How did complex life - up to humans - arise from the first cell? This was the question that the founder of the biological theory of evolution, Charles Darwin, scandalously answered in his time. But one can ask further: What came before? How did the first cell itself come into existence? How did our planetary system form? To whom or what does our universe owe its life-friendly parameters? And what came after? What changed when civilized humans entered the stage of evolution? According to what principles do their culture, social organization, technology, and cognition develop and change? There are now unified answers to these questions within the framework of a comprehensive theoretical structure, the generalized theory of evolution. This field is presented for the first time in this work as an interdisciplinary and philosophical overall representation.