Table of Contents
List of Illustrations 9
Formatting Conventions 11
Foreword 15
A Cognitive History of Humanity 15
Shaping Our History 27
Part 1 Everything is Connected
Chapter 1 How We Became Human 39
Chapter 2 The Magical Weave of Language 53
Chapter 3 The Rise of Mythic Consciousness 67
Chapter 4 The Giving Environment: The World of the Hunter-Gatherers 83
Part 2 Hierarchy of the Gods
Chapter 5 Agriculture and Anxiety 103
Chapter 6 Going Their Own Ways: Early Civilizations 117
Part 3 The Patterns Diverge
Western Pattern: Split Cosmos, Split Human
Eastern Pattern: Harmonic Web of Life
Chapter 7 The Birth of Dualism in Ancient Greece 143
Chapter 8 Dualism and Divinity in Ancient India 161
Chapter 9 The Search for Harmony in Ancient China 179
Chapter 10 The Cultural Shaping of Our Minds 197
Chapter 11 Pathways to Monotheism in Israel and Alexandria 215
Chapter 12 Sinful Nature: The Dualistic Cosmos of Christianity 227
Chapter 13 The Scourge of Monotheistic Intolerance 239
Chapter 14 Discovering the Principles of Nature in Song China 251
Part 4 Conquest of Nature
Chapter 15 "To Comand the World": Metaphors of Nature 277
Chapter 16 Great Rats: The Story of Power and Exploitation 293
Chapter 17 The Enigma of the Scientific Revolution 317
Chapter 18 The Language of God: The Emergence of Scientific Cognition 335
Chapter 19 "Something Far More Deeply Interfused": The Systems Worldview 357
Chapter 20 Consuming the Earth in the Modern Era 375
Part 5 The Web of Meaning?
Chapter 21 Trajectories to Our Future 405
Further Reading 443
Acknowledgments 455
Notes 457
Index 543