Social Sciences - Society, Culture, Civilization

The Social Sciences complement the hard sciences to show what life is like in the Civilized Galaxy and beyond, spanning subjects like Archaeology, Cliology, Economics, Galactography, History, Linguistics, Mythology, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Sophontology and Intertoposophic Cultural Studies.

Trophic Levels - As societies and civilisations become more complex, they develop into trophic levels

Calendars and Timekeeping in the Terragen Sphere - accurate synchronisation of clocks in a universe dominated by Special Relativity is quite literally impossible

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Design Notes: Index Page: One of the oldest sections on the Orion's Arm site (as the "page uploaded" date (below) indicates), "Civilization" had a rather amorphous status in the first version of OA. In the second version it incorporated "society" and the rather short-lived category of "metaempires". 17 Dec 03 - The header and synopsis of this page transferred to Civilized Galaxy; the rest of this page combined with "Social Sciences"
Social Sciences Page - As part of the reorganising of the Knowledgebase, some of the material on the Social Sciences page was transferred over to the Applied Arts and Sciences page. 17 Dec 03, merged with "Civilization Main Page" - except for Civ header and synopsis which becomes "The Civilized Galaxy"

	Civilizations, Major: At least a dozen or so vast star-spanning civilizations and metaempires - each very alien to the other, some allied, others hostile, shape the ecology of the Terragen sphere. Deeper Covenant \| The Diamond Network \| The Eternal \| The Meistersingers \| The Muuh \| The Objectivists \| The Sephirotics \| The Soft Ones \| The Solipsist Panvirtuality \| The Transcend

	Civilizations, Types: Civilizations and Societies can be distinguished - among other things - according to Levels, Density Scale, Size, and Speed and Substrate.

	Cultures and Subcultures: The galaxy is inhabited by billions of different tribes, cultures, subgroups, subcultures, and lineages; each made up of sophonts sharing particular morphological, cultural, religio-ideologico-memetic, and toposophic characteristics; a mindboggling diversity of fashions, ideologies, and phenotypes. Old Earth was nothing like this!

	Galactography - The Terragen Sphere: The huge expanse of colonised space in the present setting extends to over several billion cubic light years. It takes time to cross this distance, especially in the outer regions away from the nearest wormhole link.

	Infrastructure: Vast megascale engineering works, dedicated expert systems and hyperturings, entire ecologies of mechosystems, angelnetting, nanofacturing and efficient recycling of materials; galactic civilization is based on foundations that would have been unimaginable in the pre-archailect era.

	Languages and Linguistics: Across colonised space, millions of different languages are spoken by hu, ai, and other phyles of beings. As well as general widely spoken tongues there are specialised trade languages, library languages, machine languages, encrypted languages, and more.

	Metaphysics: Here we find everything from Keterist neohermeticism to Genen Tantra, from the great Sophic Monasteries to the most eccentric religio-philosophical cults. Metaphysics can be a spiritual path to greater understanding of life. Then again, sometimes it may simply be an excuse for manipulation by beings of a higher toposophic level than oneself Philosophy \| Religion \| Esotericism

	Polities: Sovereign states, the building blocks of the political landscape whether locally or interstellar, a polity may be as small as a single individual or as large as an empire. These are the sociopolitical units that make much of galactic government. The way that their laws, regulations, and form of government, even their attitude to other sapients (friendly or hostile) may differ wildly, even among two polities connected by wormhole, shows that one must always proceed with caution when traversing the galaxy. Here we encounter some representative and not so representative polities.

	Socio-Ecological Categories and Status: One may be a free citizen and lordly zar, a pampered pet, a servant or a slave or worse, run free or live out one's days in a societiums. Or be part of a community living in symbiotic or commensal relationship with the larger identity. Here the major Socio-Ecological Categories that determine one's status are reviewed.