Hold on to your hat. If history is our teacher, we're on the threshold of a Renaissance Age of the likes the world has never known.

Why? Because we're currently living in the hurricane of one of history's rare eras of extraordinary discovery.

One thing is consistent throughout history; nations and epochs marked by the greatest flowering of exploration are also marked by the most consequential cultural exuberance.

Each Discovery Era has spawned its own Renaissance Age: a rebirth, an enlightenment period of exponential growth in so many disciplines; in the arts, science, philosophy, architecture, mathematics, biology, religious study and astronomy.

In Pharaonic Egypt, the pyramids boldly attempted to reach into the heavens, challenging cosmology and immortality. Hieroglyphs, the messenger of its times, passionately captured the voice of a thinking, multi-dimensional society yearning for spiritual answers.

The transatlantic explorations and Gutenberg's printing press in the 1400s marked our first great discovery age; and was a conduit for a renaissance of expression that blanketed the world. Rabelais and Montaigne in France; Shakespeare, Milton and the translators of the King James Bible in England, Cervantes and Lope de Vega in Spain, Camoens in Portugal -- all date from this period.

On the heels of the invention of the telescope, the microscope and the pendulum clock, Copernicus and Galileo continued to rattle the world. Scientific exploration and artistic expression answered; spawning the works of Isaac Newton, Descartes, Spinoza, Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Francis Bacon.

We saw it again in the early 20th century with the harnessing of electricity, and as man flew for the first time like a bird; breeding a plethora of advancements in science and industry.

But then there was the mother lode; the last quarter of the 20th Century. Ignited by space exploration, bold scientific breakthroughs led by Einstein, and most significantly, the advent of the computer, the last 25 years was an unparalleled explosion of discovery and invention.

Exploiting the computer and micro-circuitry (continuing to exponentially improve), the disciplines of biology, physics, mathematics and cosmology are, once again, forcing us to reevaluate our faiths, our anthrocentric beliefs, and our understanding of basic universal elements (such as time, space, matter and dimension).

The Renaissance for the next fifty years will be extraordinary: as we challenge the validity of the intriguing worlds of string theory, dark matter, black holes, parallel universes, cloning -- and new physical dimensions. Music, religion, art, philosophy, politics, wars, education - and everyday life -- will mirror our confusion, our wonder - and our never-ending need to know the answer to the same three simple questions that have haunted man for a hundred thousand years; Where are we? Who are we? Where are we going?

We now get to sit back and enjoy the creative and intellectual fireworks. The prerequisite for taking this 50-year ride will be a love of knowledge - and an open mind regarding everything we've ever believed to be true.

This weekly column will explore these issues - and I welcome you to join me...