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In the 1940s and 1950s, Greenwich Village, and New York City in general, were places that were participating in great change. Beat Generation writers, pop artists and contemporary musicians were redefining their crafts. In the midst of all this lived Martha Rogers, who was redefining her craft, nursing. In this paper the author argues, in what could be defined as a beginning and informal hermeneutic analysis, that in order to fully understand the Science of Unitary Human Beings it is necessary to understand the social context in which the theoretical framework was developed. Implications arising from the insights that emerge from this brief exploration of the social context in which the Science of Unitary Human Beings developed, which concentrates on the writing of the Beat Generation, are discussed.
It is widely recognised that Martha Rogers drew much inspiration for the development of the Science of Unitary Human Beings from the work of many individuals, mostly from the academic community. These sources are well documented in any or all of the general and even more specific textbooks on nursing theory. In the first few pages of An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing,1 there is reference to Greek mythology, cosmology, archaeology, music, philosophy and prehistory. More specifically, there is reference to the work of Harvey, Preistley, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Bacon and Descartes. Falco and Lobo2 stated that Roger's influences have `capitalised on the knowledge base gained from anthropology, sociology, astronomy, religion, philosophy, history and mythology', with Daily et aT adding that those influences included psychology, biology, physics, mathematics and literature. Meleis4 considered that science fiction and futurology played a part in the development of the Science of Unitary Human Beings, and Falco and Lobo2 along with others have found explicit evidence of the influence of von Bertalanffy's open systems theory. Influences from the work of Nightingale, Einstein, Burr and Northrop,' early Greek philosophers and also de Chardin, Polanyi and Lewin can be found. Many of these influences are critically and philosophically explored in the exemplary work `The Stream of Becoming: A Study of Martha Rogers Theory'.5
It is unlikely, however, that Martha Rogers developed the Science of Unitary Human Beings having only been influenced by these members of the academic community. Hektor,6 in...