06.05.07

History and evolution

Posted in Evolution, The Axial Age, The Eonic Effect, you've got mail at 9:36 pm by nemo

Post at teilhard, chaosmos, hegelnet, kenwilber @yahoogroups.com, see the archives for context (the essay speaks for itself alone).

The issue of history and evolution is indeed a confusing one,

and it does indeed seem as if I am making a category error. But consider the following question: when did evolution stop and history begin? This tricky question will trip up the Darwinian approach and leave it to collapse on a contradiction. The answer of course is that there couldn’t be an instantaneous switch.
We can see that to set a specific date is contradictory. So we must specify
a transition between evolution and history. What form would this hybrid take,
passing from evolution to history? Either it is all evolution or all
history. Or….??? Or maybe a series of mini transitions with evolution
dominant then history dominant. In alternation. What???
Now look at the eonic effect: it speaks not just of evolution, but of
history and evolution, the two braided together, with history emerging from
evolution. And this eonic effet takes the form of a sequence of alternating
periods, with evolution (in my sense) dominant during eras of transition, and
co-related periods with history (in my sense) dominant. Thus we actually see in
history the data matching the deduction about transitions, passing from
evolution to history. !!!!

If you pursue the eonic effect and its model in detail you will find a
formal definition of ‘eonic evolution’ and ‘history as free action’ with the two
braided together in a drumbeat alternation pattern. This is defined as an
‘evolution of freedom’ in a purely formal fashion. As ‘freedom evolves’ (in my
sense) history comes into being.

The enigma of the Axial Age, for example, yields at once to this kind of
analysis.

The question of a category error is irrelevant, really. You assume evolution
is solely genetic, and that biologists have the defining standard. But they
don’t.
The term ‘evolution’ means ‘rolling out’, and ‘eonic evolution’ means the
rolling out of civilization in the context of the eonic effect. we see that
there is a ‘macroevolution’ involved with this.
Note that we use the term ‘evolution’ in a host of contexts, economics, art,
philosophy, any category. Do you forbid those too? Those usages are just as
valid (and maybe as incoheren) as the Darwinian. Darwin never actually used
the word, in his first edition.

So my ‘eonic evolution’ is correct, because that’s the way I define it. LIke
Humpty Dumpty, I get the definition right because I am in charge of the
definition, and pay my bills. Fine, but then what does this have to do with some
Darwinian definition (just as valid therefore as mine, i.e. genetic
evolution).
The answer is that ‘eonic evolution’ takes up five (probably ten) thousand
years of human history, and is better documented than the Darwinian, which is
speculative, in fact.
Ten thousand years isn’t much, but it is one twentieth of the way to 200,
000 BCE, the supposed source of anatomically modern man.
That’s no vanishing percentage. Something has to give. Either Darwin is
right and my evolution is wrong, or Darwin wrong and my approach is right (or at
least hints at the right approach). Ten thousand over two hundred thousand is
a tight fraction. You can have only one elephant in a room that size.
So, I have ten thousand years, with good evidence indeed over five thousand
of that (since the invention of writing). Data at the level of centuries or
less. And that evidence shows macroevolution of the type of the eonic effect.
And what do Darwinists have? Zilch, in fact. Zilch.
Darwinists don’t have a single stretch of evolution at the level of detail
of the eonic effect. Nowhere.

And this leaves the question all over again, when did evolution stop and
history begin: apply this to the Paleolithic. The history factor is certainly
there with early men. I would conjecture that an early form of my ‘eonic
evolution’ (i.e. drumbeat alternation over a scale of ten thousand years) might
well be an aspect of the so-called Great Explosion.
The Darwinian account of man’s descent is incoherent. Anatomically modern
man appears ca. two hundred thousand years ago. Seems like a long time.
But man has remained virtually static for the last fifty thousand. What???
That leaves the Darwinist about a hundred fifty thousand years, or less, for
his slow evolution, since the last fifty thousand is static (apart from genetic
drift and the emergence of races). If fifty thousand shows very little
change, then I fear that three time fifty thousand isn’t going to be theanswer,
in Darwinian terms. Something is suspiciously missing here!!!
Just at this point the obscure ‘Great Explosion’, never quite defined or
observed, but intuited, is posited. !!!

Hardly surprising. So something doesn’t add up in Darwin on man. Darwinists
have to face this fact, but won’t. We hear ridiculous nonsense about some
magic mutation that pulled behaviorally modern man out of a hat.
I certainly wouldn’t claim to prove it, but the eonic efffect ought to be
relevant here, for it shows truly rapid high speed change able to occur
globally in short ranges over five to ten thousand years, operating in drumbeat
alternation. Fits the bill for what Darwinists are looking for.
I make no hard claims for this, but I am certainly NOT required to take
Darwinists seriously once I see the eonic effect in history. Of course, the
eonic effect can’t explain the genetic evolution of early man. But can Darwinists
explain it either?
I would be forced to assume some combination of something like the eonic
effect is mixed with genetic evolution in very very early man. I won’t
speculate, and simply note that the eonic effect falsifies Darwin on man.
Darwinistscan’t snap out of it, but it is factual that they have no conclusive evidence
of claims of natural selection.

Finally, consider two cones, overlapping (draw a picture), one emerging from
the other, like a cornucopia. That’s something like the relationship between
history and evolution. In the beginning (macro) evolution is dominant,
history minimal (passivity of man), then history starts to emerge as (macro)
evolution continues but begins to wane and leave man to his devices. Finally
evolution fades out, as history (human free action) becomes dominant. One cone
goes to a point, the other emerges from a point to become a cone.
That shows how the conflict of the two ideas is illusory. Actually they are
tailor made for each other.

Thanks for comments.

John Landon.

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