I herein submit for discussion and improvement a first draft of a manuscript, titled: A Unitary Process of Big-World History, a transcendental and constructivist perspective in history.

The manuscript is presented in four files that may be downloaded in World. They are:

1. Abstract, Keywords, and Table of Contents
2. The Text
3. Table of Categories
4. Bibliography

In this manuscript, that was preceded by the building of an historical Thesaurus or conceptual map, I am trying to prove the intimate linkage between religion, politics, sociology, aesthetics, economics and linguistics, and more specifically the linkage between the rise and fall of civilizations and historical stages and the rise and fall of myths, rituals, languages, religions, arts, sciences, political powers and social and economic hegemonies, in the context of the rivalry between the East and the West, and between the South (Third World) and the North (First World), as well as to justify the need to transcend traditional ways of doing scientific research in both Big and World histories. The rise and collapse of civilizations and historical stages is usually assigned to simultaneous factors ignoring the role played by deferred factors, such as instant and fast events or sudden historical changes as well as by long-lasting factors.In that sense, very seldom a military or political victory or defeat is accompanied by a cultural, social or economic rise or collapse. As well, not very often an economic rise or collapse is immediately followed by political, cultural and social booms or collapses.

The Text itself consists of ten (10) chapters: an Introduction , followed by an Historiographical Approach; a Methodological consideration defining the notions of categories, properties and prototypes; The Rise and Expansion of Civilizations and Empires; The Decline and Fall of Civilizations and Empires; the Documental Source (Thesaurus or conceptual map); The Nature of the Geographic Notions Implemented; Electronic esources used in this research, a Conclusion chapter, and an Acknowledgment Section. The Table of Categories consists of a graph where conceptual categories are represented in the abscissa«s axis and geographic continents in the ordinate axis. Each corresponding box are filled with the name of the individual country and the name of the author in parenthesis. In both chapters concerned with the rise and fall of civilizations, after the exposure of each one of the seventy (70) qualitative equations, a more detailed definition of each category is developed.

The Historiographical Chapter emphasizes the need of a reconceptualization of the historical subject, a unitary process rather than the sum of local processes, and an increasing complexity of cultural spheres, by the multiplication of mythological, social, symbolic, linguistic, political and economic differentiations, regressions and integrations, was important to understand the demand of new cultural units, in a similar pattern as Weber designed his ideal-types, Simmel his forms, and Jung his archetypes. In that sense, I have developed the so-called instantiated categories and properties, of almost a hundred (100) categories, half a thousand (500) sub-categories, and their corresponding functions built as qualitative equations (71 equations), accompanied by seven hundred (700) footnotes, referring to a Bibliography of more than five thousand (5000) titles, at an average rate of ten (10) titles per sub-category. Each one of the seven hundred (700) endnotes have a link referring also to the Bibliography and the Table of Categories. This last Table is quoted only in approximately a hundred endnotes.

These categories, properties and functions need to be cross-culturally confronted with those foundational events capable of contributing shifts between historical stages. However, the aggregate of categories must be improved on a collective, interdisciplinary, multilingual and international basis and by means of a computer-supported cooperative work. In that sense a search engine for term and author seeking would be absolutely necessary.

Finally, new documental sources consisting of collections of simple and integrated semantic properties and conceptual maps is highly demanded in order to develop multiple paths to alternative pasts, potential paths to optional futures, and to stimulate the development of a radical, transcendental and constructivist historical theory.