Alastair M. Taylor
Encyclopedia
Biography
Taylor was born in VancouverVancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, in 1915, the youngest son of Scottish immigrants. In 1930 the family moved to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, where he attended Hollywood High School
Hollywood High School
Hollywood High School is a Los Angeles Unified School District high school located at the intersection of North Highland Avenue and West Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California.-History:...
and then the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1937. The topic of his Master’s thesis at USC was “The Decline of Scottish Monasticism in the Fifteenth Century”. At age 22 he collaborated with T. Walter Wallbank
T. Walter Wallbank
Thomas Walter Wallbank was an American historian and one of the original authors of the best-selling textbook Civilization Past & Present.- Biography :...
to begin writing Civilization Past and Present. The first world-history textbook in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and a best-seller since its initial appearance in 1942, it has been published in many editions for over six decades and is familiar to generations of students.http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/02/education/a-list-of-the-best.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
In 1942 Taylor returned to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
to enlist in the armed forces, but was recruited to the National Film Board in Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
, where he worked for pioneering documentary filmmaker John Grierson
John Grierson
John Grierson was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. According to popular myth, in 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" to describe a non-fiction film.-Early life:Grierson was born in Deanston, near Doune, Scotland...
, making films for the war effort. Taylor himself directed two short films focusing on the situation of Canadian workers in the domestic wartime economy.http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/result.php?type=credit&pid=15988&nom=Alistair+M.+Taylor
Between 1944 and 1952 Taylor worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was an international relief agency, largely dominated by the United States but representing 44 nations. Founded in 1943, it became part of the United Nations in 1945, was especially active in 1945 and 1946, and largely shut down...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and then for the UN Secretariat in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. At UNRRA he was a speechwriter for Herbert Lehman, former governor of New York state, and then for Fiorello La Guardia, former mayor of New York City. Taylor became the Official Spokesman of the Security Council’s United Nations Commission for Indonesia, which oversaw the peace settlement between the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and its former colony. In this capacity he spent several months in Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
in 1949 and 1950 and also attended the Dutch-Indonesian Round Table Conference
Dutch-Indonesian Round Table Conference
The Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference was held in the Hague from August 23 - November 2, 1949, between representatives of the Netherlands, the Republic of Indonesia and the BFO representing various states the Dutch had created in the Indonesian archipelago...
in The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
, Netherlands.
Taylor received his doctorate from Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
, in 1955. His dissertation was the basis for his book Indonesian Independence and the United Nations (1960), with a foreword by Lester B. Pearson
Lester B. Pearson
Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson, PC, OM, CC, OBE was a Canadian professor, historian, civil servant, statesman, diplomat, and politician, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for organizing the United Nations Emergency Force to resolve the Suez Canal Crisis...
. Upon its publication, this work was hailed as a “brilliant study of the protracted negotiations that led to Indonesia’s independence” and as “the fullest, most accurate, and least biased” treatment in print of the UN’s role.
In 1960 Taylor joined the faculty of Queen's University
Queen's University
Queen's University, , is a public research university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Founded on 16 October 1841, the university pre-dates the founding of Canada by 26 years. Queen's holds more more than of land throughout Ontario as well as Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, England...
at Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...
, where he taught in both the Geography and Political Studies departments until 1980.http://www.queensu.ca/secretariat/senate/Mar02_06/ATaylorTribute.pdf At Queen’s, in the early 1960s, he developed his systems-theory model of the historical evolution of human societies, which he designated Time-Space-Technics (TST). TST understands human societies as instances of open natural systems equilibrating with their environments in a hierarchy of integrative level
Integrative level
An integrative level, or level of organization, is a set of phenomena emerging on pre-existing phenomena of lower level. Typical examples include life emerging on non-living substances, and consciousness emerging on nervous systems....
s. It identifies an evolutionary sequence of world-views that organize societal systems at the different levels. Taylor named these world-views “Mythos”, “Theos”, “Logos”, and “Holos”. TST focuses on the interplay and tension between what Taylor called “material technics” and “societal technics”, and attempts to identify factors responsible for fracturing a system’s equilibrium and quantizing it to a different level of societal organization (either more or less complex). Taylor published a number of articles about the TST model and in his last years was preparing a book-length exposition of his ideas. He believed that today we stand at a critical juncture: although industrial society
Industrial society
In sociology, industrial society refers to a society driven by the use of technology to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour. Such a structure developed in the west in the period of time following the Industrial Revolution, and replaced...
has become culturally and environmentally unsustainable, we have the opportunity to replace it with new values and institutions appropriate to a sustainable global civilization.
Selected bibliography
- Civilization Past and Present, with T. Walter Wallbank (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1942 and subsequent editions).
- The World in Turmoil, 1914-1944, with T. Walter Wallbank (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1944).
- Indonesian Independence and the United Nations (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960; London: Stevens, 1960).
- “Toward a Field Theory of International Relations”, General Semantics Bulletin 35 (1968): 9-43.http://www.generalsemantics.org/misc/akml/akmls/35-taylor.pdf
- “Evolution-Revolution, General Systems Theory, and Society”, in Rubin Gotesky and Ervin Laszlo (eds.), Evolution-Revolution (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1971).
- “Integrative Principles in Human Societies”, in Henry Margenau (ed.), Integrative Principles of Modern Thought (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1972).
- Western Perspectives: A Concise History of Civilization, with T. Walter Wallbank and Nels M. Bailkey (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman, 1973).
- “Process and Structure in Sociocultural Systems”, in Erich Jantsch and Conrad H. Waddington (eds.), Evolution and Consciousness: Human Systems in Transition (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976).
- “The Historical Evolution of Mankind’s Inner and Outer Dimensions”, in Ervin Laszlo and Judah Bierman (eds.), Goals in a Global Community, vol. I (New York: Pergamon Press, 1977).
- Poles Apart: Winners and Losers in the History of Human Development, with Angus M. Taylor (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 1992).
- “Time-Space-Technics: The Evolution of Societal Systems and World-views”, World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution 54 (1999): 21-102.
Filmography
- A Man and His Job (National Film Board of Canada, 1943)http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=17134
- Main Street, Canada (National Film Board of Canada, 1945)http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=17100
External links
- Time-Space-Technics page at BEST Futures website