Globalistics: New Investigative Trends in Science

The article discusses some new directions of development of Global Studies stimulated by implementation of the evolutionary approach in this field. According to the authors, in a broad sense Global Studies examine global processes and systems, identifying patterns and trends of their existence and development. Moreover, Evolutionary Globalistics is considered as a study of evolution and coevolution of global processes. Particular attention is paid to the problem of method and approach in Global Studies, as well as to the spatio-temporal expansion of global research. The following temporal divisions are identified: Paleoglobalistics, Neo-Globalistics, and Futuro-Globalistics, as well as a spatial perspective – Cosmo-Globalistics.

Keywords: Cosmo-Globalistics, Globalism, globalization, global problems, globalization processes, Global Studies, global knowledge, global development, global processes, global evolutionism, Paleoglobalistics, sustainable development, Futuro-Globalistics, evolutionary approach, Evolutionary Globalistics.

Knowledge globalization and global knowledge are but two interconnected, though essentially different processes. The latter is a specific type of scholastic vision. Both of these global-intellectual approaches originated from Vladimir I. Vernadsky's theory where the central role belonged to the noosphere and the development of science was thought to be the way to the future sphere of intelligent life (Vernadsky 1991). It appears that the future sphere of intelligent life, mentioned by French scientists Édouard LeRoy and Pierre Teilhard de Charden, starts with the era of global processes and globalization of science.

All scientists believed that knowledge should have a global character, but Vernadsky was the first to apply this belief to the future human civilization. Those ‘planetary’ forecasts by Vernadsky are embodied in today's global processes as well as in social and socio-natural evolutionary processes awaiting us in the near future, which will be discussed later in the article.

Global Knowledge World and Global Knowledge about the World

Global processes and the emergence of the information society gave rise to the notion of the Global Knowledge World and subsequently the so-called ‘knowledge society’. It is obvious that in terms of global environment, knowledge acquires a planetary status that leads to a new type of knowledge – Global Knowledge. These processes are often presented without any distinction (the same refers to such notions as global education and globalization of education). Nevertheless, it is essential to distinguish these interconnected but differently oriented processes in social and scientific fields.

The emergence of the information society and the knowledge society leads to globalization of cognitive activity and as a result to different forms of knowledge via their transfer and integration, with the global system of knowledge or global world of knowledge being formed (Towards Knowledge Society 2005). According to German scholars Stern and Wufer, the process is quite complex in the context of market economy environment, which in its turn affects the development of the global knowledge society (Yefremenko 2010). Besides, the global status can be attributed to a smaller part of knowledge, the major part of knowledge is squeezed by problems which exclude them from the global process. The latter types of knowledge are local in character though situations may emerge when they obtain universal global characteristics (Ibid.: 191). The global knowledge is most probable in the sphere of cognitive activity, which is known as Global Studies core.

In Russia this cross-disciplinary integrative field of scientific research is known as Globalistics. It aims at investigating the essence of globalization, including different aspects of global problems: from causes, laws and tendencies of the problems through an insight into positive and negative aftereffects to the humankind survival and the protection of biosphere (Chumakov 2008). Globalistics can be regarded as the main subject matter, the ‘core’ of the academic field, which is known in English literature as ‘Global Studies’. Time will give proof to the necessity to distinguish between Globalistics and Global Studies, but in our opinion, Global Studies are wider in their meaning than Globalistics.

Let us illustrate the above-mentioned statement by the example of astronomy and cosmology. A famous scientist A. D. Chernin has a publication entitled ‘Global and Local’ (Chernin 2007). There these notions are used with meanings that are different from the ones typical of Globalistics: they denote the sphere of ‘Cosmos’, with the term global referring to the Universe and not only to the Earth. The article also uses a term ‘global cosmology’, which speaks for itself.

The notion ‘global’ has two main meanings of different etymology. It denotes: 1) planetary – from Latin ‘globus’, referring to the globe, to the Earth as a cosmic object; 2) universal – from French ‘universal’, taken as a whole which means embracing the Universe, the World as a whole. In academic literature, these terms are used, meaning respectively 1) global processes as the ones, which are typical of the Earth, that is the planetary processes and 2) global processes on the Universal scale, at least of the part of the visible Universe. That is, the French meaning (together with some aspects of the English meaning) denotes the same as Universal (Latin – universalis) and can be interpreted as all-embracing, Universal.

Nevertheless, many scholars, starting with R. Robertson (1992), link the term ‘global’ with the development of human activity, which acquired the meaning of a world-embracing power. We fully appreciate that today it is important to take into account all possible aspects of meaning of the notion ‘global’. And it is next to impossible to await that terms ‘global’ and ‘local’ can be mono-semantic. Homonymy together with polysemy are widely spread both in everyday speech and learned words, Global Studies being no exclusion. So, in our article we will specify the meaning of the word ‘global’ denoting mainly phenomena of the planetary scale, which, in fact, is the meaning used by the majority of scholars working in the field of Globalistics.

The result of such an approach to Global Studies is quite a specific form of cross-disciplinary knowledge, which we suggest calling ‘global knowledge’ in the sense that it integrates all global processes and systems, evolving on the Earth in all their complexity and Earth-scale importance.

Globalistics is at the stage when it still accumulates and describes information, at the inventory stage, pioneer results being compiled in the form of an encyclopedia, which was for the first time published in Russia (Mazour and Chumakov 2003, 2006). Thus, this field of cross-disciplinary knowledge has tackled challenging problems but cannot boast of any fundamental results. A possible explanation for this is that Globalistics is not yet included into a wide sphere of scientific knowledge and has not become a scientific outlook in the world. The authors carried out a special research to handle the problem in their recent publication, where Globalistics is regarded as the most important element in the cross-dependant integrative system of knowledge, which is based on principles of universal or global evolutionism (Ilyin and Ursul 2009). Such a system of knowledge is formed at the cross-section of interdisciplinary synthesis and integrative processes typical of modern sciences in order to result in forms and methods of a universal field for scientific research and application.

Not long ago separate scientific fields were responsible for investigations leading to new discoveries, which differentiated and specified different branches of sciences even more. Today the tendency is to cross-disciplinary processes of knowledge synthesis, and close interweaving of fundamental and applied research, which leads to integrative global waves, that embrace the educational and scientific space. Thus, Global Studies are now at the forefront of modern methodological process and lay out the basis of today's scientific outlook.

Currently, global knowledge includes everything that exists and develops on the Earth, which means that it deals with main problems of globalization. This proves that the subject field of Globalistics has undergone significant changes with even greater changes awaiting us ahead. It shows that there are other global phenomena in addition to the ones mentioned above, which happened to be in the background of scientific research, mainly due to quite artificial limitation of Globalistics matters only by globalization and global problems. It is clear that in the near future we will witness some other global processes to draw the attention of global researchers, because we are sure it goes far beyond its present day meaning, involving penetration into natural phenomena and their genesis. The approach results in the demand for a universal generalization of global phenomena, not just their naming.

In our opinion, such a wide context of Globalistics as a cross-disciplinary field of knowledge focuses on global processes and systems with an emphasis on regularities and tendencies of their existence and development. We consider such a systematic approach as a deep fundamental notion of Globalistics, with global processes and systems forming quite a complicated structure. In that sense global processes have come to include different types of processes ranging from natural to social and socio-natural, which are typical of the Earth and widely spread everywhere. Globalization, global crises, disasters (today as well as in the future), negative degradation phenomena and potential positive ones (such as sustainable growth, the noosphere genesis, and some others) are just some global processes of a planetary scale.

Such a broad view of Globalistics combines with an evolutionary vision of global processes and systems and we are sure that their evolutionary character makes it possible to speak about new fields of scientific research. Of course, the approach in question is pioneering and suggests much to be discussed for a better understanding, appreciation and critical reasoning (thinking) in scientific circles.

The crucial point, as we see it, lies in the universal character of Globalistics and its integration into all global processes. In fact, the approach has been approved at the Faculty of Global Studies at Moscow State University and in the recently published textbook (Gabdullin, Ilyin, and Ivanov 2011). It was of primary importance to understand that globalization as a global process takes the leading position in Globalistics, but nevertheless it is by no means the only phenomenon of Global Studies though, unfortunately, most scientists do not fully appreciate it as yet.

Globalization and Global Studies

Today the main attention is focused on such a global process as globalization, both in its narrow and wider sense. Moreover, many scholars believe that global problems and globalization are the only topics of Globalistics.

Nevertheless, at the time when Globalistics was associated with global problems, globalization was developing in its other forms (especially at the bi-polar period). Even now, when globalization is the focus of scientific research, one cannot define the limits of the globalization notion. It goes without saying that globalization started speeding up at the period of the crash of the bi-polar system, with westernization being the major direction of this global-scale process in the post-bi-polar period. The potentials of globalization were evident in the pre-bi-polar period and even long before the geopolitical approach to the analysis of this phenomenon (at that time having local not global character).

If we are to establish the origin of globalization process we should have a clear vision of the term. If the notion is vague, it means that the subject matter is indefinite and changing. In fact, there should be other global phenomena besides the ones, already mentioned in connection with globalization, which are to be studied in the future by Globalistics, and they will be even wider and deeper than understood now.

At the moment, in the social sphere (human-society dimension) globalization is the main global process, world-forming phenomenon. Nevertheless, globalization transcends even that field to have an impact on the ‘humankind-nature’ system (the socio-natural interaction). One can expect it to be responsible for the formation of the universal humankind and even for the shift to the system of coevolutionary relations between nature and men. And, of course, it implies ecological security on the global scale.

Globalization is not just one of global processes; it is a significant direction of global development, of evolution and coevolution of these processes. In its turn, globalization embraces new trends and guiding images. Thus, one must distinguish global processes and global trends (in the evolutionary context). Therefore, globalization is one of dynamic global processes and the object of Globalistics studies, seen from an evolutionary point of view. That is why, we think it reasonable to single out the Globalistics field which investigates globalization and its trends and to name it ‘Globalization Studies’.

From our point of view, Globalistics is concerned with global natural processes and some negative tendencies of all-planetary character, the latter (objectively or subjectively) being of destructive character between integral parts of social medium, and leading to planetary disintegration. Such tendencies are also a constituent part of globalization, which, notwithstanding some negative tendencies, are leading to a potentially-positive, progressive target.

Globalization consists of globalization processes which are represented by various tendencies and trends: economic, political, informational, cultural etc. forms of globalization. All of them are but integral parts of the globalization process. But, on the other hand, globalization is itself one of integrative global processes in the context of Globalistics which takes into account global natural processes, global problems etc. It goes without saying that we should pay special attention to negative aftereffects of globalization, which are of ambiguous nature and many of them have existed before the era of globalization. In fact, globalization served as a catalyst to their further development.

While globalization can be seen as an objective and positive process, it also results in some negative side effects. The essence of globalization and global processes is chaotic and it is essential to foresee the ways of managing them at the planetary scale. Of course, one of the most important issues in this respect is that political processes work more slowly than the information and economic processes. Political processes will restrain global growth and will interfere in one way or another with attempts to cope with problems of global development, which will affect management transformations on the Earth to lead in perspective to future constructive decisions.

Negative global processes and global problems

There are processes of global scale which interfere with all-planetary integrity and lead to the destruction of civilization. They can be viewed as negative or neutral global processes but not globalization processes, though they have been attributed to the latter until now (as destructive globalization processes).

In our opinion negative global processes such as crises and disasters cause social and environmental degradation, that is a regressive development. A global socio-ecological crisis of an anthropogenic character is one such example, presenting a threat to humanity and being of a planetary scale. Some natural disasters (volcano and super volcano eruptions, forest fires etc.) also present examples of negative global processes.

We can mention other negative global processes such as international (with the tendency to become global) terrorism, illegal drugs and weapons traffic of all types, infections that spread all over the world and many other negative processes, which actually do not belong to globalization processes.

Social and socio-natural contradictions lead to negative impact on social and bio-spheres and can be referred to global problems. However, positive shifts in handling these problems lead to lower aftereffects and progressive development of humanity. So, global problems are problems which were put forward in the twentieth century but, in fact, their global character had become clear long before that time. We can state that the humanity faced global problems when social and socio-natural contradictions appeared, which presented a threat to the future of people.

Global problems accumulate negative aftereffects of the previous world development, leading to major contradictions, which can result in disastrous side-effects. Thus, people should take coordinated actions to be able to overcome challenges caused by global crises, which originate from global problems and negative processes. The degradation-regressive character of global development aftereffects requires a drastic change in the vector of global development towards progressive evolution (as discovered not long ago – to the trajectory of sustainable development of a new type, which allows protection of both civilization and the biosphere). The latter requires creation of a global management as a new type of management (Veber 2009; Chumakov 2010).

Global problems are just one form of global development, being in need of a ‘reversal’ of their evolutionary trend. Close interconnection of progressive and regressive processes in the tendency of global development are evident in globalization and global problems. A newly formed Political Globalistics and its applications, as we see it, will help to reveal global political trends and other globalization processes to recommend further effective measures to weaken negative (regressive) aftereffects and to strengthen positive (progressive) tendencies of global processes (Ilyin 2010).

Humankind creates technologies and products that become a problem to civilized existence. We refer, first of all, to nuclear technologies, other destructive weapons, global environmental threats and suchlike negative processes.

The twenty first century is a kind of turning point in the existence of our civilization. Not long ago its existence was taken for granted and it never occurred to people that everyday activity can lead to disastrous side-effects. Nowadays it is clear that if people do not take necessary measures this may result in socio-ecological catastrophe on a planetary scale in connection with the aggravation of global problems and unknown threats.

Close interconnection of our civilization and negative developmental trends has led to a rather strong development of global knowledge. Real dangers caused by global problems were stated first in Reports to the Club of Rome which later contributed to the appearance of the term ‘Globalistics’ (e.g., Chumakov 2008). We are of the opinion that the challenge of insufficient security is underestimated today and requires a closer consideration than it is given now. The same is true with respect to Globalistics where security problems of a planetary character are often ignored.

Every global crisis (including the natural ones) testifies to a dangerously low level of sustainability of the global processes necessary for self-preservation. It can result from inner or outer factors and lead to the system crash and even planetary catastrophe. Another problematic field is connected with economic crisis and is discussed in a wide universal evolutionary context. Besides, there is a field of knowledge dealing with global disasters and potential dangers threatening humankind (N. Bostrom, A. V. Turchin, E. Yudkovsky and others). These scholars focus on global disasters of cosmic, planetary and anthropogenic character, assessing their various combinations and impact on people. Some scholars believe that the humankind is close to destruction and use scientific data to support their assumptions.

For example, Sorokhtin puts forward a hypothesis that the humankind theoretically could exist for a period of 600 million years if there were no disasters, even though, in fact, it is much less (Sorokhtin 2007). Another scholar, Kim Losev, assessed anthropological data on the human predecessors (hominids) and came to the conclusion that their civilization existed for the period of about two million years (Losev 2010: 129–130). He believes that Homo Sapiens has a similar period of existence and we are approximately half-way that period. In fact, there is a possibility that due to new technologies and investigations we shall be able to prolong the duration of human civilization, but other scholars, Tsiolkovsky in the first place, have a different point of view on the future of humanity and its social immortality.

It is clear that people would like to prolong their existence and that is why they must pay special attention to the study of the past disasters as well as the possible ones. As for negative global processes accompanying globalization, we must eliminate or, at least, minimize their destructive effect if we want to maintain global security and a safer future. Thus, it is necessary to develop a special Globalistics branch of knowledge, the one that foresees negative global processes and elaborates a safe path to the future.

Global studies methods and evolutionary approach

Global-integrative movement benefits from academic approaches and methods, such as the following: global modeling, systematizing, evolutionary, coevolutionary, synergetic and some others. There are no methods typical only of Global Studies. In fact, even globalism is just one of approaches to the system of integrating all the knowledge of the all-planetary scale, while humankind are just part of the universal world community, with global characteristics prevailing and forming a unique involvement into global processes.

At first, systematization and global modeling were the main methods in Globalistics, later they gave way to Complexity Studies which became the basis for the evolutionary approach in Globalistics. Complexity Studies provides the methodology of studying self-organizing (or self-disorganizing) processes in non-linear misbalanced, non-stationary systems.

Besides, using general scientific approaches scholars lay down foundation for new Global Studies fields. For instance, an evolutionary and universal-evolutionary approach proposed by us gave rise to the appearance of such new research fields as Cosmo-Globalistics, Futuro-Globalistics and some others (Ilyin and Ursul 2009). The field of Globalistics studying natural and social processes of the past is called Paleoglobalistics. Whereas, global processes taking place today are at the core of Globalistics itself, or ‘Neo-Globalistics’. And consequently, the field of global research dealing with forecasting of future trends in global processes and systems is called ‘Futuro-Globalistics’. Globalistics integrates all the three branches and applies them in order to achieve a better understanding of our world as a unique evolutionary system.

Evolutionism is regarded as a world outlook in its wide sense, which approaches the world as closely integrated and irreversible evolution of processes and systems. Of course, it is necessary to remember that there are other, narrower interpretations of evolutionism. Today evolutionism is regarded as a concept and a methodological approach, which understands processes not only as dynamic, moving or changing, but also as evolving and evolutionary (we adhere to the point that evolution is more than just the quantitative accumulation of changes).

We believe that evolutionary Globalistics will develop on the basis of a wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary approach to global processes and systems, global evolutionism being its foundation. Whereas ideas come to Globalistics through different channels, the main one is global evolutionism which integrates knowledge of various branches of science. Hence, global evolutionism is a fundamental form of knowledge about global evolution, being based on self-organization of material systems as the main type of the progress of the visible Universe (we use the term ‘visible’ because evolution is not typical of dark matter and dark energy).

Nobody denies the importance of evolutionary processes, though the evolution of global processes has not received enough attention. Globalistics could not have appeared all at once as a study of evolutionary processes because at the first stage there is always the phase of defining the subject of the research, its description and systematization. The next stage is concerned with methods and approaches to the subject matter. It is the way with all sciences, Globalistics being no exclusion. We can name Biology, Geology, Economics, which started as research fields about three centuries ago but only by now they have became sciences. Another example is Evolutionary Economics, which appeared at the same period as Global Studies.

Because Globalistics is at a foundational stage of its evolution, it is possible to forecast new investigative trends, such as applied global researches, global education and global management. Globalistics is at the stage of its subject matter definition both in theoretical and practical aspects. The concept that the subject matter of Globalistics is not only globalization and global processes, but global processes and systems in their evolution (coevolution) has a major impact on epistemology of Global Studies. We can forecast that Evolutionary Globalistics will become a part of Global Studies. When the evolutionary approach becomes the most effective approach to Global Studies it will result in a new stage of evolutionary knowledge (a global knowledge), with global evolution becoming its main subject matter.

At the moment Globalistics pays but little attention to the issue of the development of global processes, nevertheless we assume that its main integral object is global evolution. The latter is a cross-disciplinary scientific field where descriptive and historical methods prevail. As for Globalistics, it should research in the long-run a global development as an evolution of all integrated global processes.

Thus, if we assume that in future Globalistics will focus on the study of global processes and systems in their dynamics, then the concept sphere of Globalistics will be quite different and the latter will cause the development of Evolutionary Globalistics. So Evolutionary Globalistics will integrate two methodological approaches: evolutionism and globalism.

As was mentioned above, evolution in its wider meaning is represented by processes and material forms that are changing their content and structure (which is a sustainable and irreversible trend). This vector means that they will evolve and progress to become more sophisticated or they can degrade to be simplified and doomed to degradation and decay. Besides, there are other forms of development which present different combination of the already mentioned trends, such as: neutral, undulating, cyclic, circular etc. which have also become a subject of Global Studies.

One should take into account that the notions ‘development’ and ‘evolution’ are very similar, evolution embracing qualitative and spasmodic uneven quantitative changes, as well as integration of all types of development, that is progressive, regressive, cyclic, undulating and many other forms and types of development. In that sense, evolution is a synonym for development.

Evolutionary and historical globalistics. Paleoglobalistics

One of the most important methodological problems in Evolutionary Globalistics is the relationship and correlation of historical and evolutionary approaches in Global Studies. The historical approach appeared earlier than the evolutionary one and earlier than Evolutionary Globalistics (Ionov 2001). It is closely connected with the development of a global outlook and is concerned with description of facts, events, the society, that is social dynamics in temporal coordinates. The other peculiarity of the historical approach results from its essence, for it always investigates the events that have already taken place. The history never investigates something that is to take place, that is why it is a science about the past.

When studying the past we come across development processes but they are different from a mere chronological succession of events and they do not have linear characteristics compulsory within a traditional historical approach. The latter does not reflect the objective logical structure of the object, which is of utmost importance for the evolutionary approach. In fact if the evolutionary approach were the same as the historical one, Charles Darwin would not have to create the evolutionary biology as well as other branches of science would not develop ‘evolutionary aspects’ of their investigations.

There exists some correlation between evolutionary and historical approaches. For example, many historians tried to link their investigations to evolutionary processes. One time they identified historic progress with progress itself and regarded regressive changes as accidental aftereffects and evasion from the main trajectory of historical development. Then they began to apply the ideas of rotation and cyclic and undulating development to history, linking natural changes and social evolution. Recently there became popular to speak about the end of the history (Fukuyama). As the historic approach is based on evolutionary appreciation of historical data, it additionally testifies to the reliability of the evolutionary approach. It means that Historical Globalistics is not the same as Evolutionary Globalistics, which is also true about the correlation of the historical approach to Globalistics and the evolutionary approach to Globalistics.

Hence, Historic Globalistics is concerned with description, temporal and factual investigation of human society dynamics while Evolutionary Globalistics studies evolution and coevolution of global processes and at utmost – their systematic synergetic phenomenon, that is, global evolution. However, in reality, both approaches act together, giving rise to a new branch of scientific research – Paleoglobalistics.

In our monograph Evolutionary Globalistics (Ilyin and Ursul 2009) we suggested distinguishing between present-day, past and future global processes. The branch of global science, concerned with global processes of the past, was named Paleoglobalistics. Two years later a textbook was published which opens a new era in global knowledge and, more than that, a new phenomenon, that is, global education.

Of course, it is impossible to study global problems and ways of settling them without a detailed insight into their history, the way they developed in space and time. Present-day global processes have their roots in the history of our planet which can be dated as far as five billion years ago. The time period witnessed dramatic changes on the Earth, including evolution of ecosystems, biosphere, planetary disasters and systematic crises. Thus, the main task of Paleoglobalistics is to investigate the evolutionary processes on the Earth and apply them to better understanding of what is going on with human civilization in order to solve major global problems facing humankind today.

The subject of Paleoglobalistics is our planet which is now a sophisticated totality of global systems (primarily, of the Earth covers, geospheres), which is co-evolving in geological time and space. So the main methods of Paleoglobalistics are universal scientific methods (actualistic, historic, systemic, evolutionary, modeling etc.) and methods of historical-evolutionary character, namely: historic geology method, evolutionary geography, paleogeography, historic geoecology, archeology, ecological history methods and some others. We believe that Paleoglobalistics will be of the keystones of the Globalistics theory.

Paleoglobalistics has some tasks of primary importance to solve, such as:

a) to systematize laws of global systems functioning and their development in different spatial and temporal coordinates (including the geological one);

b) to study the history of interdependence and coevolution of geo-spheres as the biggest global systems;

c) to analyze Paleoglobalistics notions using scientific tools of global evolutionism.

From the point of view of Globalistics, the dramatic interconnection of nature and society today is to be revised as it will not be appropriate in the future. So Paleoglobalistics will be of paramount importance because, when developing the sustainable growth theory, we should take into consideration not only the history of the human civilization but also all the data of Paleoglobalistics as regards the evolution of the Earth, starting with biosphere through humankind history to noosphere-genesis. Hence, we should pay special attention to the study of interdependence and mutual influence of all main global systems of the planet, including geospheres and the role of people in the future coevolution.

The synthesis of Neo-Globalistics, Futuro-Globalistics and Paleoglobalistics is another very important goal of Globalistics as a scientific and educational world outlook. However, it can become possible only after separate branches of Globalistics are developed well enough.

Besides, effective global activity will be possible only after the conception (evolutionary one at the utmost) of Globalistics is developed well enough. It means that appreciation of different global phenomena will give an opportunity to apply effective measures to everyday activity to tackle such vital spheres as the survival of our civilization and the biosphere, which is the basis of the life. We can not overestimate the importance of global education which will be responsible for the formation of leading planetary consciousness.

It is significant to streamline the global education in the direction of understanding the necessity of foreseeing and solving global problems to grant the survival of the humankind. If Globalistics and global knowledge are to take the leading positions in the twenty first century then global education can become a catalyst to lead to a new qualitative level of the educational process which will correspond to the planetary noo-spheric future of people (Ilyin and Ursul 2010a, 2010b).

Global Processes in Space. Cosmology

From methodological point of view Globalistics is an inter-disciplinary science applied to the universal knowledge in its integrity with the tendency to integration. It implies not only integration of problems and processes, but also and mainly, multi-aspect-embracing cognition of social and global activity. Hence, Globalistics as a scientific sphere must study the diversity of phenomena typical of the society in its planetary dimension and in interaction with natural environment in the Earth and in the Cosmos.

Planetary problems are of primary importance for Globalistics. Nevertheless, our planet cannot be regarded isolated from Cosmos and cosmic problems because it is in constant interaction with Space and the humanity has started cosmic exploration. Cosmonautics is a kind of a global issue because this science integrates achievements of technological and production spheres, being based upon global-planetary, bio-spherical activity. Cosmization, which started much earlier than globalization, goes hand in hand with globalization and contributes a lot to the latter quicker development.

Global problems, connected with the Cosmos will always accompany human development and though one can forecast dramatic changes in their global meaning, they will retain their cosmic essence. All global and many other problems will undergo changes to become cosmic ones which will happen thanks to space exploration. There is a possibility that the term ‘global’ which now means ‘planetary’ will acquire a cosmic tint of meaning (works on cosmology demonstrate it even now). The term ‘global’ may acquire the notion of all-embracing universal meaning, it already being a meaning in cosmic branches of knowledge, which are not thought global today.

We would like to emphasize that the notion ‘global’ was topical before it was used in Globalistics which was described as if viewed from Cosmos. In the monograph Humankind, Earth, Universe there were put forward two main aspects of the integrity (Ursul 1977). The first aspect is connected with systemic-historical and spatial characteristics (global and cosmic) while the second one is connected with universal laws which make it possible to speak about the universal humanity long before there appeared communication among autonomous communities of people. Universal character of human integrity is the essence and a historic goal of the globalization process, especially from the point of view of global criteria and cosmic transformations.

Nowadays, we single out a new branch of science within Globalistics, namely, Cosmic Globalistics or Cosmo-Globalistics. The tasks and goals of Cosmo-Globalistics include studying general features and tendencies of cosmic processes of global character; understanding the role of cosmos exploration in the context of global problems (and processes); defining the place of cosmonautics and its potential in handling the problems (Ursul 2010; Ursul and Dronov 1988, 1990). We must transform global activity into cosmic activity and global evolution into cosmic evolution. However, this approach should structure the subject matter in such a way that global and cosmic natural processes are included into Cosmo-Globalistics. It is a kind of an innovation to include global cosmic processes and their impact on people into the sphere of Cosmic Globalistics, which points to the fact that Globalistics acquires a new meaning and gives rise to Evolutionary Globalistics. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that practical cosmonautics was at the origin of global problems for the view from Cosmos helped to realize planetary problems such as: close relationship between people and space, between people and natural environment.

Such a conscious active approach to Cosmo-Globalistics has only originated but it is already too narrow to reflect cosmization of global natural and, later on, global socio-natural and social processes. Cosmo-Globalistics should regard the cosmogony which resulted in the birth of the Earth, post-astronomic history as being too limited from the point of the Earth evolution.

The above-mentioned approach influences the correlation between Globalistics and Cosmo-Globalistics, the latter being of a wider influence and embracing all the planetary and cosmic space. And nevertheless, the correlation in question is too vague and general to be of practical importance as Globalistics is referred mainly to the Earth while Cosmo-Globalistics – to the correlation of the Earth and the Cosmos. The wider view on global and cosmic is reflected in the notions of global evolutionism, where ‘global’ implies universal, all-embracing meaning.

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