Those of us who try to understand humankind have become entangled in a tension between the illusions of modernity and progress, the legacy of the past two centuries, and the ironic caution of postmodernism, offered as a bridge into the next century. Located between these two positions is what Alvin Toffler (1970) referred to more than 20 years ago as “the furious storm of change.” No one questions the inevitability of change, but in the scientific community it seems that there is little consensus about whether it is prudent to allow it to go beyond the “defense belt” of paradigms, and if so, there is little consensus about how to deal with it.

Neither among scientists nor among citizens is there unanimity on the perception of change. In general, it could be said that a state of uneasiness has arisen over a whole series of events occurring in societies throughout the world. It seems that there is no easy way to respond to this state of affairs. There is the increasingly rapid disappearance of relatively stable traditional societies and long-standing contexts that have been essential for humans' well-being. And the new conditions replacing these contexts bring their own set of problems.