Guided Evolution of Society

1. Introduction. Part I: The Evolutionary Journey of Humankind. 2. The Evolution of the Evolutionary Idea. 3. The Story of Human and Societal Evolution: The Evolutionary Journey of our Ancestors. 4. The Story of the Evolution of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Part II: The Journey From Evolutionary Consciousness to Conscious Evolution. 5. What Have We Learned From the Evolutionary Story? 6. From Evolutionary Consciousness to Conscious Evolution. 7. Calling for Conscious Evolution. Part III: Self-Guided Evolution. 8. Organizing Perspectives and Conditions of Engaging in Self-Guided Evolution. 9. Self-Guided Evolution. 10. An Epistemology of Conscious, Self-Guided Evolution. 11. The Design of Evolutionary Guidance Systems. 12. The Agoras of the Twenty First Century. A Closing Thought.

` Professor Banathy is the world's foremost expert on evolutionary design. In this benchmark work he trances our immense human journey from the earliest hominoids through the emergence of self-awareness and culture, and down to the present moment when we as a species must take our evolutionary heritage into our own hands. With the skill of a lifetime of research and application, Banathy guides the reader through the principles of evolutionary learning and design toward a tomorrow in which evolutionary competence can replace humankind's present blind rush into the future. This is a superb work that will be of interest to theorists and advanced students alike.' Professor Allan Combs, Author of "The Radiance of Being", co-author of "Changing Visions: Human Cognitive Maps, Past, Present and Future" `People all over the world aspire to practicing democracy, and yet the democratic ideal of participating in planning and designing any social system, from cities to national health care, is compromised by the inability to engage the stakeholders in a meaningful and productive dialogue. By (re)asserting the fundamental right of human beings to participate directly in making decisions that affect their lives, and to guide their own destiny by applying evolutionary competence and evolutionary epistemology, Banathy's book is a major achievement! Guided Evolution of Society is going to change the way democracy is interpreted in an evolutionary context; it could very well also alter how it will be practiced in the "New Agoras of the 21st Century."' Aleco Christakis, Ph.D. CEO, CWA Ltd. `There is no more important task for humanity's future than consciously taking charge of our own evolution. Our times are unique in that we are being pushed by ecological necessity as well as pulled by evolutionary opportunity to a higher level of functioning and purpose as a collective human organism. Bela Banathy brings pioneering scholarship and multiple modes of learning to the most important