Throughout history the most general and basic problem has been addressed by philosophers. That is the task of defining ideas that originate in similarities in phenomena, defining them in terms of other ideas of greater generality, widely manifested in many more phenomena — whole classes of phenomena. As these classes can be defined in terms of other more general classes, the question then becomes, when does this regress stop? What is the final analysis? There may be several resonses: one, that the phenomena are themselves final, satisfies many but places them at the mercy of the disorder and chaos that was the original impetus to seek a solution; two, that if we can reach an understanding of what someone understands another to understand, we can juggle the resulting human relations, hoping to muddle through the s.n.a.f.u. The much more satisfactory answer is that certain ideas, notably and first of all non-being and being, are necessarily known to anyone and everyone who has any capability to think. Therefore those ideas can be safely presumed in any communication. One can be sure that whomever one speaks to knows those ideas and the difference between them, recognizes them and understands to some extent their participation in all other ideas, indeed in all things.
    Two high points in the history of this lofty investigation were attained by Aristotle when he identified the universal elements non-being and being, and Jesus' mature, humanistic, integrated standpoint, finding existence not remote and external but immediate in self and life. For him, life appeared as the number one element of all things. In his day, as to some extent in any, the cultural thread of thought had wandered by a dialectical process that left it tied up in disputing about external things, forgetting ourselves. One might say that man had ruled himself out of the picture, but man is relevant, and somehow he must rule himself back into the picture. While the masses of people concentrated on the man Jesus and his life as the key to eternity, Christian philosophers such as Augustine were able to apply the refined standpoint to philosophy. The problem they persevered in addressing, that problem on which all human thought depended for integration into one coherent whole, reached a clarification. All human affairs are composed of the elements life, mind,and art. You can find this elemental systematization implied in Augustine’s essay On Immortality, which without mentioning God proves to the satisfaction of the most rational thinker that life, mind, and art transcend death and are immortal. Therefore, Augustine concludes logically, the human soul is immortal.
    Later thinkers such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas failed to notice this key to the solution of the philosophic problem of universal systematization, nor did Augustine realize its full implications. Only as we come to the 20th Century is that problem taken up in a concerted effort to unify the now extensive culture of science. Then Boole, Frege, Russell and the many logicists went on a dialectical tangent of their own, to another mortal ruin as their vein terminated in the same ancient dehumanization. At the end of all that, in 1980 we put the key into the lock and tried a systematization based on the original Pythagorean thesis, number, and the humanistic elements life, mind and art. I needn't say whether it was a success. I will show you, and you will see for yourself.