Briefing on the Symposium ‘Planning the Future World with the Diversity of Civilizations’

Hideaki Nakatani
(Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.)

The most important question to be asked about the contemporary world seems to be in what situations we are now and in what direction we should guide our world in order to realize a better human society. This task is all the more urgent because the speed with which the globe is changing has become exceedingly rapid with the drastic development of scientific technology.

The answer, however, can not be found automatically. In fact: (1) The speed of change is too quick to know exactly the real economic, political or social situations of every corner of the globe. (2) The specialization of the various sciences has attained such an extreme degree that only a limited number of specialists are able to understand the real meaning of the vast outcomes from foremost scientific researches. (3) Every civilization has its own system of values. Without the accurate knowledge of this system, it is impossible to plan our new world.

In brief, the precise knowledge of these three domains (local and global situations of the world, the outcomes of foremost sciences, spiritual traditions of every civilization) will be indispensable for making any plan for the future of the world.

Unfortunately, we do not know any scientific field that is engaged in this most urgent task. That is why we propose the creation of a new field, which we would like to call ‘generalized science of humanity’.

For that purpose, we would devise the following two methods for extracting the most important and reliable information from a huge amount of continuously emerging knowledge on our incessantly changing world. 

(1) Exhaustive accumulation of knowledge by using a classification table. Taking into account the chronological range of its subject of research, we would classify our whole knowledge under three items: 1) knowledge of instruments, 2) knowledge of humanity,  3) knowledge of world views. For example, the brain science, knowledge of the humanity, can elucidate the function of the prefrontal proper to mankind, which could date, accordingly, from 7 million years ago. On the other hand, comparative mythology, the most ancient knowledge of world views, can trace the diffusion of mythical archetypes which, born in Africa some 100 thousands years ago, started there to the Oceania and afterwards to the Eurasia. The above mentioned three domains of knowledge ‘local and global situations of the world’, ‘outcomes of foremost sciences’, ‘spiritual traditions of every civilization’ would form part, respectively, of knowledge of humanity, of instruments, and of world views.

(2) Direct dialogue between specialists. The fastest way to accumulate the most important and reliable knowledge would be to hear directly from specialists. The scholars of civilizations could rate the knowledge thus accumulated from their diverse points of view. The dialogue between them will bring the information to a new dimension of knowledge with reformulated concepts.

In this symposium, we will try to verify, from these perspectives, the role of the characteristics of different civilizations for conceiving approaches to contribute to problem-solving in the world and for planning the future world.