description must precede valuation and therapy. To substitute 
moral valuation for diagnosis is a natural and common enough 
procedure, but not necessarily a fruitful one.

     Karl Popper devotes the first part of his large study to 
the detribalization of ancient Greece and the reaction to it. But 
neither in Greece nor in the modern world does he give any 
consideration to the dynamics of our technologically extended 
senses as factors either in the opening or closing of societies. 
His descriptions and analyses follow an economic and political 
point of view. The passage below is especially relevant to The  
Gutenberg Galaxy  because it begins with the interplay of 
cultures via  commerce and ends with the dissolution of the 
tribal state, even as it is dramatized by Shakespeare in King  
Lear .