Our societies are pluralistic and egalitarian. And we exist within environments looking for the elements and the laws which are collective, which are shared by all things. We see ourselves as environments and as interacting with other environments. Singularity is Copernicus' sun - central, external, and acting. It is Maxwell's field - separate, central aether, acting on bodies.
Plurality is Newton's gravity - common, internal, and interacting.
It is Einstein's field - relative, known by measurement, by interaction. The sequence repeats after 476 A.D., the fall of the Western Roman Empire, starting anew with Northern European tribes. We have, of course, left out many historical times and many different cultures from this description of the patterns of the history of knowledge. The use of the symbol in both singular and plural periods by all tribes and feudal empires strongly suggests that these tools are common to all of human knowledge. In that tradition we can create a complete and continuous picture of the pattern of knowledge.