"Moving easily among the realms of literature, philosophy, biology, physics, mathematics, ethics, art, and religion, J.T. Fraser excavates the foundations of human values and elucidates their role in the lives of individuals, societies, and the historical process. Positing that the need for human values arises from the necessity to control the unbounded imaginative powers of the mind, Fraser reveals time as an essential constituent of the principles of selection that determine values, rather than merely a backdrop against which the stability of values may be tested."--Jacket. "Over the course of history, Fraser argues, human values have served primarily not as conservative influences that promote permanence, continuity, and balance - as commonly believed - but as revolutionary forces that, in the long run, promote change by generating and sustaining certain unresolvable conflicts."--Jacket.