Complex organizations, such as atoms, molecules, space and time, living beings, minds and societies emerge out of these actions through the process of evolution . The specific state of the universe or the world in which we live is partially a historical accident, since evolution is an indeterministic process, partially the result of a lawful process of self-organization, which leads predictably to higher levels of organization through the mechanism of metasystem transition . We can reconstruct in some detail the subsequent stages in the evolution of the universe, leading from the Big Bang, elementary particles, atoms and molecules to living cells, multicellular organisms, animals, people and society. Thus the history of evolution , conceived as a sequence of metasystem transitions, tells us how and in which order all the different types of phenomena we see around us have arisen. Humans evolved out of animals that had the capacity to learn associations from the environment, by additionally acquiring the capacity to think , that is, autonomously control these associations.
Human thought is rooted in the emergence of symbolic language.
As far as we know, humans occupy the provisionally most advanced level in the hierarchy of metasystems. Our capacity for thought distinguishes us from the animals by giving us uniquely human characteristics, such as self-consciousness, tool making, imagination, planning, play, sense of humor and esthetic feelings. The theory of metasystem transitions helps us to extrapolate present, on-going progress into the future . Recent developments point to a new metasystem transition which will bring us to a yet higher level of complexity or consciousness, transcending individual thought. This emergent level is perhaps best described by the metaphor of the social superorganism and its global brain .