At the Junction of Theories and Paradigms

When we started the publication of the Evolution Almanac, we proceeded from the idea that we need epistemological key terms in order to understand the changes occurring in nature and society in their entirety and similarity of patterns and laws of development etc. There are quite a few scientific notions that сan be employed as such key terms. We think that evolution is one of them. In our opin-ion, the concept of evolution remains important for the unification of knowledge. At present we also need a higher level of co-operation that could provide a large-scale analysis of the evolutionary processes through interdisci-plinary approaches. Our research in this direction as well as our interaction with those who work in this field representing various sciences and approaches (in-cluding the Big History one) have convinced us that this idea is really fruitful. The application of the evolutionary approach to the history of nature and society has remained one of the most effective ways to conceptualize and integrate our growing knowledge of the Universe, society and human thought. Moreover, we believe that without using mega-paradigmatic, theoretical instruments such as the evolutionary approach, the scientists working in different fields may run the risk of losing sight of each other's contributions (Grinin, Korotayev, Carneiro, and Spier 2011: 7)