Baker Brownell

A student of George Santayana, Baker Brownell was a social philosopher at Northwestern University in the 1930s and 40s. He proposed changing technocratic-industrial society into a simpler lifestyle in balance with the natural world.

. . . {man's life} has been laid out through millions of years in association with living animals and plants and the vast music movement of the natural world . . . The Human Community, 1950.

 

We are continuous with nature and the world. Ibid.

 

. . . the beasts and the plants participate primevally in our communities. They enter our philosophies, mold our natures; help make us fully human. They are among our greatest teachers. Ibid.

 

Mysticism enables man to comprehend the unity of direct experience which is denied to science . . . Ibid.