The paper argues that humanity has entered a new stage of evolution: epistemic evolution. Just as cultural evolution emerged against the background of biological evolution, epistemic evolution began as an aspect of cultural evolution and now dominates the global fate of humanity. It is characterized by the increasing dependence of global society on the achievements and further extension of science and technology in order to ensure its sustainability in the age of the Anthropocene. The historical development of knowledge is reviewed from an evolutionary perspective that introduces key concepts of an historical epistemology.

The history of science can be better understood against the background of a history of knowledge comprising not only theoretical but also intuitive and practical knowledge. This widening of scope necessitates a more concise definition of the concept of knowledge, relating its cognitive to its material and social dimensions. The history of knowledge comprises the history of institutions in which knowledge is produced and transmitted. This is an essential but hitherto neglected aspect of cultural evolution. Taking this aspect into account one is led to the concept of extended evolution, which integrates the perspectives of niche construction and complex regulative networks. The paper illustrates this concept using four examples: the emergence of language, the Neolithic revolution, the invention of writing and the origin of mechanics.

On his way to general relativity, Einstein used the equivalence principle to formulate a theory of the static gravitational field. In this context he introduced an approximate coordinate transformation to an accelerated frame which turns out to be closely related to Rindler coordinates, widely used in modern general relativity. This work, published in the Annalen, led him directly to interpret gravitation in terms of spacetime curvature.

To understand the dynamics and trajectories of the Anthropocene, the single most crucial parameter of investigation is time—specifically, the interconnections and friction between multiple ...