This book has been foisted upon the encyclopedic work "The Circle of Knowledge", authored by Henry W. Ruoff, M.A., LITT.D., D.C.L., published in 1917 by The Standard Publication Company for the US edition and by the John A. Hertel CO., Ltd. for its Canadian edition.
Although I have tried to remain as close as possible to the concept and layout of the original work, new evolutions in science, art, religion and language have required some heavy reediting and rewriting of certain parts. Some of the old plates and illustrations have been kept as a reminder that human progress is a cyclical evolutionary process. I've elaborated upon this thought by comparing the cyclical nature of the reality to an egg.
In alchemy the egg stands for the chaos apprehended by the artifex, the prima materia containing the captive world-soul. Out of the egg - symbolized by the round cooking vessel - will raise the eagle or phoenix, the liberated soul, which is ultimately identical with the Anthropos who was imprisoned in the embrace of Physis.
The Circle of Knowledge offers a contemporary cosmos-synthesis that sketches a thinking frame, able to unite all facets of human knowledge and skills under one umbrella. It doesn't have answers to all ontological questions where science, art and religion are bifurcating. Instead it formulates some new paradigms, showing where these three fields have found new intersections. This book offers an insight how the human thinking processes, recent trends in North American art and the social entropy in that country are interacting, accumulating in a result that can be interpreted through the lens of the system theory and placed into an evolutionary historical perspective. Above all, it gives the readers an impression of the vast amount of questions that still remain unanswered while indicating an optimal course of action supported b y the current state of our knowledge and abilities.
