10.06.08
The eonic effect: as Darwinism crashes…
As the ground under the Darwin paradigm erodes, the pressure for some new synthesis builds. But it’s worth asking if the same trap won’t reoccur with a new paradigm. We need to go beyond paradigms to live in the Kantian rubble beyond theories, hence ideologies. And there one is left with the question, where did Darwinism go wrong?
Here the study of the eonic effect shows at once the reason for the hallucination of natural selection. We construct an hypothesis that satisfies the requirements desired for a scientific explanation, then, without an empirical grounding, apply that as a kind of universal generalization about an unobserved whole to the vast interval of deep time. That’s a recipe for failure, in the name of ‘science’. In almost no cases has science verified the exact historical details of this generalization. Scientists, thus, think nothing of generalizating about intervals a mere million years, or more, and claiming that they have a valid explanation. How is this science?
What if evolutionary dynamics operates at high-speed over short intervals of time? Too short for us to observe. This possibility is never considered by biologists, because it invokes the possibility that theories of evolution are, so far, beyond our grasp. We don’t have empirically documented intervals observed at close range (geographically specific) over short intervals of time.
With one exception, world history. World history is the one dataset we have that is observed at close range (geographically specific histories in global zones) over short intervals, in fact, century by century. There is still much that is missing, but the documentation of the last five thousand years that is emerging is rapidly becoming a century by century chronicle, in fact, in many cases a decade by decade chronicle.
This is a unique data set, the only one we have that might tell us if short range high speed evolution exists.
Sure enough, with the eonic effect we discover just that, and it is a real whopper.
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As an example consider the Axial Age (an aspect of the eonic effect). In less than three centuries a global transformation occurs that remorphs whole cultures in parallel producing a distinct ratchet effect as these sourcing areas almost jump to a new level of culture. Then the transformation subsides and the system returns to a relative steady state. There is no trace of any genetic component, nor does it have anything to do with natural selection.
Three centuries!! a mere instant against the backdrop of deep time. Imagine what we are probably missing, perhaps, in all those millions of years!
Furthermore, you can go to the library and check the data.
We need a new strategy with evolution then: world history is the only ground we have for assessing the actual form and action of evolution. We don’t observe that in deep time, to the needed degree of resolving power.
So we can adopt the standard of historical evolution as the basis for evolutionary interpretation, acknowledging our ignorance of deep time. We can allow research to accumulate, but we need to free ourselves culturally from the botched pseudo-evolutionism of the age of scientism, and rescue history from the false generalizations of confused biologists.