This chapter discusses the creation of the intelligible world, which comes to being through the formative activity of the Good on its first product. The Great Kinds are dynamically balanced principles, by virtue of which Intelligible Matter received form as Being, Movement achieves Rest, and Difference is united by Identity, thus establishing Intellect, the One-Many. The three crucial principles of the Plotinian metaphysics are outlined: (1) the principle of the microcosm, (2) the imaging principle, and (3) the principle of the triadic selfhood. In light of the first principle, at all the levels of reality there exist individual beings who exist within and are united with the great principles of reality by virtue of two forms of participation. The notions of vertical and horizontal participation are defined. The imaging principle relates to reality consisting of hierarchies of dynamically produced images of higher archetypes. What is expressed participates vertically in its archetype. The third principle is a triadic intertwining of loving and knowing with selfhood. The “negative” or “potential” aspects of the Great Kinds are described as the metaphysical seeds of evil and fall.

This essay describes how the HKW (Haus der Kulturen der Welt) in Berlin was been transformed through its exploration of the Anthropocene. Originally an institution dedicated to showcasing non-European cultures, it now focuses on the new relationship between culture and the planet. The “Anthropocene-Project” began by asking how a cultural institution might approach the large-scale transformation confronting our societies? It soon became clear that the HKW must change its methods and processes. Instead of approaching the world via representations in exhibitions and talks, the HKW developed an experimental mode of active cultural production that called “curating ideas in the making.” This method combines aesthetic with scientific approaches, and reflects the fact that in the Anthropocene, knowledge production has to change: the categorical frameworks developed during the last 200 years are no longer adequate to confront the problems of the radically altered situation we find ourselves in.

An alternative way of initiating the purchase consists for the customer in requesting a specific product. The way requests are formatted, and the way they are produced by looking and possibly pointing at the products, displays whether the customer is a connoisseur or a novice, and project the relevant service expected. The seller provides for a differentiated response to requests displaying more or less knowledge of the requested product. Whereas customers knowing what they request just name the product and are fetched with it, customers not fully knowing what they request are responded to in a more expanded way by the seller. The seller engages in informing – providing a diversity of verbal information about the cheese, within an expert and relatively standardized discourse –  and in showing the product, associating visual characteristics with verbal descriptions. When this is considered by the participants as an insufficient basis for decision-making, the seller offers them to taste the cheese. In this way, the access to the materiality of cheese is provided, depending on the sequential unfolding of the interaction, in a stepwise way ordering vision, talk, and closer sensorial approaches, like touch, smell, and taste.

The opening chapter introduces the narrator, Mrs. Gribbin, who brings the revised manuscript with her and who, throughout the book, makes possible a level of commentary that would not otherwise be possible. Key terms and concepts – such as learning, theories, science, folk beliefs and naïve psychology, pop psychology, and approaches to gathering and evaluating psychological information – are introduced and clarified at the outset. The chapter makes the point that good theories are evaluated not so much in terms of whether they are right or wrong but more in light of how useful they are. Their usefulness is reflected in how well they summarize important facts, how clear and understandable they are, how thought-provoking, how valuable for predicting as well as explaining, and how practical they are in the real world. The chapter concludes with brief previews of each of the next 11 chapters. Mrs. Gribbin describes these previews as hors d’oeuvres, brief appetizers that not only provide a hint of what is to come, but that each include an intriguing question that the reader will be able to answer after having read the chapter.