“We live by story – and the story we are living by is driving our species toward extinction.”

The Great Adventure course in evolution studies is designed to help build the new “fully human” theory of evolution that opens the way to the better future.

Learn by Doing!

Using the inexpensive new SUNY Press book The Great Adventure: Toward a Fully Human Theory of Evolution as a text, you learn by becoming the principal investigator of your own self-selected study.

At the same time you are working with and learning from others elsewhere around the world.

And instead of just another test at the end of the term, your work, and their work, goes into the archives for updating and expanding the new “full spectrum, action-oriented ” theory and story of human evolution that our times requires.

	Distance learning via Internet will make this course available to you wherever you are, anywhere in the world.
	Exploring leading edge studies and methods will provide rare research experience.
	Instructors will include members of the multinational, multidisciplinary General Evolution Research Group.
	As established, you can gain college credits and the satisfaction of participating in an historic scientific project directly aimed at bettering our world.

Through the Great Adventure courses, within a single term of study you can begin to contribute to the new “higher” evolutionary grounding for all of us and for the field that most interests you for career or avocation.

back to top

Your Gains, the World’s Gains!

Why a course of this kind? What can you and the world gain from it?

The Great Adventure course in new evolution studies is designed to give you -- as a student or teacher -- a significant role in helping to update and expand the theory and story of human evolution

Worldwide -- for here's the situation -- our species confronts the rocket speed challenges of the 21st century with an evolutionary road map suitable for horse and buggy days.

The scientific “tree of evolution” for the 20th century, for example, looked something like this.

Look down there below the "brain" level and you can see this "tree" had big fat “roots” in the three basic levels for science of physics, chemistry, and biology.  But everything “above ground” -- in the world of social science, the humanities, and human evolution -- was starved for lack of a connection to the full spectrum, fully human reality of evolution.

What is the full spectrum, fully human reality of evolution — as opposed to the disastrous reduction to the bottom three levels for prevailing 20th century theory?

Here are the 15 levels for evolution identified in The Great Adventure: Toward a Fully Human Theory of Evolution.

The Unfolding of Evolution:
A Full-Spectrum, Action-Oriented Model

Moving upward from the bottom to the top, here you can see the difference between the overwhelming focus for the 20th century on the science and story of evolution below the brain line and everything above the line involved in the great adventure of human evolution.

As you can see, above the brain line are practically all the fields of study, of career interests, of occupation -- in short, of living -- that actually explore the potential and and worldwide shape the lives of our species. 

Brain research. Psychology. History, philosophy and anthropology. Sociology. Economics. Political science. Technology. Education. Studies of ethics, moral development, and spirituality. Evolutionary systems science, management science, and the study of consciousness.

At the “top”— most important of all — is ACTION to put our understanding of the multi-level evolutionary systems reality of our lives to work to build the better future and the better world.

Yet even as we enter the 21st century, all these basic activities and basic fields for life at our species level are still dangling out there with little or no connection to each other or to mainstream evolution theory -- and thus to clear paths for action. 

In other words, at present the "road map" to the better future is a tangle in which again and again every good idea, cause, movement, or thrust in common toward the better future bogs down in the maze of poorly marked detours or dead ends of an inadequate understanding of evolution.  This inadequate understanding is locked in place with the disastrous half-truth of an inadequate evolution theory made to order for the exploitation rather than the liberation of our species. 

Hence, the urgent need for the development of the full spectrum, action-oriented, or fully human, theory of evolution that the Great Adventure Courses in Evolution Studies are designed to help build.

back to top

A Leap Forward
Toward the Better World!

If your primary interest, major, or money-making career goal is in any of these or other fields of study above the brain line, the Great Adventure Course in Evolution Studies offers you an exciting chance to “go where no one has gone before.”

By offering students a choice of self-directed study in the field of their greatest personal or career interest

. . .which will feed results into the data base for building      the better theory

. . .

The Great Adventure course provides a way both students and teachers can gain a new understanding of evolution useful to themselves, to their career and interest fields, . . . which in turn will advance science       and society more generally.

 

By globally linking the education of new generations of teachers and students to the building of a theory and story of who we really are and can become, The Great Adventure project is designed to year by year, step by step, give us the full spectrum, fully human “tree” of evolution and everyday life that our poor, battered species — and all life on this rare and endangered planet — has been seeking for 100,000 years!

An Open Letter to Teachers, Students, and Schools

Pestalozzi	Montessori	Dewey	Piaget	Noddings	Miller

From the impact of Pestalozzi and Montessori to the vision of John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and in our time Nel Noddings and Ron Miller, behind the best of schools lies the understanding of these and scores of other great educators of the role of education in rising above adversity to drive human evolution ahead.

If ever a time needed a courageous new thrust of this vision, this is it. 

You, as a student, as a teacher, as a school administrator, influential faculty or department head, are uniquely placed to fill this role of such crucial importance to the future for our species. 

No matter where you are located on this planet, you can join and contribute to this historic project. Here is all it takes:

For Prospective Teachers

Browse this website and purchase and read enough of The Great Adventure: Toward a Fully Human Theory of Evolution to gain a sure sense of whether this is a project you would like to be engaged in.

This course is designed for both the expert and the non-expert — but the chief qualification for teachers is not an expert’s knowledge of evolution theory, which is riddled with problems.  Being in the throes of transition from the old to a new paradigm, as the book The Great Adventure brings to life, the field is in an intellectual turmoil beyond the capacity for any expert presently to comprehend in detail.

At this stage, the most important qualification for teachers is strong interest in the subject of evolution, and training and teaching experience in one of the fields including and above the brain line presently badly in need of grounding in the emergent onsensual sketch for a new full spectrum, action-oriented, or fully human, evolution theory.

Most vital at this point is for teachers to initially work together to establish the new updated and expanded grounding level of understanding described in the Course Outlines in The Great Adventure appendix.  

At present there is little to motivate most students to take a course in what has become identified as an exotic subject mired in rcane complexities with little connection to anything else of meaning and of no use whatsoever in getting a job.  Reading carefully you will see how these basic course outlines, by appealing to the bedrock necessity and practicality of students' career motivations, have been carefully designed to recruit the best of students to this new venture so vital for the future of our species. 

By working together to establish this new basic curricula in common for both teachers and students you will, in turn, help create the globally expanding new community of students -- or highly interested student pool -- for the wide variety of courses in more advanced evolution studies you may create once the new basic introductory courses are launched and well underway.

Using the Course Outlines in The Great Adventure appendix, this becomes for the teacher a co-learning experience in which you are the guide, facilitator, and evaluator.

Propose and discuss prospects for this course with yourself as teacher to a school with an investment in distance learning or pertinent on campus studies. This step is crucial both for gaining students and the responsible administration (e.g., collecting fees, dispersing remuneration, and potential crediting) that only an established school or other firmly established educational institution can offer.

For Prospective Schools

In evaluating proposals for this course from prospective teachers, the above steps for prospective teacher self-evaluation will also provide useful guidelines for you.

In evaluating the educational validity of The Great Adventure course, the following segments of this website should prove most useful:

About the Darwin Project, including the stature, bios, and affiliations of The Darwin Project Council and The Center for Partnership Studies.

The Great Adventure, including descriptions of The Great Adventure: The Book; Distance Learning and On Campus Courses; Building the Fully Human Theory; Action Book Discussion Groups; and Telling the New Story.

The General Evolution Research Group, including multinational and multidisciplinary membership and brief history outlining origining goals and historic importance.

In evaluating the market for The Great Adventure Course, look at the grim news that bombards us daily and think of the yearning among the best of your students to reconnect with the great stream of human hope and aspiration. 

To live once again with a sense of a significant role within a meaningful story.

This is the journey to which The Great Adventure Course can open the door, binding together all departments, all majors, in a new sense of community and the shared venture toward the better world.

back to top