It is my great pleasure to be able to republish for you in this edition some fantastic writing that approaches a cornerstone of the notion of choreography as an aesthetics of change (for more on this see the last editorial). Anne Baring and Jules Cashford have concisely and lucidly surveyed the evolution of consciousness since before the beginnings of history, indeed since before the very notion of his-story. Their work on the evolution of images of our gods tracks the development of our ways of thinking. It is key for us as choreographers and choreonauts to recognise that our way of thinking actually organises our perceptions of the world; that our conceptual frames actually produce reality as we know it. It is therefore vital that any art of change take note of how and why we have developed certain habits of mind, for

‘The mind organises the world by organising itself’ (Piaget, 1937). The cognitive organism shapes and coordinates its experience and, in doing so, transforms it into a structured world.

as Ernst Von Glasersfeld has put it (see Radical Constructivism). I am very grateful to Anne and Jules for permission to republish the material from their highly recommended book.

To add both context and depth to their analysis, I include Peter Harries-Jones own diagnosis of the ‘ecology of bad ideas’ and philosopher Caroline Heinrich’s dissertation on the new paradigm hinted at in our lead article, the innocent child.

While Anne, Jules and Peter break our knowledge models down, Alexis Clancy provides the beginner’s basic in building one up: his ongoing whirlwind tour of the art, science and ethics of theory ie model ie reality building can be found filed under raw thinking.