12.31.11
Problems people have with the ‘eonic effect’ and ‘evolution in history’ discussions
In search of history: introduction to the ‘eonic effect’
We discussed already the problem people have with Darwin dissent, but Richard implied a similar situation with respect to my views on evolution.
I think that these views are robust, and deliver what is promised, but if that isn’t clear on sight, then maybe there is a problem. There is! The reality of evolution is complex, elusive and not easily understood, especially if you have been overtrained to believe in the magic of natural selection. This oversimplification will make you lazy and unwilling to do the long uphill to understanding how evolution works (to whatever extent we can arrive at that). In a word, evolutionary study is going to be hard work. To be sure, simply looking backward at deep time is easy: we can detect evolution as a chronicle of forms. But it is not so easy to understand how it all works.
My purpose with the study of the ‘eonic effect’ was to
show why history must reflect evolution
show how this evolution detected is embedded in history
suggest how this visible pattern can tell us what ‘evolution’ is really like, i.e.
that it is directional, i.e. teleological,
that is operates on two levels, one expressing an invisible template (but not exactly),
with the second level carrying out the details, in a different action,
showing thus, that the deeper side to evolution is invisible to us
but that its action is so spectacular we might confuse it with design/theistic processes.
And much more.
But the basic point of all this is to do some systems analysis. People claim that history is random. A little systems analysis (throw a sine curve at the data) will show quite easily that this is false, and that contrary to common intuition an organized directionality is at work (overlaid on a chaotified divergence and diversity).
The final suspicion is that this ‘evolution’ (evolution because we defined it that way, period) is also a strong hint about how earlier human evolution produced homo sapiens: a ten thousand year sequence of transitions operating on populations in Africa, after the fashion of what we see in world history, but of course different in details in a different context, but a kind a macroevolutionary operation on populations of hominids, leading them to higher states of language, mind, culture and ‘ethics’ (which really means ‘moving toward free will’), in ways that resemble perhaps what we see in the Axial Age where high speed convulsions/transformations over a mere few centuries produce massive innovations, the genetics to follow no doubt.
There is in any case no chance Darwinists are going to explain, say, language. The eonic effect shows cases of ‘linguistic’ art sequences arising by correlated explosions in the direct path of the sequential process. That tells us something, a hint at least. The data is in essence simple: we see a creative phase (i.e. the Axial period) then a middle or medievalizing period, then another ‘punctuation’. Then we discover that this pattern replicates backward. There is clear evidence of system at work, that this system shows developmental sequencing…. Case established: a non-random pattern in world history (disguised by all sort so variously random processes).
So, I am mindful of the problems people have with the eonic effect, but its content is finally no more than simple periodization using known facts about world history which shows what it shouldn’t show: non-random directionality. I don’t have to explain anything: all I have to do is point to the facts of world history present in any text on the subject, if you can manage a bird’s eye view. That’s my strength: I don’t have to ‘explain’ evolution with a ‘theory’. All I have to do is point to evolution in a sequence, albeit incomplete. That this ‘evolution’ isn’t genetic makes no difference. I doubt if genetics is the key to evolution anyway. It is a secondary level that works in its own way under the influence of various outside forces.
Keep in mind that it is Darwininism that is crackpot. Once we suspect that evolution must be something else, and that it must show its echoes in world history we can start the easter egg hunt. Not long before the puzzle comes together.
LZ said,
January 1, 2012 at 6:47 am
The issue of the Axial Age is clear, but the larger pattern is harder to understand. How is modernity connected to evolution?
The Gurdjieff Con said,
January 1, 2012 at 12:57 pm
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