Prologue: Toward a Trans-Epochal Ontology

If you recall, this project began with an epilogue for very particular reasons which are outlined in that article. Now we find ourselves at the end of this first section and as we prepare to proceed we do so with a prologue. Before jumping into it, I want to take a moment here and discuss what I’ve been calling “epistemological epochs.”

I am using “epoch” not chronologically but epistemologically– pointing to each epoch as a horizon of intelligibility that conditions what counts as “being” (ontology) and how it can be known (epistemology). I’ve spoken about the biblical epoch where being is disclosed through narrative, covenant, symbol and divine command as well as scientific epoch where being is disclosed through measurement, falsification and mathematical modeling.

Both of these epochs describe the same world but under different a priori conditions of experience. This is an extension of Foucault’s “episteme” or Kuhn’s “paradigm,” but I am giving it an explicitly ontological twist: the epochs aren’t just about method (as for the postmodernists); they shape that which is.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at what I am calling Trans-Epochal Ontology. This prologue is a departure from the biblical commentary we have been working on, here at the beginning of man in the world after the fall, before we move on. It is, in a sense, a statement of purpose or a roadmap trying to explain how it is I see my project’s trajectory and laying out for my readers the telos towards which this project tends.

This project proposes that the apparent non-commensurability between pre-modern biblical and modern scientific descriptions of reality is not an irreconcilable conflict of ontologies, but a difference in the epoch-specific modes of disclosure of a single, shared underlying reality. By introducing the concept of “epistemological epochs,” the study articulates a trans-epochal common ontology grounded in Kant’s aesthetic judgement (Critique of Judgement, 1790) and Jung’s theory of archetypes (Collected Works, Vols. 8-9). Kant supplies the formal, pre-predictive universality of the sensus communis; Jung supplies the imaginal constraints that persist across historical ruptures. Through close reading, phenomenological case studies (light, time, selfhood), and a new diagrammatic heuristics, the project demonstrates that both epochs are variant “judgements of taste” upon the same sublime object: Being itself. The outcome is a non-reductive philosophical framework capable of re-enchanting scientific rationality without regression into fundamentalism.

Modernity is often narrated as the triumphant replacement of theological myth by empirical science. Yet this narrative obscures a deeper continuity: both the biblical and scientific epochs refer to the same world, the same beings, same human existence — only in irreconcilable grammars. Genesis speaks of light as divine fiat (“Let there be light”); quantum electrodynamics speaks of it as photon exchange. Both cannot be literally true simultaneously, yet both disclose something indisputably real. The dominant responses — scientistic dismissal of scripture as pre-scientific, or religious rejection of science as souless — are symmetrical dead ends.

Heidegger’s history of being (Seinsgechichte) and Kuhn’s paradigm incommensurability offer partial diagnoses but no positive bridge. Postmodern relativism dissolves the problem by denying a common referent altogether. This project rejects all three paths. Instead, it asks: What if the rupture is not ontological but disclosive? What if there exists a trans-epochal common ontology that precedes and exceeds both theo-poetic and techno-empirical symbolization?

The trans-epochal common ontology is aesthetic-archetypal in structure. Formally, it is the free play of the imagination and understanding described by Kant’s analytic of the beautiful and sublime — disinterested, universally communicable, purposive without purpose. This free play is epoch-neutral: it is the pre-predictive “feeling of life” (Lebensgefühl) that allows any human, in any epoch, to sense the fit between mind and world. Materially, it is the persistence of the Jungian archetypes — transhistorical patterns in the collective unconscious (Self, Shadow, Axis Mundi, lumen naturae) — that are re-clothed in an epochally relevant manner but never abolished

Together, Kant and Jung allow us to say: The psalmist and the physicist both stand before the same sublime excess of Being and render judgements of taste upon it; only their symbolic vocabularies differ.

Intellectually, the project offers the first systemic synthesis of Kant’s third Critique and Jung’s archetypal theory for ontological purposes — filling a surprising gap in secondary literature. It moves beyond Heideggerian Seingeschichte (which remains historicist and melancholic) and Whiteheadian process thought (which remains metaphysical-speculative) towards a rigorous anthropological yet transcendental account.

Culturally, it provides resources for a post secular age. Scientists increasingly report “awe” (Keltner, Pliff) and “mystery” at the edge of knowledge; religious seekers grapple with evolutionary biology and cosmology. A trans-epochal framework allows both groups to recognize their experiences as variant disclosures of the same reality rather than zero-sum competitors.

This project does not seek harmony through compromise but fidelity through depth. By returning to the aesthetic-archetypal ground that precedes all conceptualization, it allows the biblical and scientific voices to speak again — not as rivals, but as polyphonic testimonies to a reality that forever exceeds them both.

Over the course of the essays presented here there will be dozens of examples which emerge, but I wanted to put one here to make the trans-epochal ontology move more clear from the outset. For this we can look at the origin of the world.

In Genesis 1 we have “In the beginning, God created….” The archetypal pattern here is the cosmogonic act — the separation of chaos/order, light and dark. It is expressed in what Eliade calls hierophanic language and shows the world as a sacred manifestation.

In the scientific epoch we have the Big Bang and Quantum Cosmology which shows expansion from singularity, inflation and nucleosynthesis. It is the same archetypal pattern — the emergence from unity, differentiation and order from potentiality. However, here it is expressed in mathematical formalism.

It is the same ontological intuition (Being arises from a unified ground through differentiation) but presented in different epistemological epochs (one speaking in images and the other in equations).

These are not contradictory, but complementary disclosures. The Bible is not “wrong” any more than a poem is “wrong” for not being a lab report. Science is not “reductive” any more than a map is reductive for not being a landscape. Both are valid projections of the collective ontological template onto different cognitive horizons. Jung would say the Self archetype (wholeness) appears as Yahweh in one era, field unification in another. Kant would say that both give us a sense of purposiveness without purpose — a felt coherence we cannot fully conceptualize.

Humanity shares a pre-reflective archetypal structure that discloses being in epoch-specific ways. The Bible and modern science are not competing answers, but parallel articulations of the same ground shaped by the cognitive faculties available, the archetypal images activated and the cultural-epistemic horizon of the time.

This view does not reduce religion to psychology or science to myth — it elevates both as authentic non-substitutable modes of access to “the real.”

With this overview in mind, I look forward to jumping back into the biblical stories with Cain and Able. Thank you for reading along.