03.17.10
Posted in The Eonic Effect, you've got mail at 1:45 pm by nemo
An email exchange at the history and theory listserve over
an essay by Niall Ferguson in Foreign Policy on complex systems
and empires:
John Landon _historya@history-and-evolution.com_
(mailto:historya@history-and-evolution.com)
Subject: Niall Ferguson’s “Complexity and Collapse”
The classic question, from the philosophy of history, haunts any attempt to apply complexity theory
to history: unless you deny the possibility of freedom history can’t be a causal system. Read the rest of this entry »
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03.08.10
Posted in Science & Religion, The Axial Age, The Eonic Effect at 3:59 pm by nemo
Stream and Sequence: The ‘Axial’ Transitions
To find the grounds for a perspective that is both religious and scientific requires a whole new perspective on science and a complete debriefing of religious monotheism.
A look at the eonic effect, and thence the Axial Age, shows how that could be done.
It is too easy to be a prisoner of two mythologies, the Darwinian, and the Old Testament Biblical.
The forces of propaganda won’t give you a break, so when you are ready to become a social drop out, you can deal with this issue. Til then all you have are the lies created by propagandists on both sides.
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03.07.10
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 1:17 pm by nemo
Falsifying Darwinism: A Theoretical Self-defense
The most absurd aspect of Darwinism is the way it flunks the history test: world history shows the falsifying evidence!
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03.06.10
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 1:03 pm by nemo
The fourthh edition to WHEE is on its way, so get your fill of the third edition now:
The Eonic Effect
The implications of the eonic effect is that a theory of evolution is likelyto be an abstraction without data. It is remarkable that Darwinism thrives in an absence of data on evolution.
We see evolution once we have data at the level of fine-grain history.
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03.04.10
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 1:07 pm by nemo
Human Culture, an Evolutionary Force
This Times article is interesting but will confuse the issue because they assume that Darwinian evolution is fundamental.
Please look at the ‘eonic effect’, the evidence not just of micro-cultural evolutioin, but of macro-cultural evolution, something that was probably present through human evolution, or all evolution.
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03.03.10
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 3:25 pm by nemo
Comment from Arnhart on Lamarck post
The eonic effect gives us an extremely useful and intuitive example of the basic framework of evolution as suggested by Lamarck, and distantly echoed in the ‘punctuated equilibrium’ terminology. That terminology is not a theory, but a language that is descriptive for situations in speciation where a sudden transition is followed by an equilibrium. The terminology would have been more useful to describe a general evolution formalism.
Whatever the case, the eonic effect gives us a glimpse of the way that evolution in the macro sense punctutates a stream of evolution in a micro sense. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 1:07 pm by nemo
Comment on yestereday’s Lamarck post
What is the “something” that does evolution? Is this an intelligent agent? God? If not, then what?
How exactly does this “something” carry out its will? By what natural mechanism does it work?
By what falsifiable test do we determine whether there really is a “something” that does evolution?
There is no such falsifiable test for this approach or for Darwinism. So maybe we should not be dogmatic. The value of this approach is not to hype a new theory but to make some sense of where we are going wrong.
Your questions seem to suggest the way Darwinists are always afraid of finding god, or some designer. I don’t think that god is the issue.
Read the rest of this entry »
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03.02.10
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 4:26 pm by nemo
There are twelve pages with twelve categories of ‘evolutionary theory’ at Enlightennext: The REAL Evolution Debate: Page 1
This series is not without interest, but almost all of the categories are wrong, or inadequate.
It is useful, until counterproductive, to reify these different brands. But then you can see they are better left together in one stew pot, there to simmer together, as speculative confusions. Thus to put Robert Wright in some kind of ‘directionality’ category isn’t very helpful: he is a Darwinist pure and simple, who has tried to finesse some garbage theory based on game theory to introduce this directional process. Bullshit.
I am suspicious, are all these categories bullshit?? Whatever the case, this list is useful as a temporary study guide.
Read the rest of this entry »
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03.01.10
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect, World History and The Eonic Effect at 7:48 pm by nemo
Another post for the record, dealing with my 4th edition survey.
Fourth edition, peer review, etc, etc…
I got a belated response below today from one respondent, Stuart Newman, on the email/survey I sent out to dozens of professors/scientists in academia.
It unwittingly illustrates my grounds for terminating any more interactions re: my work from professors. They are untrustworthy. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in World History and The Eonic Effect at 2:23 pm by nemo
I have been sending out a series of pdf review copies of WHEE/fourth edition to a bunch of academics et al. My purpose is to obviate the criticism that I would not submit to peer review, and to call the bluff of those who make that criticism. And as pointed out by one commentator the first edition was cited immediately by the journal History and Theory. The issue is really one of censorship by the Darwin monopoly, so the approval of academic types is completely unwanted!
So this is for the record, whether or not you care to bother with: I want the action for the public record/. The fourth edition will be out this summer, and I hope that it represents a stage toward something easier for the public to understand.
This is a final email update on the PDF preview copy of the fourth edition of World History And The Eonic Effect sent out to a large group of academic scholars and scientists. I have decided to terminate the request for review, having accomplished my purpose, and gotten the feedback that I wanted/needed, and to expedite the printing sequence stat. If you have anything to say, act at once.
My inside anonymous ‘adviser’ in academia, previously cited here (below), suggested it was a complete waste of time to deal with academic types on the issue of evolution/Darwinism, even if they are so-called critics, as with the Altenberg 16:
“Academia is completely corrupt on the issue of evolution, and you would lose your credibility to get an endorsement from these scumbags with PHD’s. You have already gotten what you need. The first edition of your book was immediately cited by the classic Journal History and Theory in 2000, proof that it would in principle pass peer review, despite its incomplete state at that point. As you well know the Darwin Gestapo descended on that magazine and their innocent mistake was fairly well punished by the enforcers, as one can see from the Darwin garbage that began to appear. Read the rest of this entry »
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02.27.10
Posted in The Eonic Effect, secularism at 2:57 pm by nemo
The best way to rebalance one’s thinking on secularism is to study the eonic effect, where the ‘modern transition’ is seen in its balanced complexity: The modern transition
The nature of secularism comes through in this context.
The great irony of secularism is that its place in world history and the evolution of civiization makes it fully the equivalent, not just of the Greek classical transition, but of Old Testament Axial period, which has been totally misunderstood and mythologized.
Thus the almost magical nature of the rise of secularism should leave Xtianity idiots gasping, clutching their now obsolete Bibles in vain.
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02.26.10
Posted in The Eonic Effect at 1:28 pm by nemo
André Glucksmann
The Velvet Philosophical Revolution
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the battle for political freedom goes on.
The discussion of the ‘end of history’ is completely confused due to its propaganda tactics. Consider this clarification:
Last and First Men
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02.23.10
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 6:21 pm by nemo
Mysterious Drumbreat
The debate over natural selection is carried out by biological Darwinists who have been systematically miseducated and led to believe that NS will explicate evolution in general. It is a fallacy that dies hard, and one can only recommend a careful look at the eonic effect: you will see that natural selection just can’t do the things claimed for it, and that the evolution is vastly more complicated than random process.
Just tracking evolution of any kind over five thousand years is extremely difficult. The eonic effect warns us of a similar problem in earlier stages of evolution.
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Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 5:59 pm by nemo
Limits of Observation
Debates over natural selection are a series of abstractions about what might be the case. The actual science of evolution would require tracking evolutionary sequences over time to see how evolution actually occurred.
Natural selection is the surface of evolutionary dynamics. The real process of evolution is rarely if ever observed.
A look at the eonic effect can clarify this point: we discover, to our shocked surprise, what evolution is really like as we track it over time.
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Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 1:16 pm by nemo
What is your beef with natural selection?
The main thing Darwin had in mind with natural selection was to come up with a theory that answers the question, “Why are certain traits there?” Why do people have hair on their heads? Why do both eyes have the same color? Why does dark hair go with dark eyes? You can make up a story that explains why it was good to have those properties in the original environment of selection. Do we have any reason to think that story is true? No.
According to Darwin, traits of creatures are selected for their contribution to fitness [likelihood to survive]. But how do you distinguish a trait that is selected for from one that comes along with it? There are a lot of interesting structures in creatures that have nothing to do with fitness.
Some variants in selection are clearly environmental. If you can’t store water you’ll do worse in a dry environment than if you can. But suppose that having a high ability to carry a lot of water is correlated for genetic reasons with skin color. How do you decide which trait is selected for by environmental factors and which one is just attached to it? There isn’t anything in the Darwinist picture that allows you to answer that question.
This kind of criticism of natural selection is long overdue, but the diehards are addicted to oversimplifications and the ‘paradigm’ is constantly made to persist. So I wonder if Fodor/PP et al. can really make a dent in the Darwin propaganda machine.
I think that the best and most comprehensive critique of natural selection lies in the study of the eonic effect: it is a unique glimpse of ‘evolution in action’, albeit in history, and this shows dramatically how silly the NS obsession is. It is a projection of the reductionist imagination onto deep time, without real evidence.
Thus I think that the Fodor/PP critique, while immensely valuable, can provoke return quibbles by defenders. The point is simply that NS is not scientifically observed in deep time. We never track evolutioanry sequences in detail to see how they occur.
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02.22.10
Posted in The Eonic Effect at 1:11 pm by nemo
From Reformation To Revolution
After reviewing Ferris’ The Science Of Liberty I am mindful of the elusiveness of the eonic effect, its portrait of history, and the way in which it clarifies the rise of modernity.
Ironically the ‘ the science of freedom’ is needed to decipher the ‘causal backdrop’ to the emergence of democracy in its mysterious rhythm.
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02.20.10
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 1:14 pm by nemo
Comment from author of Not By Design
John Reiss said,
February 20, 2010 at 7:42 am ·
… I’ve just taken a look at some of the online material on the “eonic effect” and must admit I can’t get much out of it – again perhaps my own inability. I would agree that world history seems progressive, but whether inherently or accidentally so I would not hazard a guess.
But in any case, the overlap here seems to be with our views on the role of natural selection in evolution, and here I entirely agree that too much has been ascribed to it. The problem with attacks on natural selection (as that of Fodor and Piattelli-Palmerini) is that you are never going to convince the vast majority of biologists that the theory is empty if you can’t convince them that the adaptedness of organisms does not needs to be explained as the outcome of an historical process of natural selection. All theories of self-organization, emergence, etc. run head-long into this objection. It is here that I have tried to help, by pointing out (following Cuvier, himself a Kantian, as well as the ancient atomists) that the adaptedness of organisms is a condition for their existence, and as such does not require an historical explanation.
IMHO the role of teleological properties of life itself in the evolutionary process remains unresolved, and exceedingly difficult to determine.
I have enjoyed reading some of the comments on this site, and Fodor and Piattelli-Palmerini’s book has certainly proved a fertile source for Googling other sites of interest!
The eonic effect requires a careful study of world history along the lines of th eonic model.
The point at its most simple is that world history by any standard shows a directional patterning, and, further, demonstrates a clear non-random pattern, whose interpretation is a kind of developmental regularity of structure. This is not driven by natural selection.
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02.19.10
Posted in The Eonic Effect at 9:29 pm by nemo
My review of The Science Of Liberty is generating some commentary, and I fear I mauled the book with a review of the title instead of the book. I think, however, that the book fails to grapple with all the issues that I have dealt with in the discussion of the eonic effect. Ferris might have learned something from World History And The Eonic Effect, and spared himself the cognitive dissonance generated by the title. And thence the analysis in the book.
The issue of the rise of the modern is dealt with as the ‘modern transition’ in the text of WHEE and gives a warning against the many traps into which Ferris falls in this book.
Transition and Modernity
But begin at the beginning: modernity doesn’t make sense all by itself, but needs the larger context of world history.
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02.17.10
Posted in Science, The Eonic Effect, liberalism, secularism at 2:41 pm by nemo
Ferris’ attempt to smear over the classic issues of the philosophy of history with the crude sociology of scientism deserves a look at the legacy of the Enlightenment here. Scientists can’t claim the Enlightenment then trash its classics.
The question of a science of history is discussed at length in World History And The Eonic Effect and this is connected with what I call ‘Kant’s Challenge’, that is, the paragraph of his famous essay cited in this passage:
Kant’s Challenge
I am not an interpreter of Kant here, as such, but simply take his beautiful implied change to resolve the issue of freedom and causality across history. The pattern of the eonic effect provides a spectacular answer to that implied challenge.
Note that the eonic effect automatically picks up the question of the rise of liberalism (and science) and shows its deep relationship to the historical/evolutionary process of man’s descent, and creation of world civilization.
Let me note my suspcion here, for the umpteenth time by various authros, that Ferris is well aware of World History And The Eonic Effect and wants to produce an answer (without citing the book in question) that negates the apparoach indicated. One thing is sure these people are afraid of the challenge to produce a ’science of history’. They can’t do it in conventional terms, and Ferris produces a whole book of moolah to distract attention from that fact.
Science the cause of liberalism? That’s a joke. As here, we see the effort to asphyxiate the public with the propaganda of scientism, and to eliminate history, as in any totalitarian system.
Make sure you don’t get drugged and put to sleep forever.
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Posted in Booknotes, Science, The Eonic Effect, liberalism at 2:29 pm by nemo
I also reviewed Ferris’ The Science Of Liberty. It won’t appear right away as a second review in one day.
I recommend a look at the eonic effect if you wish to indulge in causal analysis questions to do with the history of liberalism.
Despite its breezy style and superficial charm, this book, whether from ignorance or unspoken design, ventures into a quagmire of its own making, a point visible in the title itself. What a pity, since the book has a lot of potentially interesting material. But it seems to be a devious or sneaky book in the way it proceeds in a curious conspiracy of silence of its own making. Read the rest of this entry »
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02.15.10
Posted in Science, Science & Religion, The Axial Age, The Eonic Effect, liberalism at 4:13 pm by nemo
The Case of the Missing Centuries
We already commented today on Ferris’ new book The Science Of Liberty. I haven’t read the book yet, and on one level his thinking may be straightforward, but it is NOT true that science led to the emergence of liberalism. The parallel independent emergence of liberalism and science is one of the enigmas of modernity, one that can be better understood in light of the eonic effect.
The mystery of the history of science is the way it correlates exactly with the eonic sequence, and the way it nearly dies out after the period of its first Axial Age flowering. The point here is that the dynamic of the history of science, and that of liberalism is macrohistorical, strange as that might seem at first.
We can see that science by itself can’t ensure its own survival, what to say of the generation of liberalism.
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02.13.10
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 7:22 pm by nemo
The eonic effect: introduction
One way to bypass the confusion of the design debate is to look at the stunning patterning of the eonic effect in world history. A clear feeling of ‘design’ arises, and yet the sense of a designer doesn’t really arise.
The right approach is a kind of neutral ’systems analysis’ that simply delineates the properties observed, which defy simply design arguments, and which also make simple mechanical arguments look oversimplified.
The point is important because the Axial phenomenon of Old Testament history defies sociological analysis, and is a part of religious assumptions about historical design. But a closer look shows that the Israelites, and those monotheists following in their wake, didn’t get the ‘god argument’, or design issue right!
The idea of a system allows us to delineate mechanical properties within necessary applying universal causal arguments, which clearly fail.
The eeries systematics of the eonic effect shows that ‘historical evolution’ is nothing like anything to be found in Darwinism.
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02.09.10
Posted in Booknotes, Evolution, World History and The Eonic Effect at 8:48 pm by nemo
If you are confused by the evolution debate, a look at the so-called eonic effect can help, if only to show the real complexity of the question, and the failure of all current theories.
Start of World History And The Eonic Effect: WHEE is about to go offline and out of print as a book, in prep for the quite different fourth edition, so take the chance now to look at the material.
A huge number of people have been reading the comprehensive online selections since I announced the fourth edition. Join the fun.
Or get the book!
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Posted in The Eonic Effect at 8:32 pm by nemo
An Age of Enlightenment
Since we were on the Enlightenment tonight, check out the chapter on the rise of modernity, online, from World History And The Eonic Effect, with its section on the Enlightenment. Seeing the issues in the context of world history can be helpful.
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