1

LOST IN THE COSMOS? FROM BIG BANG TO BIG MYSTERY:

HUMAN EMERGENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF EVOLUTION
1. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 2, 50: [] The intellectual soul is in some way horizon and
frontier of the bodily and the non-embodied, insofar as its a non-embodied substance, while still being the
form of the body.
2. Deep is the well of the past. Should we not
call it unfathomable? That indeed may be so,
if and perhaps only if, it is the past of that
human essence that is being spoken of and
questioned; that enigmatic essence []
whose mystery very understandably forms
the Alpha and Omega of all our speaking and
questioning, bestowing stress and fire to all
speech, on all questioning its urgency. For
the deeper we sound, the further down into
the underworld of the past we grope towards
and arrive at, the more the beginnings of the
human, its history, its culture, prove to be
completely beyond our grasp, and no matter
what agelengths we unspool our plumbline to,
they always recede again and further into
fathomlessness. (Thomas Mann, Prologue,
Joseph and His Brothers [1933])

2. Tief ist der Brunnen der Vergangenheit. Sollte man

ihn nicht unergrndlich nennen? Dies nmlich dann
sogar und vielleicht eben dann, wenn nur und allein das
Menschenwesen es ist, dessen Vergangenheit in Rede
und Frage steht: dies Rtselwesen [] dessen Geheimnis sehr begreiflicherweise das A und O all
unseres Redens und Fragens bildet, allem Reden
Bedrngtheit und Feuer, allem Fragen seine Instndigkeit verleiht. Da denn nun gerade geschieht es, dass je
tiefer man schrft, je weiter hinab in die Unterwelt des
Vergangenen man dringt und tastet, die Anfangsgrnde
des Menschlichen, seiner Geschichte, seiner Gesittung,
sich als gnzlich unerlotbar erweisen und vor unserem
Senkblei, zu welcher abenteuerlichen Zeitenlnge wir
seine Schnur auch abspulen, immer wieder und weiter
ins Bodenlose zurckweichen. (Thomas Mann, Joseph
und seine Brder: Die Geschichten Jakobs, Frankfurt:
Fischer, 1964, 7)

6th STEP
c.45000 yrs ago

First human life Homo Sapiens skeletal remains in Africa, Europe, Asia & Australia
+ explosion of symbolization of experienced attunement with transfinite reality

4m yrs

First hominids

5th STEP
from 545m yrs

First multicellular animal life Ediacara (Australia, 545m yrs), Chengjiang fauna
(China, 520m yrs), Burgess Shale (Canada, 510m yrs), Tommotian fauna (Russia)

4th STEP
600-550m yrs

First complex botanical life

1b yrs

Complex eukaryotic cells (that is, cells with nucleus) algae

3rd STEP
3b yrs

First biological life prokaryotes (cells without nucleus) bacterial cells

+ archeabacteria + simple eukaryotic cells

4b yrs

Formation of Solar System

10b yrs

Formation of Galaxies

13b yrs

Formation of quasars, stars, proto-galaxies

2nd STEP
15b yrs + 10- secs

First chemical elements hydrogen, helium

up to 10 secs

First subatomic particles

1st STEP
15b yrs

First physical existence: Big Bang

3. The principle of development itself [] is the linked sequence of dynamic higher integrations. [] A
development may be defined as a flexible linked sequence of dynamic and increasing differentiated higher
integrations that meet the tension of successively transformed underlying manifolds through successive
applications of the principles of correspondence and emergence. (Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of
Human Understanding, London: 1961, 452, 454)
4. These levels of the hierarchy of being [humanpsychic, animal, vegetative, and inanimate being]
are related to each other in (a) the grounding of
the higher on the lower ones and (b) the organization of the lower by the higher ones. These
relationships are not reversible. On the one hand,
there is no eu zen, no good life in Aristotles sense,
without the foundation of zen; on the other hand,
the order of the good life does not emerge from the
corporeal foundation but comes into being only
when the entire existence is ordered by the center
of the existential tension. (Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, CW 6,
Columbia, MO: 2002, 407)

4. Diese Schichten der Seinshierarchie (Menschlich-Seelisch, Animalisch, Vegetativ und Anorganisch) stehen zueinander in den Relationen (a) der
Fundierung der hheren durch die tieferen und (b)
der Organisation der tieferen durch die hheren.
Die Relationen sind nicht umkehrbar. Einerseits
gibt es kein eu zen, kein gutes Leben im Aristotelischen Sinne, ohne das Fundament des zen;
andererseits wchst die Ordnung des guten
Lebens nicht aus dem Leibfundament, sondern
entsteht nur dann, wenn die Gesamtexistenz vom
Zentrum der existentiellen Spannung her geordnet
wird. (Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis: Zur Theorie der
Geschichte und Politik, 1966, 349f)

BIG BANG AS A BOUNDARY QUESTION FOR ASTROPHYSICS

5. Stephen Hawking seemed to deny the relevance of the boundary question of astrophysics, when he
proposed a view of the universe as having no boundary or edge, no beginning or end (on analogy with a
sphere). He remarked of such a world: It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE. (A Brief
History of Time, London: 1988, 136)
6. But in an earlier collaboration with George Ellis, he did admit the key boundary question posed by Big
Bang theory: The creation of the Universe has been argued, indecisively, from early times. [] The results
we have obtained support the idea that the universe began a finite time ago. However the actual point of
creation, the singularity, is outside the scope of presently known laws of physics. (The Large Scale
Structure of Space-Time, New York: 1973, 364)

EMERGENCE OF LIFE AS A POSSIBLE BOUNDARY QUESTION FOR BIOLOGY

7. Nobel prize-winning biologist Jacques Monod remarked that: The simplest cells available to us for study
have nothing primitive about them. [] The major problem is the origin of the genetic code and of its
transitional mechanism. Indeed it is not so much a problem as a veritable enigma. The code is meaningless unless translated. The modern cells translating machinery consists of at least fifty macro-molecular
components which are themselves coded in DNA: the code cannot be translated except by products of
translation. It is the modern expression of omne vivum ex ovo. When and how did this circle become
closed? It is exceedingly difficult to imagine. (Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the
Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology, London: Collins, 1979, 134f)
8. And Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA noted that: An honest man, armed with all the
knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment
to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it
going. (Quoted in: Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, London: 1985, 268)

EMERGENCE OF ANIMAL LIFE AS A POSSIBLE BOUNDARY QUESTION FOR ZOOLOGY

9. [I]f evolutionary change doesnt simply accumulate over the course of time, the question becomes: when
and under what conditions does evolutionary change occur? [] New species [] tend to show up abruptly
in the fossil record as the overwhelming rule. [] Punctuated equilibria is a combination of empirical
pattern (stasis interrupted by brief bursts of evolutionary change) coupled with pre-existing biological
theory. (Niles Eldredge, Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate, London: 1995, 94, 104)

10. In his Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo (New York: 2005), Sean Carroll
calls this explosion of multicellular animal life The Big Bang of Animal Evolution.
11. The basic discovery, made in the early 1990s, was that the sudden emergence of the 35 phyla or major
zoological groups (chordates, crustaceans, molluscs, etc.), around 550m years ago showed a common
deep genetic structure. Each phylum had the same genetic instructions for its top/bottom axis, front/back
polarity, head, and sensory organs. Wallace Arthur in his The Origin of Animal Body Plans: A Study in
Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Cambridge: 2000), 81, gives his opinion that: There was no multicellular animal life prior to 600m years ago; there was an explosion of body plans in Ediacaran times, with
many becoming extinct, and a second body-plan explosion in the early Cambrian; evolution in Vendian and
Cambrian times was much more experimental than it is now; and internal factors such as developmental
constraint (or early lack of it) are important in evolution as well as considerations about niche space and
external adaptation.
12. Whats amazing are the jellyfish, or cnidarians, belonging to a 36th phylum which may have originated
with the first Ediacaran fauna originating 50m years earlier without the body-plans of the other 35 phyla:
they still seem to have the same genetic plan for eyes that they share with the other phyla.
Cf. Rudolf A. Raff in The Shape of Life: Genes, Development, and the Evolution of Animal Form (Chicago:
1996), 37677: The most primitive animals with eyes are the cnidarians. Some have simple eyes lacking
lenses, but other medusae have well-developed eyes on the edges of their bells. The Cubomedusae (box
jellies), whose highly toxic stings are such a notorious threat to swimmers on Australias north coast, have
up to 24 eyes that are linked to the nerve net and enable them to orient accurately in light. These eyes are
complex, with an epidermal cornea, a spherical lens, a multilayered retina, and a region of nerve fibers.
There are about 1,000 sensory cells in each eye. [Given these jellyfish are the earliest multicellular animals]
the complexity of their eyes is surprising. If cnidarians [jellyfish] were indeed part of the Ediacaran fauna, it
suggests that eyes long predate the Cambrian radiation of bilaterian animals.
13. Sean Carroll, Jennifer Grenier and Scott Weatherbee summarize the evo-devo position in From DNA to
Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design, Malden, Mass.: 2001: [] Regulatory
evolution is the creative force underlying morphological diversity across the evolutionary spectrum, from
variation within species to body plans. (173)
14. The possibility that some degree of adaptive evolution may be the result of an inherent emergent
inventive capacity possessed by all living things cannot be ruled out. [] Certainly the phenomenon of
emergence is itself encountered throughout the natural world. We cannot predict the properties of water, or
the speed of nerve conduction, from quantum mechanics. Nor can we predict the social behaviour of bees,
ants, or indeed any organism from observing the behavior of an individual in isolation. (Michael Denton,
Natures Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe (New York: 1998, 365)
GENETICS NOT ENOUGH! CHANGE IS PRIMARILY SENSORY-PERCEPTUAL

15. An explanatory account of animal species will differentiate animals not by their organic but by their
psychic differences. [] The animal pertains to an explanatory genus beyond that of the plant; that explanatory genus turns on sensibility; its specific differences are differences of sensibility; and it is in differences of
sensibility that are to be found the basis for differences of organic structure, since that structure, as we have
seen, possesses a degree of freedom that is limited but not controlled by underlying materials and outer
circumstances. (Insight, 252, 26566)
THE NOTION OF THE THING, THE SEQUENCE OF SCIENCES, AND THINGS WITHIN THINGS

16. Lonergans notion of the thing is: an intelligible, concrete unity, differentiated by explanatory parts,
implying the possibility of different kinds of things (Insight, Ch. 8). Just what justifies our moving from a lower
science, like physics or chemistry, to one dealing with a higher level of reality like biology, botany, zoology,
or anthropology? In the natural sciences the laws of physics hold for subatomic elements, those of physics
and chemistry hold for elements and compounds; those of physics, chemistry and biology hold for plants,
and so on. As one moves from one genus to the next, there is added a new set of laws which defines its
own basic terms by its own empirically established correlations. (Insight, 255)

Corresponding to the successive genera, there will be distinct and autonomous empirical sciences. And the
successive, distinct autonomous sciences will be related as successive higher viewpoints. (Insight, 43839)
NOT THINGS WITHIN THINGS

17. In things of any higher genus, there survive lower correlations, but there do not survive lower things. The
lower correlations survive, for without them there would be nothing for the higher system of correlations to
systematize. On the other hand, lower things do not survive within higher things. This contrasts with the
statement on the back of Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene (London: 1989) which accurately summarizes
his argument: Our genes made us. We animals exist for their preservation and are nothing more than their
throwaway survival machines.

THE HUMAN REVOLUTION: THE EMERGENCE OF THE HUMAN MYSTERY

18. Michael Ruse, who has written extensively on evolution and philosophical issues, noted a few years ago
that: Unfortunately, there is simply nothing in the literature by philosophers on human origins.
19. [] Our pattern has essentially been one of business as usual for the natural world: a story of repeated
evolutionary experimentation, diversification, and, ultimately, extinction. And it was clearly in the context of
such experimentation rather than out of constant fine tuning by natural selection over the eons, that our own
amazing species appeared on Earth. Albeit, in the end, with a difference: for unlike even our closest
relations, Homo sapiens is not simply an extrapolation or improvement of what went before it. For reasons
we will explore, our species is an entirely unprecedented entity in the living world, however mundanely we
may have come by our unusual attributes. (Extinct Humans, Ian Tattersall and Geoffrey H. Schwartz, New
York: 2000, 9)
20. In his The Generation of Animals Aristotle wrote: That is why it is a very great puzzle to answer another
question, concerning Reason. At what moment, and in what manner, do those creatures which have this
principle of Reason acquire their share in it, and where does it come from? This is a very difficult problem
which we must endeavour to solve, so far as it may be solved, to the best of our power. (736b5)
21. [T]here is a sense in which it can be said that, given two mammals extraordinarily similar in organic
structure and genetic code, and given that one species has made the breakthrough into triadic behavior
[symbolization or language] and the other has not, there is, semiotically speaking, more difference between
the two than there is between the dyadic [non-symbolizing] animal and the planet Saturn. (Walker Percy,
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, New York: 1983, 97)
HUMAN BIOCHEMICAL DIFFERENCE (MTDNA AND Y-CHROMOSOMES)
22. Because mtDNA inheritance seems to imply a single mother, Rebecca Cann, Chris Stringer and others
support what has been called the Noahs Ark theorythe emergence of the human race from a single
origin. When Cann and her associates at the Department of Human Biology at Berkeley studied the mtDNA
variation in different species, they discovered a 5% variation between the two slightly different orang-utan
species in Borneo and Sumatra, a 0.6% variation among gorillas, and an astonishingly low 0.3% variation
among humans of all races. Stringer remarks in African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity, London:
1997, 113: It is not the gorilla, nor the chimpanzee, nor the orang-utan, that is unusual. [] Each enjoys a
normal spectrum of biological variability. It is the human race that is odd. We display remarkable geographical diversity, and yet astonishing genetic unity. [] The realisation that humans are biologically highly
homogeneous has one straightforward implication: that mankind has only recently evolved from one tight
little group of ancestors. [] We are all members of a very young species, and our genes betray this
secret.
23. And Tattersall and Schwartz in Extinct Humans, note that: Recent comparative studies of the human Ychromosome [uniquely passed along by men, presumably from an African Adam] suggest a pattern similar
to that suggested by the maternally derived mtDNA. (Cf. on this, Spencer Wells, The Journey of Man: A
Genetic Odyssey, London: 2002; and Stephen Oppenheimer, Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World,
London: 2003)

HUMAN BRAIN DIFFERENCES

24. Theres the large quantitative difference in the size of the human brain in relation to mammals, with an
EQ, or encephalization quotient 8 times mammal average, although this is hardly a decisive difference,
given that our brains can be smaller than Neanderthals, and can vary from 1100cc2100cc with no noticeable difference in intelligence. (Dolphins have a brain 6 times the average.) The most striking differences
are in the human brains qualitative structure, with the most distinctive features being the frontal lobes, and
in those parts of the brain dealing with the reception and the production of speech.
The frontal area of the brain is where development between australopithecines and erectines is most
noticeable. In humans, it provides the material basis for decision-making and future planning. In smaller
monkeys, the frontal area occupies 11% of the total neocortex (the topmost part of the brain), in chimpanzees 17%, and in humans 29%. Its integrative function is clear even neurologically, since it has two-way
connections with almost all levels of the brain.
What makes the human frontal area unique is its connection with Wernickes area (for speech-reception)
and Brocas area (for speech-production)since all our decision-making and specifically human action
involves verbal communication. Wernickes area, close to our left ear, analyses heard speech, identifying its
significant elements and integrating them into a meaningful sequence. John Eccles points out that the area
corresponding to it is proportionately very small in the orang-utan brain, for example, while area 37,
adjoining Wernickes area and regarded as instrumental in understanding language, seems to have no
equivalent, for example, in macaque or orang-utan brains. (The Human Mystery, Berlin: 1979, 8893)
HUMAN PHYSIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES
25. At this level, human beings have both a long childhood and a long period of post-reproductive
survival, ageing processes which have no counterpart either among apes, or, according to new techniques
for dating the age at death of fossil remains, among hominids, including Neanderthals or what are called
archaic sapiens populations. (Christopher Stringer, in Encyclopedia of Human Evolution and Prehistory,
New York: 1988, 269)
26. Adolf Portmann contrasts the highly specialized young animals body-structure with the extremely
unspecialized human infant body. Its very lack of specialization allows it unlimited adaptability in relation to
what Portmann calls the social womb of its human, including linguistic, environment (Vom lebendigen,
Frankfurt, 1979, 7592). The long ageing period would seem to ensure that the accumulated and radically
non-instinctual experience and tradition of the human community is passed on by the older to the younger
generation. What is of interest in both of these growth patterns is that they do not confer a biological
advantage, but are meaningful primarily in terms of the human intellectual and spiritual culture they are
aimed at serving.
SYMBOLS AND ART
27. Hans Jonas essay, Image-Making and the Freedom of Man, is an excellent meditation on the specifically human significance of certain phenomena at the perceptual level (The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a
Philosophical Biology, New York: 1968, 15775). Jonas puts himself in the position of an explorer from
another planet seeking evidence of a specifically human presence. He rules out tools, hearths and tombs,
focusing on images. Entering a cave, he notices lines or shapes on its walls which must have been produced artificially and which suggest a likeness to some living forms of types seen outside the cave.
He takes these as sufficient evidence of human existence. Why? First of all, he points out that animal
artefacts are directly connected with biological ends, such as nutrition, reproduction and hibernation, while a
visual representation does not change the animals condition and must have another purpose. Then he lists
the properties of an image: it is a likeness; it is produced with intent; the likeness is incomplete (i.e., if
something were copied in all respects, say a hammer, you would have another hammer, not its image). This
incompleteness involves selective omissionthe first deliberate omission is for the image-maker to select
what is relevant or significant in the object represented.
A second omission is to leave out all the senses except the visual. A third omission is to limit the representation to two dimensions, permitting greater expressive freedom in emphasizing what matters most. Thus
a less of completeness can mean a more of essential likeness. (161) Incompleteness and selective
omission can lead to positive differenceas well as dissimilarity due to selective omission there can be

alteration of the selected features themselves. With the rise of symbolic convention an increasing range of
substitutions and graphical abbreviations becomes availableand it is in the exercise of this freedom, that
the norm of the given object can be abandoned entirely for the creation of shapes never seen. (162)
Finally Jonas gives his interpretation of the act of grasping the significance of the image: The principle here
involved on the part of the subject is the mental separation of form from matter. It is this that makes
possible the vicarious presence of the physically absent at once with the self-effacement of the physically
present. Here we have a specifically human fact, and the reason why we can expect neither making nor
understanding of images from animals. The animal deals with the present object itself. (167)
CONTRAST WITH CLAIMS REGARDING ANIMAL LANGUAGE: ANIMAL COMMUNICATION, YES; LANGUAGE, NO
28. In their Conclusions, the authors write: Projects devoted to teaching chimpanzees and gorillas to use
language have shown that these apes can learn vocabularies of visual symbols. There is no evidence,
however, that apes can combine such symbols in order to create new meanings. (900) They relegate their
behavior to simpler, non-linguistic processes (900). Apes can learn many isolated symbols (as can dogs,
horses, and other nonhuman species), but they show no unequivocal evidence of mastering the conversational, semantic, or syntactic organization of language. (901) (H. S. Terrace, L. A. Petitto, R. J. Sanders,
T. G. Berer, Can an Ape Create a Sentence? Science, 23 Nov. 1979, vol. 206, no. 4421, 891902)

ARISTOTLES INSIGHT INTO COMMON QUEST FOR GROUND IN MYTH AND PHILOSOPHY
29. As we know, Aristotle opens his Metaphysics with the programmatic: All men by nature reach out for
knowledge, conventionally translated more blandly as: All men by nature desire to know.
i) Lets first look at the second part of this statement, regarding what all men do, first: tou eidemi oregontai,
which seems to deserve the more active reach out for knowledge than the more usual desire to know (cf.
982a32, where Aristotle uses pursue or seize with regard to knowledge). In 981a13-982a20 the knowledge turns out to be questioning, from minor matters to the ground of the cosmos.
In 982b12f, were told that philosophy begins in wonder, and in 983a14f, he speaks of a wondering why
things should be as they are. So, thaumazein, wondering, implies the quest for the ground, a quest
undertaken because of his consciousness of ignorance, agnoein, 982b18. Consequently, Voegelin suggests
paraphrasing the first line of the Metaphysics as: All men are by nature in quest of the ground.
ii) Lets turn now to that first part of the opening sentence: All men are by nature Aristotle identifies two
styles of truth, philosophy and myth. He characterizes what both styles have in common: wonder about the
ground of being. So he can write, in 982b18f: The philomythos (lover of myth) is in a sense a philosophos
(lover of wisdom), for myth is composed of wonders.
What is relevant for us is that Aristotle had come to a grasp of what was in common to the two cultural forms
he was acquainted with, myth and philosophy, which was that both were symbolizations of the quest for the
ground, which remains an impenetrable mystery. Voegelin would thus see that Aristotle had grasped the key
principle of equivalence, that is to say, the recognizable identity of the reality experienced and symbolized
on the various levels of differentiation. (Autobiographical Reflections, Baton Rouge: 1989, 108)

THE RECOVERY OF THE BIG MYSTERY OF THE HUMAN PERSON AS YOU-FOR-TRANSCENDENT GROUND
30. Edith Stein (died, Auschwitz, Aug. 1942) wrote in her Ending and Unending Being (1936): So the riddle
of the I remains. For the I must receive its being from Someone elsenot from itself. I do not exist of myself,
and of myself I am nothing. Every moment I stand before nothingness, so that every moment I must be
dowered anew with being. [] This nothinged being of mine, this frail received being, is being. [] It thirsts
not only for endless continuation of its being but for full possession of being. (Ch. 2, 7, 55)
31. Etty Hillesum (died, Auschwitz, Sept. 1943): I love people so terribly much, because in every one I
love a part of you. [] And I look for you everywhere in others and I often find a part of you. And I try to
unearth you in the hearts of others. [] And now I must do everything alone. The best and noblest part of
my friend, of the man who awakened you in me, is now already with you. (Etty: De nagelaten geschriften
van Etty Hillesum 1941-1943, Amsterdam: 1991: Diary, September 15, 1942, 544)

Many are still hieroglyphs before me, but very slowly I learn to decipher them. It is the most beautiful thing I
know: to read life from people. In Westerbork it was just as if I stood before the naked skeleton of life.
(Diary, September 20, 1942, 552)
And she exposes the source of her understanding of this universal humanity, in her intense consciousness
of the you-wardness of each person, as a you-for-You, that painfully recovered experience of a transfinite
personal ground: My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with you, my God, a great dialogue. When I
stand in a corner of the camp, my feet planted on your earth, my face lifted to your sky, then sometimes
tears run down that face, born from inner emotion and thankfulness seeking expression. (Letter, August 18,
1943, 682)
32. The perfection of the universe depends essentially on the diversity of natures by which the various
levels of goodness are fulfilled, rather than on the multiplying of the individuals within one nature. (In Sent I.
44.1.2, quoted in Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Creation, Oxford: 1999, 224, n106)
33. Gods creation out of nothing can be understood kenoticallythat God loses himself to let creation be. It
is this rich notion of divine creation out of nothing that lifts the metaphysical event at the level of being into
the ethical event at the level of love and encounter. (Cf. Piero Coda, Dio e la creazione, I: Trinit e creazione dal nulla, Nuova Umanit, 115 (January-February, 1998) 1, 6788)

Common Quest underlying

Mythic, Mytho-speculative,
Philosophic, Revelational,
Ideological & Post-Ideological
experienceswhat happens
in history is the very process
of differentiating consciousness that constitutes history.
[] There is no answer to the
Question other than the
Mystery as it becomes
luminous in the acts of
questioning. (OH4, 330f)

Islam

Contemporary
. Archaic Societies
in Australasia,
Asia, North & South
America, and Africa

Hinduism;
Buddhism

<Indus civilization;
Maurya Empire>

Zoroastrianism

<Ancient Near Eastern

Empires: Ebla, Sumer, Babylon,
Mesopotamia, Egypt, etc.>

Judaism

Christianity

MYTHIC EXPERIENCES----UPPER PALEOLITHIC (FROM ABOUT 45,000 BC);

MESOLITHIC (FROM 10,000 BC); NEOLITHIC (FROM 3,000 BC)

<Minoan and
Achaean
civilizations>

Philosophy

Ideologies

Post-Ideological
Modernity

5. <underlying political orders>

1. Undifferentiated
experience (M);
2. Partially differentiated
experience (M-S);
3. Differentiated
experience (P, R, PIM);
4. Partial Loss of
differentiation (I)

<Hsia (Xia), Shang,

Chou (Zhou) & Chin
(Qin) Dynasties>

Taoism;
Confucianism

MODERNITY NOW ACCESSIBLE AS VIRTUAL UNIVERSAL HUMANITY IN QUEST OF THE GROUND OF EXISTENCE

HERE COMES EVERYBODY!!! EXPERIENCES OF ALL MATRICES: MYTH, PHILOSOPHY, REVELATION, IDEOLOGIES, AND POST-IDEOLOGICAL