12.03.08
The Dawkins mistake on ‘climbing Mt. Improbable’
Dawkins’ claims about randomness are completely upside down and serve to cover up the whole confusion of Darwinists.
This earlier post today on the issue of random evolution invites still another reference to the way in which we can observe a true instance of non-random evolution (or non-random patterning if you wish to defer the issue of evolution) in world history: all we have to do is examine the patterning of emergent novelties against a series of timelines: if we are systematic we notice at once a non-random pattern, evidence of some deeper process at work. It is a remarkably ‘simple’ demonstration in principle (in practice requiring looking at a lot of history), one that involves very few extra or metaphysical assumptions. This pattern is part of the way we speak of the ‘axial age’, i.e. a period stands out from the random stream, something ’caused it’, it is ‘non-random’ and we give it a name. The pattern is also reflected in our use of the term ‘middle ages’. The in-between periods seem less spectacular, or driven. The eonic effect makes the job simple because it shows not just a non-random pattern, but simple sequencing and periodic alternation in the periods that express the pattern.
The case that this is also ‘evolution’ (qualified as ‘eonic or ratchet evolution’) is hard and fast, but not as clear perhaps at the beginning. But the point is clear in general: random process can’t ‘climb Mt. Improbable’. Dawkins can’t manage to get past his own mistake with ‘methinks it is a weasal’ computer argument in his book Climbing Mt. Improbable.
One of the most tenacious claims of defenders of Darwinism is that of the randomness of evolution. By and large, despite various efforts of writers such as Richard Dawkins to claim that natural selection is ‘non-random’, Darwinian theory is about random evolution. And yet this assumption is contradicted by world history itself, where we can see clear evidence of a non-random pattern exhibiting the properties of evolution, ‘evolution of some kind’. We can call this the eonic effect. This pattern gives real meaning to the phrase ‘Climbing Mt. Improbable’.
History and evolution This pattern forces us to ask, What is the relationship of history and evolution? In fact, a careful consideration of what we mean by evolution suggests that the two must be braided together in some way, since the transition between the two could not be discontinuous. This leaves us suspicious about the current claims for the evolution of man. Darwinism makes very strong claims, not only about evolution, but reality itself, based on the thesis that natural selection generates all the complexity that we see in the emergence of biological forms.
These claims are more projections of a set of assumptions about how things should be than properly verified assertions of science. One irony in the study of history is that it enforces a discipline of factual verification. Darwinists see no problem with assertions about unseen periods of deep time, while the historian is committed to an exact and continuous chronicle of ‘what happened’ at the level of millennia, centuries, decades, and years. It is, so far, able to apply this standard to but a few millennia of world history, with considerable data nonetheless in the range of millennia to centuries stretching back to the onset of the Neolithic. The achievement of this data set is very recent and if we examine the result a very definite overall pattern begins to emerge. In fact, we begin to see what we can call the ‘transition from evolution to history’, and this is a definite process of what can only be called ‘macroevolution’, and it doesn’t square with wild generalizations about natural selection.
Climbing Mt. Improbable World History And The Eonic Effect sets as its prime objective the demonstration of a non-random pattern in world history itself, the eonic effect. And this leaves us suspicious about what is often called the Great Explosion, the sudden transition to modern man that we deduce from the woefully incomplete data of the Paleolithic. Armed with a perception of the eonic effect, we are left suspicious that current theories have completely missed the main event. Although we cannot draw definite conclusions without the same standard of evidence that we apply to history, we can quarantine world history and block the misapplication of Darwinian assumptions to cultural evolution.
We have lost any sense of universal history. Modern science, confused by the tenets of Darwinism, has produced a very distorted picture of the historical evolution of man. The study of the eonic effect can help to correct this distortion, by generating an idea for a universal history, in a phrase of the philosopher Kant. We can do this by generating a simple model to the data we find, and then seeing how this resolves the classic paradoxes of causality and freedom applied to historical evolution. The result is an elegant introit to a ‘science of history’ in the form of an ‘evolution of freedom’.
Theoretical self-defense One of the classic confusions of Darwinian theory is the misapplication of natural selection to cultural action in the present. This makes the theory a dangerous piece of bad social software. Our new approach can resolve this difficulty. And one of ironies of our study, and model, is that we can bring evolution into our present and future even as we free history from the evolutionary straightjacket. This is an effect of the type of model we develop, based on two levels, and able to distinction properly the ‘macro-action’ of evolution and the micro-action of history. It can be hard to defend oneself against the authority of ‘experts’ on the issue of evolution. Armed with the data of the eonic effect we have the incontrovertible piece of evidence for the basic problem with Darwinism.
In a theme of last and first men, from chimpanzee to man, we find ourselves confronted with the implications of our evolutionary past and the potential of our future action as the realization of our species character, as man.
Stephen P. Smith said,
December 3, 2008 at 6:21 pm
So much is written about the “non-random pattern†in history that stands out during the said “Axial age.” But then the discussion seems to fall short. A clear definition of the Axial age, and a clear description of the non-random pattern will help us readers!
By “Axial age,” I am assuming your talking about a point in history 2000 years ago, or so, where civilization first emerged with the worlds religions?
See this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age
And by the “non-random pattern,” I am assuming you are talking about the way religion emerged with civilization all over the world and all at once? The pattern show a break in the deterministic chain that points to the past? Hense, evolution and history show two faces? And so we can infer that something is holding the two together as one evolution?
nemo said,
December 3, 2008 at 9:54 pm
I put this up as a post tomorrow, but to answer your question I rarely use the term ‘Axial Age’ in World History And The Eonic Effect.
The discussion is about the distribution of innovation in the relevant time-frames of the transitions defined, in this case from -900 to ca. -600.
Nor is this an issue of religions. The Axial Age encompasses the progression of a world system, and that includes all categories. Note especially the case of Greece.
FORGET WIKIPEDIA on the Axial Age, it is completely useless.
I fear the notion of the Axial Age has fallen into confusion.
In the eonic model of the eonic effect we see what are essentially three transitions equally spaced and about three centuries in length. The second is sometimes called the Axial Age, but the only clear case is completely secular, the Greek transtion, as archaic Greece most remarkably starts to take off in the period after -900.
Keep in mind that the emergence of religion in the Judaic ‘Axial’ is misleading. The concept of monotheism arises, slowly, crystallizing ca. -600 (in part influenced by Zoroastrianism also) in the context of a tribal/state culture and its theocratic religious beliefs. Many of the elements of later religion begin to emerge. But our idea of religion, e.g. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, are NOT Axial creations. This requires therefore careful use of the term ‘religion’.
The issue of the non-random pattern then is of three transitions over five millennia from Egypt/Sumer to modern times. The clustering of innovations in these transitions is what creates the overall non-random pattern.
I need reminding that the idea of the Axial Age is hopeless confusion in most people’s minds. I rarely used the term in the first edition, but allowed it in in the second and third, but in the final analysis the analysis of the eonic effect has to mention and then set aside the terminology of the Axial Age.
I have discussed multiple times the confusion sown by Karen Armstrong on this question, along with many others on the internet. The Axial Age for me is simply a vague reference to the brief interval of generative innovation that brings into existence a new age of world history, between -900 and -600, with an aftereffect of about two centuries, to -400, as the new explodes into form. That’s something far more than the question of religion, which has confused the issue. Israelite culture in this ‘Axial’ transtion produced prophets, and tended to critique its polytheism, just as the modern Enlightenment in the modern transition critique monotheism. The overall pattern of culture was not religion generation in our sense. All that we consider religion now arose in the wake of the Axial Age.
It is much better to study these issues with the Greek example where the issue of Axial Ages producing religions doesn’t even arise.