before the new age

Discussion in class today was great, thanks everyone. Rosemarie & I worked on the Robinet influence in the reading, where the scientists were still struggling with the mix of religion and the history of nature. Our diagram could have been simpler, but we had a continuum as an infinite spiraling upward project that Robinet could have suggested. Robinet's idea of evolutionism as a project was a system of principles toward perfection, with lots of rejects along the way. The factory that Katerie suggested suddenly made sense, in this factory there were often the imperfections of variability in mass producing copies of a prototype.

The function of continuity serves to perhaps assert an undisturbed possession of belief systems. The role of continuity plays the part of linking the natural processes, or the connected events of less to more, or small to big, or going from not knowing to attaining knowledge. For example, Adam and Eve did not have the scientific wherewithal that more evolved humans now had, but a step-by-step lineage of progression could explain particular advancements while incorporating all possible mutations within a particular belief system. Along this continuum of combinations and arrangements humans could understand the connection between point A and point B, from the archetypal prototype (Adam & Eve) to the variety of specie copies and derivations. Through observation and beliefs it was continuity that held it together to identify similarities and discriminate differences. Somehow there had to be an explanation of humans and nature evolving at the same time. Through continuity humans remained in intimate contact with nature, a cultural denial of the actual separation (or discontinuity) of humans and nature as populations, cities and inventions grew.

All history IS linear isn't it? Or is it? What are ways of writing about everything before us that is not linear? To create a story that connects us to the past there seems to be a need to have those connections line up or identified as group-able and sensible, such as words in a sentence lining up to connect thought with communication and the sharing of ideas or sources of ideas. Art history tells us that from the beginning humans communicated or expressed what they believed with what they had at their disposal, which in turn led to inventions or mechanisms to practice different methods of expression. This seems to me to be a development of technologies to aid human desire to connect - to others or to nature or to a higher power. Drawing a line from cave paintings to the Impressionist movement for example took some explanation, connecting the dots in order to understand this development. Studying art history perhaps allows students to see patterns and deviations, to spark something new in the old, or to carry on traditions as an institutional convention. After all, heritage is a habit/practice/legend/ritual of instruction.

Studying art history is heavily centered on the progressions through culture and material, through preferences of the times as a system of beliefs. No wonder religion played (plays) such a serious role in human evolution, what humans believe humans do. Maybe it's our desire not to be ever disconnected from nature or from God (Gods, Goddesses, Mother Earth, a higher power), as though our superiority has evolved from the natural processes that point heavenward. There's a need to explain everything, to connect everything, to understand how we got from there to here - that would be linear unless the New Age continues onto the beliefs around alien visitation, Mayan superstitions, or other unnatural orders deemed absurd. But our language is basically linear, until we evolve into 4th or 5th dimensions discovering new rules or systems of expression and communication.