Last updated 3.2.26.

Key Academic Publications:

Stewart, John E. (2022), The Evolution and Development of Consciousness: The Subject-Object Emergence Hypothesis. Biosystems, 217: 104687.

Stewart, John E. (2020), Towards a general theory of the major cooperative evolutionary transitions. BioSystems, 198: 104237.

Stewart, John. E. (2019), The Trajectory of Evolution and its Implications for Humanity. Journal of Big History, 3, pp 141-155.

Stewart, John E. (2019), The Origins of Life: The Managed-Metabolism Hypothesis. Foundations of Science, 24, pp 171-195.

Stewart, John E. (2018), Evolutionary Possibilities: Can a society be constrained so "the good" self-organizes? World Futures, 74, pp 1-35.

Stewart, J. E. (2016), The Evolution of Cooperative Organization and the Origins of Life.  Presented at the OEE Workshop held at ALIFE XV, Cancun, Mexico, 4 July 2016.

Stewart, J. E. (2015), The Self-Organizing Society: A Grower's Guide. ECCO Working paper 2015-12.

Stewart, J. E. (2014), The direction of evolution: The rise of cooperative organisation, BioSystems, 123: 27-36 download

Stewart, J. E. (2010), The meaning of life in a developing universe, Foundations of Science, 15, pp. 395-409.

Stewart, J. E. (2007), The future evolution of consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14, pp. 58-92.

Stewart, J. E. (2001), Future psychological evolution, Journal of Dynamical Psychology.

Stewart, J. E. (2000), Evolution’s Arrow: the direction of evolution and the future of humanity, (Rivett, Canberra: Chapman Press).

Stewart, J. E. (1997), Evolutionary Progress, Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 20, pp. 335-62.

Stewart, J. E. (1997), Evolutionary transitions and artificial life, Artificial Life, 3, pp. 101-120.

Stewart, J. E. (1997), The evolution of genetic cognition, Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 20, pp 53-73

Stewart, J. E. (1995), Metaevolution, Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 18, 113-114.

Stewart, J. E. (1993), The maintenance of sex, Evolutionary Theory, 10, 195-202.

John Stewart's latest book has just been published. It identifies how individuals can scaffold metasystemic thinking in themselves and others. This level of cognitive capacity is essential if individuals are to fully understand the evolutionary worldview and to identify what they need to do to advance the evolutionary process on Earth. The book is titled Human Superintelligence: How You Can Develop It Using Recursive Self-Improvement. The book's website contains materials that enable you to quickly and conveniently assess whether the book is relevant to your goals and interests. The Website is at HumanSuperintelligenceBook.com You can download a free electronic copy of the full book in either PDF or EPUB format from the Evolutionary Manifesto website here.

Podcasts, Videos, Interviews, Discussions

For 9 YouTube Videos in which John Stewart talks about the evolutionary worldview and its implications for humanity, go to: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpotN6lpXPsYj_MVoznhE27lJ3RqyJ4L-

Relevant non-academic articles and materials about the evolutionary worldview

2022, Materials, Practices and Technologies for Developing Higher Psychological Capacities.

2019, A short overview of the evolutionary worldview and its implications for humanity.

2017, Enlightenment and the Evolution of the Material World. Spanda Journal, 2017, Vol VII, 1, pp 107-114

2016, Review of Otto Laske's Primer on Dialectical/Metasystemic Cognition. Integral Leadership Review, August 2017.

2012, Does the persistence of bacteria, frogs and fish meant that there is no direction to evolution? Integral World.

2011, The First Planning Meeting for the Second Enlightenment.

2011, Evolución intencional, Athanor, 88 July/August issue.

2010, Is this the meaning of life?, an article for The Guardian's Science Blog 

2009, The Ubermensch, in the online magazine Re-public: re-imagining democracy, Special Issue on Transhumanism.

2009, STRATEGIES FOR ADVANCING EVOLUTION, online here.

2008, Evolution towards global cooperation, Kosmos Journal, Vol VII, 2, pp 56-58.

2008, THE EVOLUTIONARY MANIFESTO, online here.

2007, The Potential of Evolution, What is Enlightenment?, Issue 35, pp 40-42.

2006, Space and Humanity's Evolution,  Beyond Earth: the future of humans in space, Ed: Bob Krone, pp 156-59.

2003, The evolutionary significance of spiritual development, Metanexus: The Online Forum on Religion and Science.

The Global Governance Initiative

The "Global Governance Initiative" is an attempt to get evolutionary science to confirm that there is an evolutionary imperative for humanity to transition to a cooperative, sustainable, and highly evolvable global society. This transition is essential if human civilization is to overcome the threats to its survival emerging in the form of nuclear war and environmental degradation (including global warming).

As part of this initiative, the following four emails have been sent to over 700 evolutionary scientists whose work deals to some extent with the large-scale evolutionary processes that have shaped life on Earth, and that will determine its future: first email; second email; third email; and fourth email.

The third email contains links to separate emails that were sent to 15 leading evolutionary scientists in an attempt to get them to use their reputations to lead the initiative.

Another Global Governance Initiative

This is another strategy directed at assisting the emergence of a unified, cooperative, and highly-evolvable global society. Such a society will need to be underpinned by global governance capable of aligning the interests of nation-states, corporations, individuals, and other entities with those of the planet as a whole. When this is achieved, it will no longer be in the interests of governments, corporations, and others to act in ways that degrade the environment or that produce wars.

The strategy relies on the fact that throughout the evolutionary history of life on Earth, the emergence of larger-scale cooperative organisations has always first required the emergence of a source of power that can manage the organisation in ways that support cooperation and prevent free-riding, etc.

It is highly improbable that such a source of global power could be achieved at this time through 'bottom-up' processes, e.g., by individuals banding together in support of strategies that can institute a global system. Somewhat counterintuitively, a far more likely potential source of global power is a coalition of the extremely wealthy.

I have written two Sub Stack articles that draw on an evolutionary perspective to identify the feasibility of such a strategy and how it can be organised:

"Why there ‘must’ be a viable strategy for overcoming climate change and other existential threats”: A PDF of the article is here:  evolutionarymanifesto.com/evolutionarycontext.pdf

"How ‘The One Percent’ can be Organized to Fix Climate Change": a PDF of this article is here:  evolutionarymanifesto.com/theonepercent.pdf

About the Massive Updating and Knowledge Transfer Still Taking Place From the Old Universe Spirit Website to this New Way of the Universe Website

This description of the Way of the Universe is designed to show how the Universe Spirit nonprofit organization is evolving. We are far from done with this evolution. The Way of the Universe philosophy is a new philosophy born in the 21st century to help address 21st-century problems. It is our new name for many, but not all, of the objectives we pursued on our old UniverseSpirit.org website over the last 24 years.

This new name better reflects our efforts to develop a universal, rational, and practical philosophy. This name also helps distinguish ourselves from the many negative associations that come from appearing anything like a traditional religion, any new-age type of spirituality, or even from our own decades of efforts to create a universal meta-spirituality that would unite humanity.

It may take at least another 6-12 months to transfer and upgrade 24 years of work (about 1,000 pages) from our old Universe Spirit website to this new one. During this massive transfer process, every page is under review, in construction, and being updated. We need to fix broken links, add new insights, remove outdated materials that no longer align with our philosophy-based approach, update language, and revise grammar and spelling to bring our older materials up to date and align with our new Way of the Universe philosophical framing. 

Some links on this site during construction will still point to our old website until we complete the large-scale transfer. If the home page of our old site displays a random error message and you can't view the entire site, click the refresh button; the old site will appear. To return to our new website from the old one, click the Back button or the Way of the Universe link at the top of the old home page. (The disappearing old website bug is very random, and we're still working on finding the cause and fixing it.)

Additional Progressive "Evolution 2.0" Position Papers

(Please note: B is the starting level, I is the intermediate level material, and A is the advanced material.)

What is Evolution 2.0's position on global warming and climate destabilization? (B) 

What is Evolution 2.0's position on technology, particularly New Technologies such as genetic engineering, biotech, nanotech, artificial intelligence, artificial life, cybernetics, etc.? (I)

What is Evolution 2.0's position on Population Management and Population Control? (B)

What is Evolution 2.0's position on Government and the Governed, Economics, and Society? (I)

What are Evolution 2.0's positions on peace, conflict, and crisis viewed through the lens of progressive evolution? (I)

What is Evolution 2.0's position on nuclear energy? (B)

What is Evolution 2.0's position on Evolutionary Transhumanism? (I)