I. The Genesis Vision: A Creative Organic Universe

Prescient attempts earlier in the 20th century sketched the broad outlines of an organically developmental universe. These literature examples are followed by current holistic efforts to articulate this discovery and revolution as it lately gains scientific verification and humanist import.

A. Historic Precedents

Although a mechanical philosophy of the universe arose in the 17th and 18th centuries due to its physical research, an ancient organic sensibility remained in the popular imagination. After Charles Darwin published its evolutionary expansion in the mid 19th century, this Romantic view took on the appearance of a temporal gestation. A progressive rise of life, mind, and spirit distinguished the idealist persuasion. But in the 20th century, as John Boodin notes, an expiring cosmos indifferent to human beings has taken over. This pessimism holds today, as John Updike observes in Current Vistas, and lies at the deep root of our secular calamity. These selections glimpse the outlines of a cosmic genesis from past times. Three lifeworks stand out - the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945), and the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). A significant publication for each is cited as an entry point. The image is from the cover of the Teilhard in the 21st Century book to suggest an innately convergent universe growing in numinous intelligence and community.

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B. Current Vistas

As evolution was said to be “in the air” in the 1850’s, today a revolution in our conception of what kind of universe we live in appears much underway. The old 20th century gloom of a mechanical, expiring cosmos, where life is but a random tangent, is passing. These overview sources, backed up by the rest of the website, express a quite different, self-developing, life-friendly, unfinished genesis just now awakening to its own intended recognition and discovery. This luminous work by Charles Jencks and friends is one example of such a creative human universe.

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C. Breaking News - Conferences Plus

This is a new section circa November 2008 as an up front, eclectic place to post info about upcoming conferences, notable projects and initiatives, and salient achievements across the spectrum. It is named "Breaking News" because every venue today seems to use this banner. A more complete list can be found on the weekly Complexity Digest posting at www.comdig.org We would like very much to be able announce a peaceful, life and children friendly, sustainable genesis universe.

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