Evolution, embodiment, mythology, philosophy

July 5th, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Embodiment, Evolution, Myth, Naive Physics, Perennialism |

These things we share:

• shared evolutionary experience, which have given us all the same hands, eyes, and brains
• shared ontogenic developmental experience, which has introduced us all to the same basic features of the world at the same rate
• shared knowledge or propensities that we all seem to be born with
• shared knowledge and practices we all seem to generate culturally, usually expressed as ‘human universals’
• shared knowledge we all create about our experiences in the world, usually expressed as ‘folk science’
• shared mythic structures, narratives, and archetypes
• shared religious and philosophical frameworks, usually expressed as ‘ perennial philosophy’

It is quite likely that there is a relationship across these commonalities, that, for example, our ‘perennial philosophy’ is ultimately related to our shared evolutionary experience.