| The subject of this dissertation is story as an expression of embodied philosophy, and as such, as a participant in, and a contributor to, the cultural actualization of a postmodern philosophical cosmology. From within Alfred N. Whitehead's model of reality, this dissertation explores the relationship between cultural transformation, meaning, philosophical ideas of high generality, and story. But most of all, it assesses the potential of story---or what throughout this work I will also categorize as "integral narrative"---as a vehicle, as well as a lure, for philosophical thought in general, and for Whitehead's process philosophy in particular. The thesis defended by this dissertation states that story is an efficient and necessary means for conveying the meaning of conceptual, complex, general ideas in the interest of the process of cultural transformation . Consequently, if a culture and its underlying dynamics of meaning are to be transformed by new, incoming philosophical and/or scientific cosmologies (such as A. N. Whitehead's metaphysics), the conceptual vision of the cosmic order and of the nature of reality on which they are grounded need to find their expression as, and be disseminated through, story-form.;The theoretical research behind this thesis has led me to propose that meaning is a fundamental constituent of the structure of reality; that its nature is archetypal, and that meaning's cosmological status is the source of humanity's archetypal predisposition. This predisposition manifests as the human's inborn impulse to communicate meaning derived from "lived" experience through the use of symbols and metaphors in the form of stories or "personal" myths. In time, these stories become the roots of a culture's mythopoietic process, through which shared human experiences are consolidated into collective models of meaning or myths, exemplary models based on which we act in the world.;Therefore, the development of the mythical dimension of a new cosmological outlook such as Whitehead's metaphysics can be seen as a necessary condition for it to acquire cultural prevalence, and its beginnings are to be found within the individual, in his or her stories: in your stories and mine. |
