The Great Story

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The Great Story, "The Epic of Evolution", and the "Story of the Universe", refer to mythopoetic language used by a social movement (or meta-religious movement) that tell the history of the Universe in ways that are simultaneously scientific and sacred. It is an articulatation of the understandings of modern science – especially the evolutionary sciences ranging from stellar evolution to biological evolution and cultural evolution – as a sacred creation story, much like the traditional creation myths passed down through oral cultures and sacred texts. The most visible contemporary exponents of The Great Story are Michael Dowd, a former pastor, and Connie Barlow, a science author. The phrase "The Great Story" was coined in 1992 by cultural historian Thomas Berry.

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[edit] Teachings

Advocates of The Great Story see science not only as a source of physical truths that empower technology and the material affluence and complexity of modern life. They see its 14 billion year epic of evolution – with its eons of increasing complexity, aliveness, consciousness and intelligence – as a story filled with meaning and moral texture.

A foundational book of The Great Story is The Universe Story (1992) by Brian Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist, and Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest of the Passionist order and a cultural historian. But the movement sees itself as having roots in the work of anthropologist and naturalist Loren Eiseley, biologist Edward O. Wilson, early conservation movement leader Aldo Leopold, evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley and, above all, the French Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (himself inspired by Henri Bergson). Recent contributions to an understanding of The Great Story include the writings of Robert Wright, John Stewart, Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams, and Eric Chaisson.

[edit] The Great Story Timeline

  1. 13,700 mya: Great Radiance - beginning of the universe (13.7 billion years ago)
  2. 12,000 mya: Galactic Phase - formation of stars
  3. 4,600 mya: Hadean - formation of Earth, pre-life
  4. 3,800 mya: Archaean - first life: bacteria
  5. 2,000 mya: Proterozoic - amoebas
  6. 540 mya: Paleozoic - complex life
  7. 245 mya: Mesozoic - dinosaurs
  8. 65 mya: Cenozoic - mammals & birds
  9. 0.013 mya: Holocene - human-caused extinctions (13,000 years ago)
  10. Today: Ecozoic - Vision for the future

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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