Larger context for LACK in Corpus USbrown_UKbncw/US_brown.txt
The major effect of these advances appears to lie in the part they have played in the industrial revolution and in the tools which scientific understanding has given us to build and manipulate a more protective environment.
In addition, our way of dealing directly with natural phenomena has also changed.
Even in domains where detailed and predictive understanding is still lacking, but where some explanations are possible, as with lightning and weather and earthquakes, the appropriate kind of human action has been more adequately indicated.
Apparently the population as a whole eventually acquires enough confidence in the explanations of the scientists to modify its procedures and its fears.
How and why this process occurs would provide an interesting separate subject for study.
In some areas, the progress is slower than in others.
In agriculture, for example, despite the advances in biology, elaborate rituals tend to persist along with a continued sense of the imminence of some natural disaster.
In child care, the opposite extreme prevails; procedures change rapidly and parental confidence probably exceeds anything warranted by established psychological theory.
There are many domains in which understanding has brought about widespread and quite appropriate reduction in ritual and fear.