Evo Devo Universe - BIL 2009 (Video, 23 mins). A presentation on evolutionary and developmental features of our universe, and implications for. Um discurso sobre as ci. Boaventura de Sousa Santos * Estamos a doze anos do final do s Big History examines the past using numerous time scales, from the Big Bang to modernity, unlike conventional history courses which typically begin with the.Spiritual evolution is the philosophical, theological, esoteric or spiritual idea that nature and human beings and/or human culture evolve: either extending from the. Could quantum mechanics save the soul? In the light of 20th century physics, is free will plausible? Such as been the hope of some philosophers, scientists. Spiritual evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Spiritual evolution is the philosophical, theological, esoteric or spiritual idea that nature and human beings and/or human culture evolve: either extending from the established cosmologicalpattern (ascent), or in accordance with certain pre- established potentials. They may be cosmological (describing existence at large), personal (describing the development of the individual), or both. They can be holistic (holding that higher realities emerge from and are not reducible to the lower), idealist (holding that reality is primarily mental or spiritual) or nondual (holding that there is no ultimate distinction between mental and physical reality). One can regard all of them as teleological to a greater or lesser degree. Philosophers, scientists, and educators who have proposed theories of spiritual evolution include Schelling, Hegel, Carl Jung, Max Th. Young, Edward Haskell, E. Schumacher, Erich Jantsch, Clare W. Graves, Alfred North Whitehead, Terence Mc. Kenna, P. R. However, for those cultures that have a cyclic cosmology, the concept of a progressive deterioration of the universe (as in the Hesiodic, Hindu, and Lurianic cosmologies of a degradation from a Golden Age to an Iron Age or Kali Yuga) might be balanced by a corresponding ascent to more spiritual stages and a return to paradisical conditions. This is what one finds in Buddhist and especially Jain cosmologies. Emanation. If the Cyclic view is temporal, then emanation is a non- temporal precursor to the theory of spiritual evolution. According to this paradigm, Creation proceeds as an outpouring or even a transformation in the original Absolute or Godhead. The Supreme Light or Consciousness descends through a series of stages, gradations, worlds or hypostases, becoming progressively more material and embodied, before finally turning around to return to the One, retracing its steps through spiritual knowledge, contemplation and ascent. A supreme example of this form of thinking is the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and his successors. Other examples and interpretations might be found in the Hindu sect of Kashmir Shaivism and Tantra in general, Gnosticism, Sufism, and Kabbalah. The Hindu idea of the Chakras might also considered here as the . The Yogi raises the Kundalini or life force through and thus transcends each chakra in turn, until he reaches the crown chakra and liberation. Unlike most types of classic Hinduism, the traditional Samkhyan philosophy is atheistic and dualistic. Pure spirit (called purusha) comes into proximity with prakriti (psychophysical nature), disturbing its equilibrium. As a result, the original root- prakriti (mulaprakriti) undergoes a series of progressive transformations or unfoldings, in the form of successive essences called tattvas. The most subtle tattwas emerge first, then progressively grosser ones, each in a particular order, and finally the elements and the organs of sense. The goal of evolution however is, paradoxically, the release of purusha and the return to the unmanifest condition. Hence everything is tending towards a goal of spiritual quiescence. Plotinus in turn heavily influenced Augustine's theology, and from there Aquinas and the Scholastics. The Great Chain of Being was an important theme in Renaissance and Elizabethan thought, had an under- acknowledged influence on the shaping of the ideas of the Enlightenment and played a large part in the worldview of 1. Europe. And while essentially a static worldview, by the 1. Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful, has recently proposed a sort of simplified Great Chain of Being, based on the idea of four . William Sturgis Bigelow - a physician and Buddhist - attempted to merge biology with spirituality. He accepted the existence of both material and spiritual realms, and many of his ideas were discussed in his book Buddhism and Immortality (1. Bigelow used the concept of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution. According to the author, spiritual evolution involves an individual emerging from . Then the individual moves to a level of celestial experience, and finally is able to . Bigelow accepted both material and spiritual evolution and he also believed that Buddhism and science were compatible. He also opposes creationism for being dogmatic and instead advocates spiritual evolution. Broadly speaking, the concept of evolution fit the spiritualist thought of the progressive development of humanity. At the same time, however, a belief in the animal origins of man threatened the foundation of the immortality of the spirit, for if man had not been created, it was scarcely plausible that he would be specially endowed with a spirit. This led to spiritualists embracing spiritual evolution. According to this idea, evolution occurred in the spirit world . Wallace attributed these novelties to a supernatural agency. He believed that evolution suggested the universe had a purpose, and that certain aspects of living organisms are not explainable in terms of purely materialistic processes. In a 1. 90. 9 magazine article entitled The World of Life, which he later expanded into a book of the same name. Wallace believed natural selection could not explain intelligence or morality in the human being so suggested that non- material spiritual forces accounted for these. Wallace believed the spiritual nature of man could not have come about by natural selection alone, the origins of the spiritual nature must originate ? According to Broom there were at least two different kinds of spiritual forces, and psychics are capable of seeing them. Spiritual evolution, rather than being a physical (or physico- spiritual) process is based on the idea of realms or stages through which the soul or spirit passes in a non- temporal, qualitative way. This is still an important part of some spiritualist ideas today, and is similar to some mainline (as opposed to fundamentalist) Protestant Christian beliefs, according to which after death the person goes to . Blavatsky developed a highly original cosmology, according to which the human race (both collectively and through the succession of individual reincarnation and spiritual evolution) passes through a number of Root Races, beginning with the huge ethereal and mindless Polarian or First Root Race, through the Lemurian (3rd), Atlantean (4th) and our present . This will give rise to a future, Post- Aryan 6th Root Race of highly spiritual and enlightened beings that will arise in Baja California in the 2. Root Race, before ascending to totally superhuman and cosmic states of existence. Blavatsky's ideas were further developed by her successors, such as C. W. Leadbeater, Rudolf Steiner, Alice Bailey, Benjamin Creme, and Victor Skumin each of whom went into huge detail in constructing baroque cycles of rounds, races, and sub- races. Skumin elaborated on the theosophical conceptions of spiritual evolution, he proposed a definition and classification of Homo spiritalis (Latin: . Darwinism, with its explanation of evolution through material factors like natural selection and random mutation, does not sit well with many spiritual evolutionists, for whom evolution is initiated or guided by metaphysical principles or is tending towards a final spiritual or divine state. It is believed by Theosophists that humans are evolving spiritually through a series of esoteric initiations and in the future humans will become esoteric masters themselves as their souls gradually rise upward through the spiritual hierarchy over the course of eons as they reincarnate. Despite this, recent Theosophists and Anthroposophists have tried to incorporate the facts of geology and paleontology into their cosmology and spiritual evolution (in Anthroposophy Hermann Poppelbaum is a particularly creative thinker in this regard). Some have attempted to equate Lemuria with Gondwanaland, for example. Today all these ideas have little influence outside their specialised followings, but for a time Theosophical concepts were immensely influential. Theosophy- like teachings also continue today in a group of religions based on Theosophy called the Ascended Master Teachings. Theurgy. Theurgy is considered by many to be another term for high magic and is known to have influenced the members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn many of whom considered the order to be Theurgic in nature. Aleister Crowley also considered his Thelemic system of magical philosophy to be a Theurgic tradition as it emphasized the Great Work, which is essentially another form of spiritual evolution. The Great Work is believed to result in communication with one's personal angel or higher self. Epigenesis. Humans have the capacity, therefore, to become creative intelligences. For a human to fulfill this promise, his training should allow for the exercise of originality, which distinguishes creation from imitation. When epigenesis becomes inactive, in the individual or even in a race, evolution ceases and degeneration commences. This concept is based on the Rosicrucian view of the world as a training school, which posits that while mistakes are made in life, humans often learn more from mistakes than successes. Suffering is considered as merely the result of error, and the impact of suffering on the consciousness causes humans to be active along other lines which are found to be good, in harmony with nature. Humans are seen as spirits attending the school of life for the purpose of unfolding latent spiritual power, developing themselves from impotence to omnipotence (related also to development from innocence into virtue), reaching the stage of creative gods at the end of mankind's present evolution: Great Day of Manifestation. Teilhard de Chardin refers to this as the Omega Point, and Sri Aurobindo as the Supermind. According to Teilhard evolution does not cease here but continues on to its culmination and unification in the Omega Point, which he identifies with Christ. Big History - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Artist's depiction of the WMAP satellite gathering data to help scientists understand the Big Bang. Big History is an emerging academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approach based on combining numerous disciplines from science and the humanities. Kennedy's famous speech at Rice University where he explains 5. It explores common themes and patterns. They're not going to learn how to balance . It tries to grasp history as a whole, looking for common themes across multiple time scales in history. Big Historians point out that this limits study to the past 5,0. Earth. Henry Kannberg sees Big History as being a product of the Information Age, a stage in history itself following speech, writing, and printing. It sees the transition to civilization as a gradual one, with many causes and effects, rather than an abrupt transformation from uncivilized static cavemen to dynamic civilized farmers. They hunkered over campfires and ate scorched meat. Sometimes they carried spears. Once in a while they scratched pictures of antelopes on the walls of their caves. That's what I learned during elementary school, anyway. History didn't start with the first humans - they were cavemen! The Stone Age wasn't history; the Stone Age was a preamble to history, a dystopian era of stasis before the happy onset of civilization, and the arrival of nifty developments like chariot wheels, gunpowder, and Google. History started with agriculture, nation- states, and written documents. History began in Mesopotamia's Fertile Crescent, somewhere around 4. BC. It began when we finally overcame our savage legacy, and culture surpassed biology. According to historian and educator Sam Wineburg of Stanford University, Big History eschews the interpretation of texts in favor of a purely scientific approach, thus becoming . In some instances, it uses mathematical modeling to explore interactions between long- term trends in sociological systems, and it has led to the coining of the term cliodynamics by Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut to describe how mathematical models might explain events such as the growth of empires, social discontent, and the collapse of nations. Christian believes such . Cosmic evolution, while fully addressing all complex systems (and not merely those that led to humans), which is also sometimes called cosmological history or universal history, has been taught and researched for decades, mostly by astronomers and astrophysicists. This Big- Bang- to- humankind scenario well preceded the subject that some historians began calling Big History in the 1. Cosmic evolution is an intellectual framework that offers a grand synthesis of the many varied changes in the assembly and composition of radiation, matter, and life throughout the history of the universe. While engaging the time- honored queries of who we are and whence we came, this interdisciplinary subject attempts to unify the sciences within the entirety of natural history. Ancient Greek philosophers of the fifth century BCE, most notably Heraclitus, are celebrated for their reasoned claims that all things change. Early modern speculation about cosmic evolution began more than a century ago, including the broad insights of Robert Chambers, Herbert Spencer, and Lawrence Henderson. Only in the mid- 2. Harlow Shapley widely articulated the idea of cosmic evolution (often calling it . This extremely broad subject now continues to be richly formulated as both a technical research program and a scientific worldview for the 2. Other notable efforts include a large website on . These two subjects, closely allied and overlapping, benefit from each other; cosmic evolutionists tend to treat universal history linearly, thus humankind enters their story only at the most very recent times, whereas big historians tend to stress humanity and its many cultural achievements, granting human beings a larger part of their story. One can compare and contrast these different emphases by watching two short movies portraying the Big- Bang- to- humankind narrative, one . Yet another telling of the Big- Bang- to- humankind story is one that emphasizes the earlier universe, particularly the growth of particles, galaxies, and large- scale cosmic structure, such as in physical cosmology. Notable among quantitative efforts to describe cosmic evolution are Eric Chaisson's research efforts to describe the concept of energy flow through open, thermodynamic systems, including galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society. As such, ordered material systems. A recent review article, which is especially directed toward big historians, summarizes much of this empirical effort over the past decade. Although the absolute energy in astronomical systems greatly exceeds that of humans, and although the mass densities of stars, planets, bodies, and brains are all comparable, the energy rate density for humans and modern human society are approximately a million times greater than for stars and galaxies. For example, the Sun emits a vast luminosity, 4x. In contrast to any star, more energy flows through each gram of a plant's leaf during photosynthesis, and much more (nearly a million times) rushes through each gram of a human brain while thinking (~2. W/1. 35. 0g). This inclusive scientific worldview constitutes an objective, quantitative approach toward deciphering much of what comprises organized, material Nature. Its uniform, consistent philosophy of approach toward all complex systems demonstrates that the basic differences, both within and among many varied systems, are of degree, not of kind. And, in particular, it suggests that optimal ranges of energy rate density grant opportunities for the evolution of complexity; those systems able to adjust, adapt, or otherwise take advantage of such energy flows survive and prosper, while other systems adversely affected by too much or too little energy are non- randomly eliminated. Stars require sufficient quantities of hydrogen, sufficiently packed together under tremendous gravity, to cause nuclear fusion. For example, life began not in solids (molecules are stuck together, preventing the right kinds of associations) or gases (molecules move too fast to enable favorable associations) but in liquids such as water which permitted the right kinds of interactions at the right speeds. Neither maximum energy principles nor minimum entropy states are likely relevant, and appeals to . Eager to learn about the Stelliferous epoch? Click away, my fellow explorer. Curious about the formation of the earth? In the mid- 1. 9th century, Alexander von Humboldt's book Kosmos, and Robert Chambers' 1. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. In the first half of the 2. Julian Huxley originated the term . In the mid and later 2. The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski examined history from a multidisciplinary perspective. Later, Eric Chaisson explored the subject of cosmic evolution quantitatively in terms of energy rate density, and the astronomer Carl Sagan wrote Cosmos. Some early efforts were courses in Cosmic Evolution at Harvard University in the United States, and Universal History in the Soviet Union. One account suggested that the notable Earthrise photo, taken during a lunar orbit by the spacecraft Apollo 8, which showed Earth as a small blue and white ball behind a stark and desolate lunar landscape, not only stimulated the environmental movement but also caused an upsurge of interdisciplinary interest. Siegfried Kutter at Evergreen State College in Washington state, and Harvard University astrophysicists George B. Field and Eric Chaisson started synthesizing knowledge to form a . His analysis did not begin with the Big Bang, but his chapter . His first university- level course was offered in 1. This course eventually became a Teaching Company course entitled Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity, with 2. In 1. 99. 4 at the University of Amsterdam and the Eindhoven University of Technology, college courses were offered. By defining 'regime' in this way, human cultural regimes thus became a subcategory of regimes in general, and the approach allowed me to look systematically at interactions among different regimes which together produce big history. Gates said about David Christian: He really blew me away. Here's a guy who's read across the sciences, humanities, and social sciences and brought it together in a single framework. It made me wish that I could have taken big history when I was young, because it would have given me a way to think about all of the school work and reading that followed. In particular, it really put the sciences in an interesting historical context and explained how they apply to a lot of contemporary concerns. This program, directed by Mojgan Behmand, includes a one- semester survey of Big History, and an interdisciplinary second- semester course exploring the Big History metanarrative through the lens of a particular discipline or subject. Our program invites you on an immense journey through time, to witness the first moments of our universe, the birth of stars and planets, the formation of life on Earth, the dawn of human consciousness, and the ever- unfolding story of humans as Earth's dominant species. Explore the inevitable question of what it means to be human and our momentous role in shaping possible futures for our planet. In 2. 01. 5, University of California Press published Teaching Big History, a comprehensive pedagogical guide for teaching Big History, edited by Richard B. Simon, Mojgan Behmand, and Thomas Burke, and written by the Dominican faculty. By 2. 01. 1, 5. 0 professors around the world have offered courses. In 2. 01. 2, one report suggested that Big History was being practiced as a . An education project founded by philanthropist.
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