Philosopher and Canadian nationalist, George Grant (1918–1988), born in Toronto, Ontario on November 13, rose to prominence in the 1960s through his concern that the homogenizing nature of modern technology would lead to the destruction of Canadian independence. He came from a family of prominent Canadian educators. A Rhodes scholar, Grant taught at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His meditations on the character of technology led to election to the Royal Society of Canada, several honorary degrees, and an appointment to the Order of Canada.

Grant saw the origins of the Western predicament as follows: Natural law philosophers such as philosopher and religious Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274), following the tradition of antiquity, taught that there were moral laws beyond space and time that were absolutely and universally binding on all human beings. In the seventeenth century a British philosopher, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), envisaged...