Abstract
Who am I? Where am I? Who are you? Why are we here? These are some of the existential questions humans have asked since leaving the blissful state of undifferentiated subconsciousness of “oneness with nature” and “oneness with wholeness.” At the dawn of consciousness, Homo sapiens sapiens (HSS) took the first step into the world of self-reflection about the “I and thou,” “we and others,” and “we and nature.” This separation from nature and from “oneness with wholeness” marked the critical point of transcending “biological evolution” and entering the path of “cultural evolution.” After dozing in a faint dawn of preconsciousness for several million years, “we humans finally awakened into the stark sunlight of life and discovered that we are here—‘the flat fact’—of our existence.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Banathy, B.H. (2000). The Evolution of the Evolutionary Idea. In: Guided Evolution of Society. Contemporary Systems Thinking. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3139-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3139-2_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-3342-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-3139-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive