In the early 20th century academics across multiple fields were figuring out a Naturphilosophie, a metaphysics for the scientific age that could have developed alongside it. After the wars, the open-system biology and field physics disappeared and we got closed-system cybernetics as the interdisciplinary paradigm, while the specific fields were dominated by fractured specialisms that philosophers were barred from generalizing about. All the real important developments in physics and biology have been repressed or diverted into black budget operations. What has remained has only been what has been convenient for control purposes.
Consequently philosophy can only generalize on science that resists comprehensive analysis, and the only people left creating new ideas are in the fringes of alternative science where they often lack the rigor and education that would make them influential.
Many New Age authors have tried to extrapolate from mainstream physics models to explain the occult or spiritual.The New Age has definitely taken up the mantle of trying to develop our culture’s much needed cosmology and Naturphilosophie, but they seldom say anything new.
One of the main problems with New Age authors is that they have retained many of the uncritical liberal concepts of the individual, of progress, etc. Even the more academically orientated latch onto Jean Gebser or some sort of dialectical conception of progress, integration, or individuation, which prevents them from doing anything actually “new”. But when evaluating novelty, I do think one has to understand the way processes evolve in their later stages, and not get stuck in the Spenglerian mode of judging creativity by the standards of earlier individualistic stages.
Later stages, as any good astrologer knows, are unavoidably tied up with collective and universal concerns. The mature spirit actually thrives better in a late-stage culture or medium, where the challenge is no longer individuating one’s self within the medium, but rather using the medium to experiment with collective and universal problems. There is much collective creativity going on right now in the distributed interstices of the internet. The medium itself is breaking into the territory of cosmic and universal problems if you know where and how to look.
