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The United Nations University's Project on Socio-cultural Development Alternatives in a Changing World (SCA) is proud to present to the international intellectual, scientific, and academic community the results of the first international seminar of the SCA sub-project on the Transformation of the World - devoted to "Science and Technology in the Transformation of the World'' - organized jointly with the University of Belgrade and held in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 22-26 October 1979.
The sub-project on the Transformation of the World is one of the two sub-projects of the SCA Project itself - parallel with the sub-project on Endogenous Intellectual Creativity - and an accompanying series of convergence areas. It has been designed from the outset as a pioneer inspection of the ongoing major transformations in the world system towards a more equable and humane future for mankind. More than a new international economic order, the transformation of the world has its deep impact on all major dimensions of human and societal existence and evolution - from strategy to spirituality, from economics to patterns of human societies, from science and technology to visions of the world wherefore the sub-project on the Transformation of the World has been designed to deal with the following dimensions:
- science and technology,
- economy and society,
- culture and thought,
- philosophy and religion,
- history and international relations,
- the civilizational prospective.
This SCA sub-project is being implemented through a series of major international seminars, of which the one held in Belgrade was the first, and a wider net of detailed exploration of sub-themes by several of the research units associated with the SCA Project network in the five continents, supported by a select converging set of research reports by individual experts.
The preparation of this volume - bringing together the presentations, official addresses, position papers, and reports of the Belgrade seminar - has been made possible by the convergence and lucid amity of a large group of senior scholars and research staff, involved both in the preparation of the seminar itself and in the elaboration of the several stages leading to the publishing of this volume.
Dr. Miroslav Pecujlic, Rector of the University of Belgrade, has been at the very heart of the whole process: he has assumed with the greatest distinction the key role of orientation, intellectual and scientific, of this international seminar, as witness his key contributions in the volume. We were privileged to have the support of the Yugoslav authorities, as represented by Mr. Zivorad Kovacevic, President of the City Assembly of Belgrade, Professor Pavle Savic, President of the Academy of Sciences of Serbia, Dr. Anton Vratusa, Chairman of the Executive Council of Slovenia, Dr. Milojko Drulovic, Secretary of the Executive Committee of the YCL of Yugoslavia, and other senior colleagues. Professor Henri Lefebvre, in his keynote address, "Le Nécessaries et le Possible dans la Formation du Mondial," set the level at which the whole seminar proceeded. Professors José A. Silva Michelena, Salustiano del Campo Urbano, Osama El-Kholy, Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, and Celso Furtado, as chairmen of the individual sessions, with the painstaking support of the five rapporteurs for these sessions, Professors James A. Maraj, Cuthbert K. Omari, Gregory Blue, Vladimir Stambuk, and Ahmad Yousef Hassan, played a key role in co-ordinating the meeting and giving sense to our convergence through differences and contradictions, in the spirit of the SCA Project: the non-antagonistic dialectical treatment of contradictions leading towards complimentarily. The general rapporteurs of the seminar, Professors Kazuko Tsurumi, Rajko Tomovic, and A.N. Pandeya, undertook a crucial responsibility in giving a sense of the thrust of the seminar in most distinguished terms.
Dr. Kinhide Mushakoji, Vice-Rector of the United Nations University for the Human and Social Development Programme, assisted by Dr. Hossam Issa, Programme Officer of the HSD Programme and secretary to the international seminar, gave their support and help, the warm fraternity, to the seminar, which also has benefited from the presence and the contribution of Dr. Alexander Kwapong, Vice-Rector of the United Nations University for Planning and Development.
We are particularly indebted to Mr. Gregory Blue, Assistant to the Director of the East Asian History of Science Library, Cambridge, for his dedication to his responsibility as co-editor for the seminar, especially in the shorter "Report" volume, where kits crystal-clear analytic mind and editorial remolding of the complete proceedings have played a major role in bringing the gist of our endeavors to the widest possible public. We wish to formally recognize our indebtedness to his work, initiative, devotion, and ability in giving shape and light to a mountain of documents in a most distinguished manner.
Mr. R.N. Malik, Chtef of Conference and General Services of the UN Untversity, Mr. Shigeo Mtnowa, Chtef of Academic Services, Mr. Ray Fleming, Director of Information Services, Mr. D.T. Manson, Director of Administration, and all the administrative staff at the UNU Centre contributed their full share of support and help in amity to the globally of this process.
At the central echelon of the SCA Project in Paris, Mrs. Christine Colpin, our assistant and head of secretariat and technical unit, contributed invaluable help to make feasible the very initiation of this sub-project, facing serious logistical difficulties as well as the work of co-ordination with the University's Cent re in Tokyo, with the greatest accuracy and courtesy throughout, for which she has fully deserved the gratitude of all concerned.
The SCA Project is fully conscious of its responsibilities in contributing its share to the prospection and mediation processes vitally needed if the dangers at work in the present tensions, at this time of transformation of the world, are to be tamed towards rationality and fraternity - to which the TW sub-project is essentially devoted, open for all to join hands.
Anouar Abdel-Malek
Project Co-ordinator Editor