A New Renaissance diagnoses the urgent need for cultural change and renewal in today's period of crisis in philosophy, science, and society - now even more pressing than when this volume was first published. Some six hundred years ago, the Florentine Renaissance took a huge leap forward into realism, rationality, and self-awareness. It was born from the waning authority of medieval institutions and beliefs.

Today, we stand at a similar junction in history. It appears to many that reductionist science and its materialistic values - a worldview that has driven modern culture for the past two centuries - is rapidly losing credibility. Its objectives of growth and acquisition and its guiding principles asserting that there is no intrinsic meaning to life or purpose in the cosmos are now widely seen as creating an unhappy and unsustainable world. The essays gathered here are a cultural response to the shortcomings of the prevailing materialistic worldview.

Contributors include: Ervin Laszlo, Richard Tarnas, HM King Charles III, Iain McGilchrist, Larry Dossey, Chris Clarke, Rupert Sheldrake, Anne Baring, Satish Kumar, Henryk Skolimowski, Guy Claxton, Peter Russell, Jean Hardy, David Peat, David Luke, Elisabet Sahtouris, with an Introduction by David Lorimer.