The physicists carried man to the brink of the pit but then halted him and bade him look down. It may be that, after the seeming inevitability of two world wars, the creation of nuclear weapons was an admonitory gift, which spared us a third clash of great nations and introduced the longest period of general peace, albeit a peace of terror, since Victorian times. But physics seemed to have come to the end of its paramountcy during the 1960s. In any case it could not tell us what we increasingly demanded to know: Why had the 20th century turned into an age of horror or, as some would say, evil? The social sciences, which claimed such questions as their province, could not provide the answer. Nor was this surprising: they were part, and a very important part, of the problem. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.