The energy inherent in life to create forms that transcend life is a force toward cultural diversity, not unity. In radical contrast to Comte and Marx, who envisioned the goal of evolution to be the production of a homogeneous culture for one humanity, Simmel saw the generation of increasingly specialized cultural products ordered in fundamentally discrete and incommensurable worlds.

XREF: Contrasts with Comte and Marx's progressivist assumptions; parallels later critiques of universalizing teleology in social theory.

XREF: Connects to debates between universalist progress narratives (Comte, Marx) and pluralist or incommensurable-world frameworks in anthropology and cultural theory.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 25