The Evolution of Meaning, Volume 1: Cosmos to Culture

The Evolution of Meaning is a three-volume history of humanity’s engagement with matters of ultimate concern. Drawing on numerous disciplines, it presents cultural evolution as part of a broader learning process underway in the cosmos. As this process has unfolded, human conceptions of meaning, value, and the sacred have developed across the millennia.

But what is meaning? To ground this study, Dempsey offers a theory based in thermodynamics and information processing. If the acquisition of meaningful information is what enables entities to exist far from equilibrium, then learning is the basis of cosmic complexification. Tracking this process through structural, genetic, cognitive, and symbolic forms of information processing, he shows how meaning acquires greater depth and informational richness across new emergent levels. Human notions of purpose and value thus arise as extensions of more fundamental dynamics.

Turning to symbolic learning specifically, Dempsey examines how human minds acquire such increasingly adaptive knowledge. Summarizing 150 years of research in developmental psychology, he shows how our conceptions of morality, value, self, and God evolve as the psyche complexifies. Moreover, he demonstrates how these transformations can be scientifically measured.

The inquiry then expands to society. Do cultures also learn? Dempsey says yes, showing how persons and societies continually co-create one another, generating new forms of knowledge, social organization, and meaning in response to civilizational challenges. By measuring the actual developmental complexity of texts across history, he offers first-of-its-kind quantitative evidence that societal-level meaning-making has complexified over time. The remaining volumes will trace this development—with special attention to the evolution of God—through Tribal, Archaic, Axial, Modern, Postmodern, and Integrative worldviews.