Gordon Rattray Taylor
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Gordon Rattray Taylor (January 11, 1911 - December 7 1981) was a British author and broadcaster best-known for his Freudian interpretation of history: Sex in History (1954). Taylor also translated The Mothers (1927) by Briffault in an abridged edition in 1959.
Work
He specialised in making use of the findings of the social sciences in order to interpret the trends of contemporary society. His first book, Economics for the Exasperated, attracted immediate attention. Then followed Conditions of Happiness, in which he analysed the social and psychological forces at work in modern society. In Are Workers Human? he dealt with human behaviour in the industrial context. Later books were The Angel Makers, The Science of Life and The Biological Time Bomb.
Career
He was educated at Radley College, Trinity College, and Cambridge University. He worked as a journalist beginning in 1933 and in 1958 joined the BBC where he wrote and devised science television programs such as `Eye on Research'. During the war he worked in the Psychological Warfare division of SHAEF. He served as a member of the Society for Psychical Research, London (1976-81).
Books
- Sex in History (1954)
- Economics for the Exasperated (1948)
- Conditions of Happiness
- Are Workers Human?
- The Angel Makers
- The Science of Life: A pictorial history of biology (1967)
- The Biological Time Bomb (1968) ISBN 0500010463
- Rethink: A Paraprimitive Solution (1972) ISBN 0436516357
- Rethink: Radical Proposals to Save a Disintegrating World (1974) ISBN 0140218319
- The Doomsday Book: Can the World Survive? (ed.1972) ISBN 058603604 /00500010676
- How to Avoid the Future (1978) ISBN 0436516373
- Salute to British Genius (1978) ISBN 0436516373
- The natural history of the mind (1981) ISBN 0586083863
- The Great Evolution Mystery
