ABSTRACT
No society will maintain itself indefinitely if the premises on which it proceeds are invalid. It may survive vicissitudes and hold together for long periods of time if the challenges it encounters do not exceed its response capabilities. Failures of societies to meet challenges of events and environment have been conjectured by archaelogists and examined by philosophers of history; most extensively by Arnold Toynbee. 1 If for whatever reason the circumstances within which the society has developed are altered beyond the society’s adaptive responses, its disintegration, displacement, or transformation follows. This is not to say that all failures of society are caused by adherence to false premises, nor that it is always possible to discover what governing premises were false, nor what combination of circumstances may have caused previously harmless beliefs to become harmful. Miscalculations of leaders and governments are documented by historical evidence, but errors of judgment have been frequently made within a context of invalid assumptions which gave the judgment plausibility, even contemporary acceptance as “wisdom.”
