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The influence of ideas is a central but puzzling problem in the social sciences. Parsons insisted that ideas play a central role in social continuity as well as in social change. Basic ideas that organise experience become embedded in the public mind and structure the ways in which issues are tackled. Through much of the twentieth century, Darwinism, Freudianism and Marxism are central clusters of ideas. On a smaller scale, ideas that begin in academic settings can quite quickly spread into politics. Voegelin has detected very general notions that may structure whole eras, calling one of the most powerful in our time the “new gnosticism”. It draws on our ideas of knowledge and leads to the search for a universal ideology that dissolves all problems into demands for a totalitarian society. This paper argues that there is always an underlying basis for the power of ideas. Many ideologies of our time have been twists and turns on the Christian tradition. The form they take depends on the challenges of the hour and the nature of the surrounding cultures.

The fragmentation of knowledge poses serious threats to a survival when scientific and technological know‐how constantly outrun understanding of societies and individuals. A significant problem associated with this state of affairs is the unquestioned separation of facts and values. This paper has two immediate aims. The first is to argue that there is knowledge of values. The second is to look at some issues in the social sciences and to show this conclusion bears on the possibilities for the reunification of knowledge. Issues in economics, sociology, and anthropology are examined kin terms of detailed examples.

A recommendation system for an extended process of information retrieval in distributed information systems is proposed. This system is both a model of dynamic cognitive categorization processes and powerful real application useful for knowledge management. It utilizes an extension of fuzzy sets named evidence sets as the mathematical mechanisms to implement the categorization processes. It is a development of some aspects of Pask’s conversation theory. It is also an instance of the notion of linguistic‐based selected self‐organization here described, and as such it instantiates an open‐ended semiosis between distributed information systems and the communities of users they interact with. This means that the knowledge stored in distributed information resources adapts to the evolving semantic expectations of their users as these select the information they desire in conversation with the information resources. This way, this recommendation system establishes a mechanism for user‐driven knowledge self‐organization.

This paper aims to make the case for continued opportunity for high levels of human well-being under descent conditions characterised by declining economic throughput and socio-political complexity.

Relationships between assumptions about human well-being formed within a modern industrial context, the guiding narratives attending these, and the broader cultural influence of ideas from the evolutionary sciences are examined. Alternative ways of making sense of these relationships are explored. The experiences of societies guided by cultural narratives based on different premises to those most influential in industrial societies are reviewed for their implications for human well-being under descent conditions.

Human experiences of well-being are principally a function of the sources of meaning and associated narratives by which members of a culture make sense of their situation, as these determine the nature of the material and energetic conditions required to live well. Under descent conditions, the narrative of progress that has supported viable societies during the 300-year period of industrial expansion is unlikely to continue serving humanity well. Collective participation in the renewal of guiding cultural narratives is a primary target for efforts to provide continued opportunities for high quality of life to all members of humanity.

The findings point towards specific characteristics of cultural sense-making narratives that may support viable human societies under descent conditions.

By moving beyond the default assumption that descent automatically implies decline in human well-being, a barrier may be lowered to more open and mature society-wide engagement in conversations about the present human predicament and effective ways of responding to it.

New connections are identified between perspectives based on biological evolutionary theory and the continued influence of the idea of progress in establishing default assumptions about prospects for human well-being under descent conditions. Experiences of non-industrial societies are taken as the basis for identifying opportunities for human well-being under far more modest material and energetic conditions than those available to the portion of humanity that presently enjoys benefits of industrial development that outweigh the attendant costs.