctiveness Man's breadth of insight into the universe stems from humanity's collective efforts amassed and evolved over the centuries.

This insight, expressed through special criteria, rules, and logical procedures, has come to be known as “science.” Science in its most general sense means the sum total of human contemplations on the universe (including philosophy), the product of the collective efforts of humanity within a special system of logic.

The elevated and ideal aptitudes of humanity are born of its faith, belief, and attachment to certain realities in the universe that are both extra-individual, or general and inclusive, and extra-material, or unrelated to advantage or profit. Such beliefs and attachments are in turn born of certain worldviews and cosmologies given to humanity by prophets of God or by certain philosophers who sought to present a kind of thought that would conduce to belief and idealism.

As these elevated, ideal, supra-animal aptitudes in man find an ideational and credal infrastructure, they are designated “faith” ( iman ). It is therefore my contention that the central difference between man and the other animals, the touchstone of man's humanity, on which humanity depends, consists in science and faith. Much has been said about what distinguishes man from the other animals.

Although some have denied there is any basic difference between man and other animals, asserting that the difference in awareness and cognition is quantitative or at the most qualitative, but not essential, these thinkers have passed over all the wonders and glories that have drawn the great philosophers of East and West to the question of cognition in man.

They regard man as an animal entirely, from the standpoint of desires and objects, not differing from the animals in the least in this respect. [^1] Others think that to have a psyche makes the difference; that is, they believe that only man has a psyche, or anima, that other animals have neither feelings nor appetites, know neither pain nor pleasure, that they are soulless machines only resembling animate beings.