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I marked the appearance of human mental age, when the leading force of the development of a conscious human creativity and the highest level of organization is to train people in the community. In its development of a culture of the next level of internal consensus. This is critical thinking, in their turn, aroused modern science, the reality of building models, with identification systems.           Science: The Evolutionary Imperative     The universe is evolving. The organization of matter is constantly growing more complex. This growing complexity occurs through metasystem transitions from which new levels of organization emerge which are levels of the control hierarchy. The inorganic world, plants, animals, the human being—such has been the course of evolution on our planet, and as far as we know this is the greatest advance which has been made in the part of space that surrounds us. It also seems highly probable that the human being is the crown of evolution of the entire cosmos. In any case, we do not have any direct indications or even the slightest hints of the existence of a higher level of organization. Therefore all we can do is consider ourselves the highest.   The appearance of the human being marks the beginning of the Age of Intellect, when the leading force of development becomes conscious human creativity and the highest level of organization is the culture of human society. In its development culture generates the next level of the hierarchy within itself. This is critical thinking which, in its turn, gives rise to modern science, constructing models of reality using sign systems. These are new models; they did not and could not exist in the minds of individual human beings outside of civilization and culture, and they enlarge human power over nature colossally. They make up the continuously improving and developing super-brain of the super-being which is humanity as a whole. Thus, science is the highest level of the hierarchy in the organization of cosmic matter. It is the highest growth point of a growing tree, the leading shoot in the evolution of the universe. This is the significance of the cosmic phenomenon of science as a part of the phenomenon of man.         — Valentin F. Turchin, The Phenomenon of Science: a cybernetic approach to human evolution, Tr. by Brand Frentz, Chapter 14             Indexes/07