Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Holism And Human History, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We want and need the ‘whole story,’ but the whole story is difficult to tell. We can reduce the magnitude of the task by taking a cue from the title of the meeting, namely “Cosmos, Nature, Culture: A Transdisciplinary Conference.” The ‘whole story’ can be divided into three stories: the story of the unfolding of the universe (‘cosmos’), the story of the evolution of life (‘nature’), and the story of human history (‘culture’). This paper focuses on the third of these. Of course, human history is rooted in nature which is a manifestation of cosmos on our planet, but its …