Classification systems which are based on evolutionary origin rather than similarity of characteristics give rise to the question of ultimate origins. Is there a Proto-World Language – an ancient proto-language from which are derived all modern languages, all language families, and all dead languages known from the past 6,000 years of recorded history? Is there an overall rooted phylogenetic tree of all known organisms comprising a single common ancestor and all the descendants of that ancestor? Is there an original prototype ancient religion which subsequent environmental changes and the human imagination have together worked into the pantheons of history, and today’s living religions? Is there a single physical substance from which all things were made?
This is a seductive question for the Glass Bead Game player seeking the centre of the mandala – the “trans-category universals” which unify all knowledge. However, even if such a common ancestor could be inferred from extant languages, organisms or other phenomena, it may still only be a more recent ancestor which already may have looked back on a long evolution, and may have existed alongside other languages, organisms and phenomena of which no trace has so far been identified. Neither can we be certain that the phenomena we identify in any particular field of knowledge spring from a common source, or whether there has been parallel evolution.
Some would claim cultural trans-category universals are illusory: “During the early years of cognitive anthropology there was an idea that there might be a grammar for each culture. The idea of a single grammar from which all cultural behaviours could be generated did not last very long; the particularities of any domain quickly led away from anything so grandiose. Work across a wide variety of cultural domains in a number of cultures has found that cultural models are independent of each other. The empirical fact is that culture looks more like the collected denizens of a tide pool than a single octopus. Empirical work on plant taxonomies, colour terms, models of the mind, navigation, land tenure schemas, kin terms, etc., reveals a world of independent mental representations. Each cultural model is ‘thing-like,’ but all the models together do not form any kind of thing.” D’Andrade
Even as far as physical science is concerned, while we may have emerged in the past few centuries from alchemy into modern chemistry, we are still very far from having a general approach which is capable of more universal results. The most abundant chemical elements in the universe were mostly produced within a few hundred seconds after the Big Bang. Heavier elements were mostly produced much later, inside stars. However, the elements are only a small part of the content of the universe. Cosmological observations suggest that about 73% of the universe consists of dark energy, 23% is composed of dark matter and only 4% corresponds to visible matter which constitutes stars, planets and living beings. Dark matter has not yet been detected in a particle physics detector, and the nature of the dark energy is not yet understood.
But though these roots in each subject domain may be hard to find, and impossible to reconstruct with any certainty, it is possible in principle that they exist. It is also possible that substantive connections exist across these subject matter domains, both at the roots, and in the branches and leaves. This is the primary subject matter of the Glass Bead Game. And if we do apply the same structures of thought to all subject domains, it may be argued that there is little to be gained from comparisons across these domains. But since diverse domains yield differently to enquiry in particular areas, such that significant advances may be made in areas in one domain which are unyielding to enquiry in another domain, then there is potentially much to be gained from seeking analogies to aid the advance of enquiry elsewhere.