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Civilization is reinventing itself, much as it did 500 years ago in the shift from medieval to modern patterns of society. This time, the modern, mechanistic, imperialistic approach to life is failing and a new, ‘collaborative learning species’ vision of humanity and ‘ecosystem’ view of Global Integral Civilization is rising to take its place. Systems science stands at the heart of a new, integral stage of science that supports this new stage of civilization, not only with empirical and methodological detail, but also with a solid foundation for the new cultural and economic understandings. The result is a Copernican flip in our scientific view of the world and a new Enlightenment movement beginning to gather force throughout the world. Yet, though the ideas, the technologies, the ennobling inspiration and even the popular desire for this new era already exist, so far they remain diffuse and disjoint—obscured, suffocated and intimidated beneath the powerful pressures of business as usual. Today's challenge is to use the new scientific framework to build the intellectual clarity, common‐cause unity and social infrastructure needed to achieve the next stage in human development by channelling these positive forces into a self‐sustaining, actively learning whole. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.