From Modernity to After-Modernity (09)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 2. About the formation of consciousness



2.3.  The mind and 'Increased Complexity'

I'll start with an update of the graphs I gave in my last post.


A.    visualization of the cycle of life

Where do I stand with my "grand project" ?

2015/12/15

I terminated the first 4 columns with each 5 paintings (if one can say that a painting is ever terminated). Here is the full view. The paintings are stitched together in the Gimp (open source version of photoshop) and not taken in one shot because my present painting place is not big enough to position all the panels together while leaving me the distance to shoot the whole damn thing. This explains the 'dark-light' differences between panels. The whole thing has a better flow that on this picture but that was the price to pay to share this work with my readers. What I hope to share is the dynamic that runs between thinking, painting and writing (please click on images to get their large version).

From Modernity to After Modernity (08)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 2. About the formation of consciousness


2.  About the formation of consciousness

Species are an assemblage of a mass of individual particles that live in groups which are also called societies. The particles have a very short lifespan while their societies last the life of many generations of individual particles. Societies themselves are also mortal and collapse from time to time to be annexed by, or annexing, other societies and forming a larger unit or splitting in smaller units. Societies, or groupings, are the natural form of organization of all species for the good reason that an individual on his own soon dies without reproducing. Preservation of the individual integrity and his reproduction are thus the reasons why individuals are assembling in groups. From the dawn of the principle of life, when life emerged, immediately appeared the necessity to reproduce individual life over the generations in order to ensure the continuity of the species. This principle is the essence of human groupings or societies and societies are natural instruments that ensure the reproduction of species.

From Modernity to After Modernity (07)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 1. About the formation of human knowledge 



1.5. Conclusions (2)


1.5.5. Science and animism have different finalities

Humanity has witnessed three forms of knowledge formations along the path of its long history: animism, religion-philosophy and modern rationality.

From Modernity to After Modernity. (06)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations

Chapter 1. About the formation of human knowledge 

1.6. Conclusions (1)

Let me start by sketching the most salient traits of the history of knowledge formation as I reported on it in my last 4 posts.

From Modernity to After Modernity. (05)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations
Chapter 1. About the formation of human knowledge 




1.4.4. The civilization of China  = animism+

I have laid out in some detail, in my posts “The axioms of civilizations” 01, 02, 03 and 06, 07, 08 (2) the passage from animism to power societies and how China and the West were made to take radically different civilizational paths. I then went on to describe how their conceptual foundations ended up being pole apart. What follows is a further development of the content of those posts and more particularly the formation of knowledge under the Chinese empire. So it could be useful, but not absolutely necessary, to start reading those posts before engaging any further in the present one.

From Modernity to After Modernity. (04)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations

Chapter 1. About the formation of human knowledge

1.4. power societies

The widely shared model about the formation of empires tells us that following the emergence of agriculture sometime 12,000 years ago the sum of societal practices and knowledge that had been accumulated and transmitted from generation to generation over the preceding 100,000 years or so by tribal societies gradually disintegrated. This disintegration of the tribal model spread over a few thousand years and was paralleled by trials and errors in setting up power societies. This process that spanned roughly 7-8000 years culminated, some 5000 years ago in Sumer, in Egypt, and in China, with the institutionalization of empires that reproduce over the generations which is what gave rise to civilizations.

From Modernity to After Modernity. (03)

Part 2. Theoretical considerations

1. About the formation of human knowledge

1.3. non-power societies = tribes & animism

Tribal societies were societies without power and animism, or the tribal worldview, was shared by all. Tribesmen were free and equal individuals; free and equal women and men who willingly shared the views offered by their Man of Knowledge