Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? -Gauguin
Michael Sugrue
Draft Not For Publication or Citation
…all mankind is of one author, and is one volume… –John Donne
For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things – oak, and maple, and pine wood; and pitch and hemp – yet all these ran into each other and in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man’s valor and that man’s fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness… –Herman Melville
The past, he thought, is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another. And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered. –Anton Chekhov
… anything he paints is both an homage and a critique, and everything he says a gloss. –Robert Motherwell
Prologue On the Earth- Where Are We? Maps, Mercator Illusion, Creative Disorientation
I. The State of the Art: World History and the Maps of Human Time
A. Spengler and Toynbee
B. Late 20th Century World History: Braudel, McNeill and Curtin
C. The Turn of the Century: Diamond and Harari
D. The problems with Harari’s Sapiens and Homo Deus
II. My Response: A Big (Collective) Subject for a New Big History
A. The Investigation of Nature Reveals the Revealer: Human
Consciousness As Dialectically Emergent Property; Freedom as Subjectivity
B. Origins of Art/Religion/Philosophy = Hegel’s Absolute Spirit
Creative, Self Conscious Deployment of Symbols in Paleolithic , ~40k ya
Animal centric hunting magic, game represented
C. Cult, Creativity, Community at Gobekli Tepe 10th millennium BC
Cooperation Overcomes Conflict, Dawn of Sonderstellung?
D. Evolution of Evolution into History Means Transition From Hardware (= Brains) to
Software (= Culture) Thus Evolution Accelerates in a dialectic of subject and object
E. But feedback loop emerges: experience changes the experiencing brain:
a. Change in Neuroarchitecture: Neural/Synaptic plasticity, neurogenesis
b. Revealed in literate decline of memory (Phaedrus to Neuroarthistory)
III. Archaic Physics: Job’s Whirlwind Speaks: Nature Personified
A. Archaic Civilizations in New World: Isolated Complexity, New Subsistence strategies New World unique, 23,000BC: isolation, autarky, not riverine, few animals domesticated, Population Y exterminated. Sedentary maize production ~3500 BC
a. Norte Chico/Caracal 3000BC = Source of Andean Civilizations
b. Mesoamerica: Olmecs to Aztecs + Maya (Popol Vuh and Ball Game)
c. Mississippi Moundbuilders supplant Hopewell
B. The Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile were the heirs of millennia long traditions of
trade, agriculture, religion, pottery: Schmidt Mesopotamian myths
C. MESOPOTAMIA = Origins of Writing in counting, superior math influenced India
The Epic of Gilgamesh = From Oral to Written, Episodes to Epic
a. Epic as Primitive Encyclopedia, Farmer’s Almanac
b. All Polytheism is local and permeable
c. Epic as Ur Form
D. EGYPT — Theology and Geography (gift of writing from Mesopotamia)
a. Benevolent Gods (vs Cruel Gods of Mesopotamia)
b. Unique Achievement of Akhenaten = Monotheism =Zoroaster/Plato/Hebrews
E. INDIA — Indus to Ganges: Derivative Physics?
a. Uncertain connection between Civilizations on Indus and later Ganges Plain
b. Pausanias says Plato borrowed from India, Pyrrho from Buddhism?
c. Cultural Flow: Persia, India and Alexander the Great: Greater Hellenism
d. Ashoka and the universal moral project of Buddhism
e. Persian – Indian trade in goods and ideas old and extensive
f. 311 BC = First Year Zero: Linear time in Persia, Seleucus Nicator
g. Persia as hinge of Old World + Zoroastrian monotheism
F. CHINA—The Flow of Energy “Chi”
a. Taoist Naturalism, Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, I Ching
b. Mozi and Mohism
c. Confucius and Confucianism
d. Hsun-Tzu and Legalism
e. Importation of Buddhism
G. GREECE– Nature as Single Living Organism
a. Plato, Timaeus 30b, Nature has a soul = Archaic ”Gaia Hypothesis”
b. Anticipation of Hegelian Geist and Chalmers’ panpsychism
H. JUDEA– Emergence of Monotheism: Predictable Omnipotence
Akhenaten to Covenants with God => Salvation, which evolves from:
a. Possible (Hebrews) to
b. Universal (Christianity) to
c. Militant (Islam) Minimalist Monotheism w/viral expansion
d. One God Means One Unified Mankind
e. “God is Man’s Idea of Himself”
I. Archaic Views of Nature mostly conserved rather than destroyed
a. In language and culture (proper names for hurricanes)
b. Deepest stratum of individual psyche = Archaic Physics
c. Chapels in hospitals next door to radiological medicine units
IV. From Archaic Physics to Ancient Physics: New Questions and New Answers
A. GREECE: First Scientific Revolution ~600BC
a. New questions: “What?” rather than “Who?”
b. Thales to Sophists to Socrates to Aristotle
c. Atomism and Elements: Democritus and Empedocles
d. Plato attempts rational monotheism w/Form of Good
e. Natural Science to Social Science: Thucydides
f. Aristotelian Physics and Natural Teleology
g. Hellenistics: Euclid, Ptolemy, Polybius, Archimedes
B. CHINA: A Separate Homology ~300BC
a. Zhou Yan and School of Naturalists Plus the Wall = Stability
Split between terrestrial and celestial in science, Astronomy and Calendar remain archaic RVC myths, only terrestrial sciences changed
b. Political unity: Qin Shi Huang Di = Maximum Ego (Life as Opera)
c. Mandarins and Emperor to Four Inventions Paper, Compass, Gunpowder, Printing
d. Five Elements (“Phases”) w/o Atomism
C. INDIA Hindu Mathematics: The potentials of calculation (Mesopotamian math)
a. Altar building ritual requires applied geometry
b. Zero (700AD) and Infinity
c. Improved representation of Quantity and Calculation
d. Ashoka, political fragmentation and Buddhist universalism
e. Early Hinduism expansionist: Bali, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Bhutan
D. ROME: Applied Science and Engineering
a. Lucretius from Epicurus
b. Galen from Hippocrates
c. Vitruvius, engineering, concrete, arch and dome
d. Pragmatic politics and citizenship
F. ISLAM – The Qanun of Medicine and the search for a method (House of Wisdom)
a. Al-Farabi
b. Avecinna
c. Al-Ghazali
d. Averroes
e. Ibn Khaldun
V Modern Physics: Dynamic yet Predictable: 1300-1900
A. Beyond Aristotle: 1250-1450 (Punctuated by Black Death)
a. Rebirth of Math: Fibonacci, Hindu-Arabic numbers,
b. Practical Change: Clocks, Spectacles, Books get Tables of Contents
c. Theoretical Change: Lines of Longitude are established, new musical notation
c. Institutional Advantage: Universities as Scholar’s Guilds
d. The quantizing of continuous unity: Time and Space = Motion
e. Merton Calculators and Buridan’s Impetus: Graph of Change
B. New Worlds and the Crisis of Authority: 1300-1550 (Mann dates from 1100)
a. Overlapping Transformations Create New Worlds
b. Nominalism destroys Scholastic System Building + Papacy Crisis reduces
Prestige of Church + Black Plague 1348 = Political/Social/Econ Disintegration
c. Gunpowder = End of Feudalism, Walls No Protection,
d. 1492 Demanded Questioning of Ancient Authority, no longer authoritative
Printing = Revolution in Info Transfer enables Reformation,
Shift from Mediterranean to Atlantic Marginalizes Italy/Islam =decline long duree
C. Knowledge is Power: Modern Physics: 1450-1750
a. Copernicus and Vesalius: Astronomy and Medicine
b. Bacon and Scientific Method**: Observation to Experiment**
c. Application of Descartes’ mathematical formalization = “Exact Science”
Science transcends natural language, math supplants Latin, Analytic
geometry breaks unity of space and time (motion) into Infinitesimal but
countable algebraic units**.**
d. Telescopic and microscopic = New Worlds at home.
e. Apogee of Modern Physics = Newtonian Mechanics
Newton’s Prism as Triumph of Pythagoras
E. The Nature of Modern Physics, 1700-1900: Darwin, Pasteur, Maxwell, Frege
a. Darwinian unification of Nature, Biology and Chemistry as Physics
b. Maxwell moves toward unification = Electricity/magnetism
c. Math Lobachevsky/Frege/Cantor, Beyond Aristotelian Logic to New Paradoxes
VI. Revolution in Modern Humanities 1300-1900
A. Athens and Jerusalem: Ebb and Flow of Reason and It’s Discontents
a. Renaissance 1300-1600 Shakespeare Hamlet
b. Reformation 1450-1660 Milton Satan
c. Enlightenment 1600-1800 Defoe Crusoe
d. Romanticism 1750-1865 Dickens’ Gradgrind
e. Second Enlightenment 1850-1919 Turgenev Bazarov
f. Second Romanticism 1900-2001 Kafka Gregor Samsa
B. Politics: Social Contract Supplants Great Chain of Being
From Social Contractarianism to the Age of Revolution
Natural Rights and Natural Law, Legitimacy from bottom up
C. English, American, French Revolutions = End of Monarchy
Consent of Governed = New idea of Legitimacy, always implicit in “Justice”
Unicameralism/bicameralism and political party systems
D. The Industrial Revolution and the Age of the Machine
a. Destructive changes in Society and Family for Productivity, like Child Labor
b. Whole generations sacrificed to mechanized production, capital accumulation
c. Mass production eventually entails mass consumption = stabilizer
d. The same process in varying stages of completion is now under way globally
E. New Social Science:
a. Economics, Smith to Ricardo to Marx: Critics accuse Smith of not being Marx, Marx of not being Milton Friedman and Friedman of not being Mother Teresa?
b. Sociology, Comte to Durkheim and Weber
c. Mill: Ethics, Utilitarianism = Lucretius Quantified and Democratized
d. The Great Moral Achievements of the West: For slaves, women, the poor
F. Defragmenting the Globe: The World the West Made in the “Long” 19th Century
a. Trade
b. Language
c. Technology
d. Empire
e. Liberalism
G. Reverberations:
a. God dies but Christianity survives as Gnosticism Redux: Puritans to Antifa
b. New Technology = New Art, (Photography to Video to Virtual Reality)
c. Western Global Domination through superior technology, political decentralization, religious pluralism, work ethic, plus institutional advantages (universities, private property, rule of law)
d. Prostitution of Science to Politics: US Nazis and USSR, on Race Class Gender
H. Old Epic in a New World
a. Walcott seeks “a light beyond metaphor”, Old World Religion: Christianity, Platonism, transplanted and revived in new epic for New World: Omeros
b. Autobiography and Heroism: For and Against the Empire = TR and Che
VIII. Contemporary Physics: Indeterminacy and Disorientation, 1900-Present
A. Splitting the Atom: Subatomic Limits of Newtonian Mechanics
a. Heisenberg, Planck and the limits of observation
b. Godel and the limits of Mathematics
B. Splitting the Subject – Newton : Descartes :: Einstein : Freud
Unanticipated epistemological problems and disorientation caused by “splitting”
atomic Cartesian cogito into conscious/unconscious elements
C. Politics: World War and Legitimacy beyond the Nation State
a. Race = Hitler and Eugenics
b. Class = Stalin and Lysenko
c. Law = Wilson and Kant
D. End of Colonialism, Power to Periphery of West = US and USSR
Cold war fought by economies, not armies, Collapse of USSR 1989-92
E. Pascal’s Revenge: Pessimism to Spiritual Bankruptcy = The Old New Romanticism
Like the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment overselling reason, the high culture of the post WW1 West embraces the emotional, the subjective, the irrational, the ironic; a perverse intellectual vandalism in the service of a suicidal cultural masochism. Historically traumatized France and Germany lead the nihilism.
a. Nietzsche: The Prophet
b. Weill, Barth, Baltazar Saintly Alter Egos Praxis Fideism damned Catholic “and”
c. Futurism to Fascism: Sorel, Heidegger,
d. Dada; Hugo Ball to Devo, Compare w/ Vienna Circle
e. Science, politics and compulsory make believe Lysenko to Sokal
f. Existentialism; Freedom as the End of Human Nature, Ego w/o constraint = Will
g. Libido Worship: Freud, Lawrence, Mead, Kinsey, Marcuse, Foucault = The Sacred Project of American Sociology, demand affirmation, not tolerance.
h. For the Absolutized Libido of both the Freudian infant and the Foucaultian subject, nature, an external world, is an enemy that must be destroyed
i. Lucian Freud’s portraits as Foucault
j. Desire not bounded by love is loss of center, leakage of identity
k. Sic Transit Gloria: From American Century to American Nanosecond
VIII 2000 to Now: The World Historical Players and the Hands they have been dealt:
A. American Dominance Eroded by Rise of China = Thucydides Trap?
B. W/O Noblesse Oblige, American Elites are Dangerously Rapacious, thus populism
C. China = ably run by CCP oligarchy, but who watches the watchman? Corruption China lacks adequate resources, most importantly water. This is a going to make them covet Siberia. Best would be to create mutually beneficial trade ties, like US and Canada. Siberia requires infrastructure. Trade reduces belligerence.
D. Russia paranoid, too much space with too few people, must expand to be secure, permanently insecure border, A Spoiler more than a Contender
E. Islam, India, Latin America, Africa remain marginal, except Islam in Europe
F. The Atlantic Alliance uncertain because Europe = collective PTSD since 1945. If Russians provoke, US may decide Europe is not worth defending, As Europe fails to provide for its own defense against Russia and capital takes flight. Eurozone as the new Ottoman Empire, rich but self-defeating “Sick Man” of global politics
G. Realignment of international politics Beijing/Brussels axis? New/old Balance power
H. The bottom billion and noblesse oblige. Time for global elites to earn their keep. The way to make yourself permanent is to make yourself useful = Regain the trust of populists locally and at least stabilize global problems.
IX. Looking Toward the Horizon: Future Physics, Quo Vadis
A. The Theory of Everything: (Electroweak + Strong Forces + Gravity) Entails Revolution in Human Condition, manifest in all the arts and sciences
B. Can only be a global project for our whole species, not just the West
C. Limits of the Planet: Environment, Scarcity and Distribution
D. Abolition of the Human: Aristoi Enslave and Exterminate hoi polloi?
Harari, Evolutionary Humanism and the Triumph of Techno Hybris
E. Four Horsemen: Microorganisms, Enviro Degradation, Terror, Space Impact
Covid Crisis reveals Bankruptcy of Social/Cultural Constructivism, Nature is real
X. My Last Lecture: “What’s Going On?”
A. Where am I? Who am I? Who are We?
B. The Great Task: Reconciling Love and Reason
C. Cooperation, not conflict produced the Great Wall = Apollo 11. Beware Corcyra
D. Justice makes possible political cooperation instead of conflict. “Re-ligio”
E. What is Nature? How much is enough?
F. Apex of Value: Either/Or: Athens or Jerusalem, Love or Reason?
G. The Future: Either a collective Geist that conquers alienation or a handful of Ubermenschen that destroy their own species and themselves. Justice or hybris?
H. Epic, Heroism, and the Poverty of Human Divinity