Bücher der Reihe The Hastings Center Series in Ethics

This volume presents a completely new and substantial body of information about the origin of agriculture and plant use in Africa. All the evidence is very recent and for the first time all this archaeobotanical evidence is brought together in one volume.

and (2) the practical implications, lThe project, entitled "Ethical Issues in the Care and Treatment of the Mildly Mentally Retarded," was supported by the EVI5T program of the National Science Foundation under Grant No.

This volume is one outcome of a two-year study conducted by the Behavioral Studies Research Group of The Hastings 1 Center.

There is widespread agreement among large segments of western society that we are living in a period of hard times.

I Several years ago, when the Carter administration announced that it would support congressional action to end the public fund ing of abortions, the President was asked at a press conference whether he thought that such a policy was unfair;

SIDNEY CALLAHAN AND DANIEL CALLAHAN This book, like many other things to do with abortion, is a product of long controversy. At one time, while Daniel was writing a book on the subject, Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (1970), we talked about the subject every day for the four years of the book's gestation.

A concern for the ethical instruction and formation of students has always been a part of American higher education. Beginning in 1977, The Hastings Center, with the support of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, undertook a system atic study of the state of the teaching of ethics in American higher education.

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options.

OUR AGE IS CHARACTERIZED by an uncertainty about the na ture of moral obligations, about what one can hope for in an afterlife, and about the limits of human knowledge. Though imperfect, it is an effort to frame the unity of the human condition, which is captured in part by ethics, in part by religion, and in part by the sciences.

hope of obtaining a comprehensive and coherent understand ing of the human condition, we must somehow weave together the biological, sociological, and psychological components of human nature and experience.