05.19.10
The empirical evidence of historical evolution…
The third edition is going out of print in a few days, download the material now: The eonic effect…
05.09.10
Last week for third edition…!
In Search of History
The third edition of WHEE is going out of print this week, so download the material if you want it.
The new edition will less theoretical, more of a mere ‘world history’ in cameo.
The relationship of evolution to history is a simple logica derivation, but so far most Darwinists can’t seem to handle it.
03.14.09
The eonic model vs economic interpretations of history
One of the traps of Marx’s theory (and of many capitalist historical theorists) is the obsessive over-emphasis on the economic factor in history. Marx’s ‘historical materialism’ is a variant of the ‘economic interpretation of history’. It is claimed that economics drives history, or historical evolution.
Economic life is certainly a dominating concern! But this approach to historical theory is misguided, and unwitting traps us in the very process that constitutes a form of domination. The resolution is simple: to see that economies are human creations, and that changes are possible at any time.
That would seem obvious. But nothing is obvious anymore in an age of scientism, mathematical models, confused Darwinism, and historical materialist causal mania, which denies the power to make changes in the name of theory, postulating some ‘revolution’ to come as a dynamic of liberation.
As theory it was always a hopeless mess.
The eonic model provides something much simpler, and more coherent.
Here’s the selection (not online):
2.5.6 Econostream, Technostream,…and Eonic Sequence
We need to begin to distinguish between technological, economic, and ‘eonic’ evolution. Read the rest of this entry »
01.01.09
A glimpse of evolution
I am getting the online text of World History And The Eonic Effect organized, and the Introduction is complete, more or less. You can start here: A Glimpse Of Evolution, with the invocation section, and follow the links on each page.
Scientists, by focussing solely on natural selection have missed the complexity of real evolution. Only a careful tracking of evolutionary intervals at close range can we reconstruct what happened.
The only such interval is in world history!
12.27.08
The eonic evolution of religion
The question of the evolution of religion in world history is one of the most complex issues. We are in a complete muddle on the whole question. But the study of the eonic effect gives us a new way to look at the question, and unravels one of the most complicated facets of the Axial Age, religion, and its continuation. Here is another passage from World History And The Eonic Effect. It is out of context slightly (buy the book!) and requires the larger discusssion about the development of the eonic model, but the basic ideas are reasonably clear, perhaps.
The Eonic Evolution of Religion
In the wake of the modern transition, right on schedule, we find a resurgence of religious tradionalism, indeed, fundamentalism, endangering the fragile achievement of secularism, and giving us a sense of déjà vu as we note the fate of the Greek Axial and its birth of rationalism (next to the Indic). Quite apart from this consideration, we suddenly inherit a better sense of the nature of religious development over the course of world history, the eonic evolution of religion. But the (eonic) evolution of religion is one of the most complex problems of history. Perhaps now we have a key: with the idea of relative transforms, and stream and sequence overlays. The material in this section can seem baffling, but keep in mind that our only method is that of periodization. There is hardly any mystery to the method. What it points to is the problem of categorizing ‘religion’ at all, at a time when dogmas of historized divinity are seen increasingly to be mythological. Read the rest of this entry »
The core Old Testament as an ‘eonic transition’
Another selection from World History And The Eonic Effect on the question of ancient Israel and the eonic effect.
Canaan and ‘Israel/Judah’: The Old Testament Riddle
It is hard, in fact, impossible, to think of any other explanation than that of the eonic effect, for what is bequeathed to us by the redactors of the Old Testament, who, incidentally, lived after the events they purported to describe. It is the eonic ‘smoking gun’, for behind its history, however we reconstruct historical incidents from its account, lies an implicit straddling of the period –900 to –600, with a particular intensity in the period between –750 and afterward, an eonic Bull’s eye, and indirect evidence that stands on its own irregardless of the complete facts. Read the rest of this entry »
The Old Testament and the Eonic Effect
On the subject of the Old Testament here’s a passage from World History And The Eonic Effect:
The Old Testament as Eonic Data
One of the most remarkable cases of the eonic effect is reflected in the Old Testament. Historians are beginning to close in on the Old Testament period, to produce an account that finally begins to make sense of the confusing history and scholarship here. The worse it gets for the theologian the better it gets for the student of the eonic effect. Biblical scholarship, so-called, has often been little more than the theologian’s disinformation. We have to manage to be somewhat ruthless, and yet respectful here. We are about to annex the Old Testament to a secular model. The document, as it stands now, is beyond salvage on its own terms. Read the rest of this entry »
12.24.08
WHEE online?
I was asked by James last week about the text of World History And The Eonic Effect coming online.
Below was my reply. Actually, the post-Xmas/new year interval sounds right for it. I was dragging my feet a little bit, but now I think I will ditch the third edition online and start on a fourth edition.
The eonic model, so far, has proven too difficult for those acclimatized to Darwinism. They don’t even suspect how far off they are. Plus they don’t trust an outsider’s credentials or supposed lack of them, nor do they trust a POD text. As to credentials, anything but the current biological training. To be an outsider is an advantage, along with the POD publication venue. A POD book is one that NOONE has tampered with!
The developmental work was complete with the third edition, now a version that is easier for general readers is indicated. The current version is like a treasure locked in a safe: noone can quite get a handle on it. In part that is to prevent abuse of the findings via oversimplified metanarrative peddling. But the point has come to make the subtleties of the eonic effect accessible.
As indicated in the Preface the fourth edition will seek out, finally, a general publisher. Either that or a new book on world history in a more popular style. I have been preparing for this situation by developing an alternate text (Descent of Man Revisited) to spin off the hard parts of WHEE into an ‘eonic database’, so that the text of WHEE can move in a new direction.
So merry Xmas, Darwiniana readers.
nemo said,
December 14, 2008 at 11:12 pm ·
I am reluctant all of sudden to put the third edition online. The second edition online had a tremendous audience, but the effect was diffused. The third edition is so superior, but perhaps people recall the second, or first. And perhaps their opinions are fixed.
Actually my strategy was to put it online and produce a fourth edition for a general publisher. But the strategy may backfire, since the online version will make a general publisher reluctant to pick it up.
Someone from the university system who doesn’t dare speak about the book in public, begged me not to do it this way, and recommended a general publisher for the third edition. He may have been right.In general WHEE is beyond abilities of most readers, so I am not sure how to proceed. The book has so many innovations, but the whole approach is too strange for most people, although behind a small amount of disguise lies an elegant and spectacular structure. Another problem is the length. I need at least a thousand pages, and a narrative world history to accompany the argument, but that is difficult, and the book length limit of the current publisher/printer makes that impossible.
The argument seems hard, it should be said. In fact, there is no argument, only the construction of a careful image to visualize as world history. This approach is foolproof, so to speak, as opposed to speculative theorizing.
But you realize people don’t want careful reasoning! They want myth, like the Darwin myth.
What to do? Crap sells, a la Spengler. My argument is so far ahead of Spengler and Toynbee, but people’s thinking is fixed, frozen.
I thought to rewrite Descent of Man Revisited (a blogbook quickie for the Internet, http://history-and-evolution.com) to explore how to deal with a possible fourth edition.
I am hampered by this situation. I want to explore deeper, but I have to spend all my time dealing with Darwinists, an exceptionally idiotic subspecies. The harm done by Darwinism is collosal.
What to do?
12.20.08
Archaic Greece: the clue
Karem Armstrong in her book on the Axial Age did everything she could to confuse the issue, in the process trying to discredit the Greek Axial. But in fact the Greek Archaic is the great clue to the whole of the eonic effect.
From World History And The Eonic Effect:
Archaic Greece: The Clue
The terminology of the Axial Age has devolved into a confused perception of some kind of religious age, a sort of generalized age of revelation, complete with transcendental implications. But a study of the Greek Archaic (and Dark Age), is very useful to see the real Axial effect, undistracted by questions of the emergence of religion. If we track changes in centuries relative to millennia, it looks almost miraculous, until we note the overall pattern. Something doesn’t add up in the usual analysis. Read the rest of this entry »
12.18.08
From the Old Testament to a secular universal history
We need a renewed sense of ‘universal history’ for a secular age.
Two ‘stuck’ paradigms stand in the way of that, and of a clear view of world history: the Darwinian idee fixe, and the Biblical mythology generated from the Old Testament. The fact remains, however, that the Old Testament records a significant moment in historical evolution, although its means of doing so is mythological. Armed with the perception of the eonic effect we can recast the idea of evolution in history and the Axial Age significance of the Old Testament.
In the meantime, the historical study of Old Testament and other ancient histories is transforming our view of the subject, among other things bringing out the theme of Zoroastrianism. The monotheism we know now in Judaism/Christianity/Islam is really a unification of two proto-monotheistic streams, the Zoroastrian and the Israelite. (With other possible streams also, e.g. the Egyptian)
A selection from World History And The Eonic Effect:
Zarathustra And The Old Testament Enigma
As we enter on the artificially created moment of the new Millennium set by the Christian calendar, an observer skeptical of the eschatological visions of doomsday apocalyptics might yet consider that mankind is passing through a crisis in human history as a whole, the end of a long beginning since the passing of the last Ice Age. Globalization and economic interpenetration, the onrush of technology, political cyclone, ecological and demographic alarm, coexist with futurist expectation, and the hopes of temporal salvation rendered over to providential certainties. Ideas of progress and decline seem finally to blend in the antique hope of ‘end-time’ redemption, to pass as the ultimate ‘quick fix’ uttered in slogans. Some see the end of the ‘modern age’, and in a postmodernist mood, survey twentieth century as the close of an era. At least, the expectation of millennial completion seems a desperate impatience in a vault of centuries and a progression of epochs barely underway, barely able to begin. The nature of futurist beliefs, themselves the source of endless confusion, generate historical misperception in the traffic between archetypal ‘crisis’ and the console red-warning lights of real issues. Read the rest of this entry »
12.15.08
The eonic effect, and the pieces of a puzzle
One of the reasons that people might have difficulties with the World History And The Eonic Effect is that its depiction is tied to a set of facts, and what that needs for the depiction, not to the needs of the reader, who is confronted with something totally unexpected and, at first, unfamiliar.
But the overall analysis ties together so many different pieces of a puzzle that we sense, however accurate the ‘snapshot’, that the eonic model can’t be wrong. It is implausible that it could be wrong, whatever the meaning of the result!
A short selection from the book on this:
It is useful to consider the strange implications of what we have found [the eonic effect]. A truly extraordinary number of puzzles join together as one puzzle: issues of the Axial Age, religion, democracy, philosophic history, theories of the rise of civilization, birth of the modern, the mystery of Archaic Greece and the Old Testament, and a host of other questions. We can see that world history shows coherence, directionality, and that this reconciles the paradox of the transition from evolution to history. To see so many independent pieces of evidence interconnected increases the odds against chance in this pattern. Our apparatus of transitions soon yields to ‘understanding by coherence’ as the meaning of history begins to emerge, and our scaffolding yields to the particular after its bout with the universal.
Punctuated equilibrium Although we should be wary of the term, since it has already been used by Darwinists in a different sense, we can see that our pattern corresponds almost perfectly to something we might call ‘punctuated equilibrium’, using the dictionary meanings of the words. We see three punctuations interspersed with equilibria. ‘Disequilibrization’ would work as well since our punctuations are stirring the history stream out of equilibrium into an active state. Having made our point, we will discontinue use of the phrase from now on.
Levels of selection Ironically, one of the concerns of Darwinists in exploring punctuated equilibrium was the issue of ‘levels of selection’. We can see that the eonic sequence operates at the level of selection of whole time-slices of cultural streams!
Our use of ‘discontinuity’ was descriptive, although it seems to suggest something ‘switching’ at regular intervals. In one way, it is like raising contrast in a gray photograph, suddenly the picture stands out. We must be careful here and not speculate. All we can say is that data that fits this method of discontinuous periodization is operating on two levels. The deeper level we never see. No matter how hard we try we will never through increased data ‘see’ that deeper level. The smile of the Cheshire cat is just fading away as we zoom in or out. We can elaborate at length on what we have, but we are essentially done. The strangeness of the result springs we can guess from the hidden teleology of a system that operates on a global scale. All we see is the ‘change of direction’, directionality, as a smoke detector for some teleology.
It should be called ‘the’ pattern for there is only room for one elephant, so to speak, and this pattern, apart from its extraordinary character, is also the most ordinary and obvious answer to the quest for such a constellation. This does not preempt whatsoever the possibilities of other independent cultural evolutions, other patterns, or causal studies of independent processes, such as the history of technology or economy. Far from it, the very nature of this pattern, by its intermittency, operates as a series of relative transformations on a greater whole whose independent motions are a given.
The difference between ‘the’ pattern, and ‘a’ pattern can be controversial indeed, in the sense of ideological issues. Recall our statements about two universal histories. We have made this safe from ideologues, up to a point. Be wary however. Our two levels answer to this issue directly. The highest directs traffic, the broader level is the stuff of human history. The master sequence pushes us to new heights but in and of itself does nothing. We can both adopt the stance of science yet at the same time affirm our thesis as ‘advisory’, rather than final. Note however the irony, that this result is actually a full challenge to Darwin’s claim on the descent of man. We can explore the result. The point is that we operate on the assumption of something like ‘flat history’. A careful examination of the data shows that assumption to be very dubious, however strange the alternative.
The pursuit of patterns of universal history has gone on and on, yet within the space of a few pages we have the result, a pattern of world history, and, whatever the difficulties, a very strong result, almost without trying, using plain vanilla historical blocks, sometimes merely changing labels, e.g. medieval extended to become ‘mideonic’. We succeeded because we stayed out of trouble with causal reductionism and made the critique of such our starting point.
12.13.08
Limits of observation: the fatal flaw in Darwinism
There should be no mystery to where Darwinism goes wrong: it doesn’t have enough data to demonstrate the actual sequences of evolutionary emergence.
A semi-philosophical generalization, designed to satisfy the preconceptions of what constitutes reductionist explanation is simply assumed to explain everything and be observable if we actually zoomed into check! An extraordinary assumption. Here’s a short piece from
World History And The Eonic Effect on this issue:
The Limits Of Observation
The debate over natural selection has gone on too long. Darwinists should have long since confessed the metaphysical speculation and methodological abuse of right science latent in Darwin’s theory. We need to be finished with the matter by demanding proper proof. It is an issue of science, not religion. Where did Darwin go wrong? Darwin’s theory is a provocative generalization applied to immense vistas of time that are unobserved. Those unobserved intervals in deep time can fool us badly. We can exit the chronic debate by simply demanding proper evidence. The demand for evidence of the fact of evolution is far less stringent than that for natural selection. Demonstration that the latter is the key to all forms of higher complex structure has never been demonstrated scientifically. The task is exceedingly difficult, for starters. The difficulty may preempt easy hopes for a theory of evolution. One way to see the problem with claims for natural selection is to look at history, and we will proceed to an examination of non-random evolution in the dynamics of historical emergence.
The hurricane argument Consider a hurricane, a very brief event by comparison, as a global ‘system evolution’ on the surface of a planet. We know a hurricane when we see one, but its dynamics, mechanism, and full progression require incremental ‘closing’ on degrees of evidence and observation, a task not fully accomplished until the advent of satellites able to map global coordinates. In the same way we know evolution when we see it, roughly speaking, given the fossil evidence, but its dynamics, mechanism and full progression require incremental ‘closing’ on degrees of evidence and observation, a task not fully accomplished. Note the analogy suggests global positioning satellites over the entire planet over millions of years, to observe drifting species and their changes. Suppose an observer in outer space only had loosely sampled data on pre-Neolithic man, and post-twentieth century man, and then conjectured that some mutation caused this dramatic change.
This analogy shows at once where Darwinism departs from scientific practice. Historians routinely assume they must close on the facts in such an analysis, yet Darwinists wish to claim exemption. We have no fully observed datasets in Darwinian deep time. It is an insidious trap.
In all the noise of the Darwin debate, this judgment is final, and it is important therefore to grasp that no one is under any evidentiary obligation to take Darwinian selectionism as established scientifically, surprising as some may find that. We put it that way because we can’t refute Darwinists in their provocative claims that routinely ignore the basic objection. The question is very simple: were there any witnesses to the facts claimed? No. We are done. If we find evidence of ‘evolution’ in history, Darwinian claims are void as counterevidence.
12.08.08
Falsifying Darwinism: Darwinism falsified
After reading Bennett, I return to my more solid approach to historical evolution, but with a reminder that it is important to remind you that Darwinism has been falsified, that it is operating on limbo time.
A selection from World History And The Eonic Effect
It is world history itself that shows us the clue to evolution. Darwinists, by distracting attention to times unseen, have confused us completely. We are ready to examine the phenomenon of the eonic effect, the evidence of a non-random pattern in world history. The discovery of that pattern uncovers something more, but the basic demonstration of non-randomness in world history is conclusive, final, and almost devastating. That’s enough. And that’s that.
But we see that this pattern is hiding something more in plain sight, the ascent of Mt. Improbable. And this will uncover evolution behind history, the real meaning of evolution as a macro process, in an extended sense that is more than genetic, referring to human evolution only. The one thing Darwinists don’t want to find is such a non-random pattern, anywhere. The data for seeing such a pattern has reached critical mass only in our own times, and can be highlighted by simple inspection using careful periodization. The conclusion is inescapable: this structure demonstrates the existence of an evolutionary driver operating where least expected. There is nothing complex in the method. Throw a sine curve at world history. The results are direct, and show a degree of correlation we cannot ascribe to chance. There were many hints on the way, e.g. the data of the Axial Age. The results raise a host of other questions, and one may or may not wish to pursue that, or disagree with interpretative lines of argument. Otherwise, the basic demonstration of a non-random pattern is sufficient.
Darwinists claim that evolution is random, and that this applies to history also. Has anyone bothered to check the data? Against this, we discover, since the invention of writing, a rich patterning, a definite derandomized structure. So Darwinized thinking is wrong about history. That’s that. The eonic effect is a warning that the whole project of selectionist theory fails with history.
12.01.08
Punctuated equilibrium
The question of punctuated equilibrium has suffered all sorts of confusions, but a study of the eonic effect might help to show that a macroevolutionary argument is required to make sense of the process. This, of course, refers only to history, as if with a new coinage of the term. But the obvious pattern of ‘punctuations’ and the semi-equilibrium in between them gives world history a strong claim on the use of the term. From World History And The Eonic Effect
Punctuated Equilibrium
The Darwin controversy frequently breaks down into a debate over continuous or discontinuous evolution. Proponents of discontinuous evolution tend to be their own worst enemies, and we will tend to avoid the terms ‘continuous/discontinuous’ except as façon de parler. Read the rest of this entry »
11.28.08
World history: the clue to evolution
Theories of evolution are enforcing a permanent crisis of culture: the key to extricating oneself from the debate is to see that neither science, in its current form so stuck on Darwinism, nor religion, especially in a culture dominated by Biblical mythology, is able to resolve the issue of evolution.
We need to face the facts of scientism: it can give us a useful set of facts about evolutionary history, but it has failed to explain evolution. In fact that is a simple question of scientific methodology: Darwinian natural selection is an improperly observed process, one that has downshifted scientific thought into such a lowgrade form of explanation that it is false on the spot on such issues as ethics and consciousness. And it is doubtful if there is an easy way to correct this, although there are a number of theories in the wings, such as self-organization. But these suffer many of the flaws of Darwinism, despite being considerable advances on Darwinian fundamentalism.
The religious mythology of the Old Testament is a huge obstacle in the way of understanding. But in a strange irony it reflects something we need to understand: the presence of ‘evolution’ in some sense in world history itself.
And it is the study of history that is the only way out of this dilemma. We must be able to open our thinking to see what evolution really is, what is really about, and this the eonic effect grants up to a point, a glimpse.
Scientists have no monopoly over the explication of evolution. Worse, their tactics of using Darwinism as a universal talisman of explanation and of obstruction of any attempt to correct the distortion they have created, throw severe doubt on the current conduct of science. That is a hard truth we have to face.
This is from the third edition to World History And The Eonic Effect:
It is world history itself that shows us the clue to evolution. Darwinists, by distracting attention to times unseen, have confused us completely. We are ready to examine the phenomenon of the eonic effect, the evidence of a non-random pattern in world history. And this will uncover evolution behind history, the real meaning of evolution as a macro process, in an extended sense that is more than genetic. The one thing Darwinists don’t want to find is such a non-random pattern, anywhere. The data for seeing such a pattern has reached critical mass only in our own times, and can be highlighted by simple inspection using careful periodization. The conclusion is inescapable: this structure demonstrates the existence of an evolutionary driver operating where least expected.
Darwinists claim that evolution is random, and that this applies to history also. Has anyone bothered to check the data? Against this, we discover, since the invention of writing, a rich patterning, a definite derandomized structure. So Darwinized thinking is wrong about history. That’s that. The eonic effect is a warning that the whole project of selectionist theory fails with history.
11.24.08
Selections/WHEE, and g-design/n-design
There are a number of short selections from World History And The Eonic Effect here on this bloghttp://darwiniana.com/category/third-edition/
Here’s a useful one, with respect to today’s discussion of g-deign, n-design:
N-design, G-design, from World History And The Eonic Effect
11.20.08
Art, Evolution, and The Tragic Genre
Here’s a link to an unexpectedly popular post: I’ll be late posting today, …so read this: Art, Evolution, and The Tragic Genre
11.17.08
Studying history: academic courses in world history, and the eonic effect
Below is an email to the H-World email group. The many discussions of how to teach world history (if one teaches it at all) betray the induced inchorence of Darwinian, anti-teleological, reductionist (and, johnny come lately, postmodernist) demands on historiography. The result is a series of misunderstandings of modernity, endless confusion over Eurocentrism and its liabilities, revisionist views of Western Civilization, allergy to the idea of the ‘West’, and in general a view of history that doesn’t amount to more than the diverse histories of the local that make it up.
World History And The Eonic Effect to the rescue!!!
The eonic effect gives us the clue to world history using a very simple and intuitive method. The book seems at first an indiluted version of historical theory, but this is to prevent ‘easy metanarrative’ formation by rhetorical expansion on false teleological or ideological interpretations.
But in fact this approach is built around a virtual table of contents for a simplified and highly conherent world history from the Neolithic to the present. The formulation automatically subsumes a new view of evolution, the relationship of evolution to history, a treatment of the ‘fundamental unit of analysis’ (the civilization in Toynbee’s phrase) that is entirely novel, an interpretation of the Axial mystery, and a total clarification of the confusion of medievalism and modernity. In addition, from a secular viewpoint a new and productive approach emerges to treat the evolution of religion, even as the stance of critique is brought to bear on the confusions of religious history. The climax and tour de force is the ‘discrete freedom sequence’ and the study of emergent democracy in world history and the discovery of the hidden stream of the evolution of freedom.
Almost perfect for a one year course in world history, with backup from associated materials from the various sectors outlined in the dynamic model, a model that can throttle back from theory into periodization and chronicle.
We have lived so long with the Darwinian butchery of history that it seems normal. But it is quite abnormal, abnormally so!
World History or Western Civ? ( was Preparing Sec Ed Teachers to Teach World History)
Following these debates over world history one gets a sense of the incoherence, I won’t say the lack of a ‘metanarrative’, of the whole subject. The factor of Eurocentrism tends to deflect attention from the unifying factor of modernity, and the enigma of its emergence. Behind that lies the confusing influence of Darwinian evolutionism which claims all accounts of origins, precipitating a collapse of universal histories.
Attempts to find coherence in world history can be found in a work such a Maps of Time, by D. Christian, an attempt to look at Big History in the sense of proceeding from the Big Bang. But this work suffers from the assumptions of Darwinism, which precipitate instant analytical failure. And not use is made of the remarkable phenomenon, and hint, of the so-called Axial Age, the clue to the behind the scenes dynamic in world history.
But there is another approach to ‘Big History’, which might be called ‘Deep History’ or ‘macro’ history (as with macroevolution), which is to look at world history in light of the discovery of demonstrable dynamical patterning (the eonic effect, http://eonic-effect.net ). This allows one to elucidate the connection between ‘evolution’ (possibly non-Darwinian) and ‘history’, detect a relationship between a macro history in a mainline reciprocal to the great diversity of micro histories. This allows one to resolve the issue of Eurocentrism by seeing that the issue of historical evolution is a distraction: the question of modernity is not about Europe finally, and the idea of the ‘West’ is a red herring. We can deal, not with ‘civilizations’, but with dynamical subsets or timeslice transformations of cultures/civilizations. In general a dose of theory, a postdarwinian mindset, and balanced macro/micro view is what is needed to balance the study of world history from its current incoherence which is intractable in the context of current paradigms.
This approach, brought from relative degree of abstraction, would provide a highly practical approach to historical study, and a splendid outline of world history, realizable as a specific history in all sorts of combinations able to do justice to the reciprocity of directionality and diversity.
The current paradigm is one of deep paralysis, so one cannot as yet foresee this kind of approach being tried. But the current Darwin paradigm is rapidly foundering (try a Google search for ‘Altenberg 16′), so the time is fast approaching when a new perspective on world history will be needed. There the resolution of the history/evolution paradox in the so-called ‘eonic effect’ can come into its own, and provide a new way to bypass the ‘metanarrative’ with a genuine ‘meta’ of some kind, a universal history of human development in civilization.
11.15.08
In Search of History
From World History And The Eonic Effect
Historical research has greatly expanded our knowledge of world history, and the result is an unexpected discovery: that of a process of universal history in the action of a mysterious dynamic generating a non-random pattern. Read the rest of this entry »
11.11.08
The eonic effect, control systems, evolutionary directionality
This remarkable article, Evolutionary control systems, is an opportunity to consider, or reconsider the issues of evolution, or micro/macro evolution in the light of control theory. This time without genetic support.
As we examine the transitions of evolution in the large the suspicion arises that at certain critical points a ‘control system’ analog (that is, control theory might not be exactly it, but roughly on the right track) operates in relation to microevolution as macroevolution. Many of the confusions of evolutionary theory disappear at once with such an approach. Currently biologists are smearing together these two different levels, with disastrous results.
What is remarkable is that the eonic effect shows directly that precisely this is the case, and with respect to human history! This ‘evolution’ in a macro sense shows precisely the kind of ‘control theory’ process action indicated, but this time in the large, on the level of whole cultural systems. Impossible? check the evidence in the eonic model. It is a fairly simple demonstration.
In general, the factor of evolutionary directionality doesn’t make sense yet. The reason is the confusion of different levels, with the result that the evidence of evolutionary directionality seems refuted by the majority evidence seemingly against (micro). But major transitions would be brief, and in relation to the larger intervals taken up by the micro hard to observe.
In the eonic effect we can see the whole thing in specific terms, but applied to the time and motion study of the emergence of civilization from the Neolithic. We have to suspect that the current account of the descent of man is simply a Darwin myth, given this evidence.
World History And The Eonic Effect contains the full demonstration
11.10.08
Studying history: Darwinism, world history, and a photo finish test
The study of world history shows a host of cultural constructions that couldn’t have evolved according to a Darwinian scenario. Thus one of the indirect falsifications of Darwinism lies in the way it flunks a photo finish test. The result we see in history simply does not correspond to the result expected from Darwinian explanation.
A selection from World History And The Eonic Effect, Third Edition.
2.3.1 A Photo Finish Test
We can restate this as a photo finish argument, falsifying Darwinism. The problem is that ‘history’ and ‘evolution’ overlap, so our account is moving towards a photo finish contradiction. We are beginning to see something totally different from what Darwinists propose. Nor is it likely that earlier human emergence could be something completely different from this. The eonic effect shows us direct examples of the evolution of social units, religions, cultural entities, at a high level, in a non-genetic macroevolution. The core nature of man and his culture springs from the very period Darwinists assume for their account. Are we to suppose without proof this was purely genetic? The brief photo finish of human evolution since the beginning of civilization is thus beginning to suggest a surprising set of facts.
Darwinism fails a reality check, given the eonic effect, and thus flunks a photo finish test. If someone says the racehorse is one color, and the photo finish shows another, the original claim comes under suspicion. If the claim is made that cultural and biological evolution are distinct, we can construct (below) an evolution of freedom argument demanding an overlap of some unified homogenous evolution. Over and over people have suspected something is missing in Darwin’s theory. We sense immediately that we have found it, and in our own history. The search for a ‘something’ that might ‘cause evolution’ against the random suddenly becomes visible in our own history, seen in the very pattern of human activity taken over the long term. We see conclusive evidence of a global aspect to evolution.
10.21.08
The eonic effect, the Axial Age, and Archaic Greece
The question of the Axial Age is confused by the many wrong interpretations based on issues of religion. It is not until we look at another aspect of it, the Greek Archaic, that we begin to see what is going on. Here is a short passage from
World History And The Eonic Effect
Archaic Greece: The Clue
The terminology of the Axial Age has devolved into a confused perception of some kind of religious age, a sort of generalized age of revelation, complete with transcendental implications. But a study of the Greek Archaic (and Dark Age), is very useful to see the real Axial effect, undistracted by questions of the emergence of religion. If we track changes in centuries relative to millennia, it looks almost miraculous, until we note the overall pattern. Something doesn’t add up in the usual analysis. Read the rest of this entry »
10.18.08
The eonic effect: Climbing Mt. Improbable
One of the great dangers of Darwinism is the way it makes it seem scientific to make generalizations about deep time, lulling us into what is in reality a pseudo-scientific position. And then natural selection is brought in, not empirically, but as a superficial impression, and said to perform all the uphill of evolution, climbing Mt. Improbable.
Once we get a real data set to work with, like the eonic effect, we suddenly realize how imaginary the Darwinian thesis really is.
World History And The Eonic Effect gives us detailed portrait of a system of ratchet evolution, climbing Mt. Improbable.
And here is an online mini-tutorial on the subject:
http://eonic-effect.net/the_eonic_effect.htm:
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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’. Read the rest of this entry »
10.17.08
Evolving freedom: the discrete freedom sequence
In a previous post today we looked at the question of ethics, free will, and naturalism, and indicated that the eonic effect gives us a direct picture of the ‘evolution of freedom’. This passage from World History And The Eonic Effect discusses the ‘discrete freedom sequence’, a spectacular outer clue to a deeper dynamic embedded in the macrohistorical historical dynamic seen in the eonic effect.
Freedom Evolves? The Discrete Freedom Sequence
Our eonic periodization is about to uncover one of the most remarkable mysteries of human history, and evolution, a windfall that leads us to the core of the Kantian philosophy of history. It is the only clue we have to the otherwise invisible action of the eonic sequence. On the surface the eonic effect is a transparent phenomenon, almost widget-like in its system action. But the basic dynamic never shows its hand. However, like a dropped handkerchief it does leave behind the traces of a bare something, and in the next chapter we will attempt to uncover that mysterious logic, reminiscent of the Kantian intimations of the noumenal. Read the rest of this entry »
10.12.08
The eonic effect and scientific fallacies of cultural evolution
A growing number of scientists argue that human culture itself has become the foremost agent of biological change.
One thing that isn’t evolving, apparently, is our understanding of evolution. We are stuck in the Darwin mindset, and can’t get out of it. Physics routinely undergoes scientific method, with the resulting multiple transformatons and paradigms. But Darwinian, repackaged as Neo-Darwinism, is stuck, stuck.
One symptom is the confusion between microevolution, and something else, macroevolution.
The latter is hard to deal with, but the evidence is there, as far as human evolution is concerned, in, for example, the eonic effect.
Seed here pursues the evidence for microevolution, and the genetic issues are no doubt showing a new perspective. But, still, this isn’t evolution.
The influence of culture on all this is, again, compelling. But, still, this is microevolution.
The question of the evolution of culture needs a thorough look at the eonic effect, because the evidence for macroevolution is hard to detect in our current paradigm lockdown, but detect it we can. Then we realize that the enigma of cultural evolution is right under our noses. In terms of the eonic effect this takes two forms, corresponding to the two levels in the eonic pattern, reflected in the eonic model as macroaction, and microaction. Then we see that the macro aspect of cultural evolution is massive inside the so-called eonic sequence. For example the Axial Age. The system action on the macro level is nontheless not constant, but intermittent, witness the brief interval of the Axial period.
In the wake of macroaction we see the resulting field of microaction (human free activity in response to the macro action) whose execution may or may not fulfill or exactly match the eonic action. Thus there are two aspects to cultural evolution. So far, the macro factor outstrips the micro. It is our evolutionary destiny we hope to move beyond evolution (in this form) into history, speaking formally, as an expression of the evolution of freedom into the self-evolution of that freedom.
This is not a genetic form of evolution. But a mysterious, but detectable, form of macro self-organization on the level of civilizations along a mainline of directional emergence which then acts on the whole via diffusion.
Much more to say here. But it is a constant and forever misleading fallacy of the dominant Darwinian paradigm to be misplacing our focus with its obsession on the genetic microevolution of the genome and the injection of natural selection, by definition a constant, into the slot reserved for macroevolutin which we now know is something different.
Note how the seed article stumbles with the perception (which is still unsufficiently documented) of evolution suddenly coming to a stop around 40K BC. There are many versions of this (it may be false, or expressible in other forms) but it squares with the perception of the eonic effect. Once we see the eonic effect we suspect, but can’t yet prove, what the Great Explosion claims seem to be saying, that man rapidly crossed a threshold at some point in the past 100K years and then stabilized, temporarily.
Certainly we have to suspect that this macro factor started up again later, probably from the Neolithic onward.
IN any case it is dangerously misleading to put all our eggs in the Darwinism basket. Scientists in the name of dogma will rise to try and control evolution under the incorrect rubric, in the process making wrong decisions based on incorrect views of what evolution is. Scientists are already in a major snafu over the issue(s) of religion because they assume that a form of genetic evolution is responsible for religious phenomena. And yet a careful look at the eonic effect shows the direct relationship of religion to this macro factor. The same can be said for science, indeed, secularism itself. This has nothing to do with the various science/religion compromises, but refers to looking at the actual facts of religion in world history, both in relation to the eonic sequence, and otherwise, outside of it. This study is complex indeed, and to be confronted with inaccuracies of scientism on this is unsettling. Time to consider the insight of Huxley at the end of his life: there is something missing in Darwin’s account.
I think a close look at the eonic effect will give us a glimpse at what that is.
10.11.08
Has (eonic) evolution stopped? The perspective of the eonic effect
Human evolution stopping? Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The whole debate over Jones’ thesis as to evolution stopping is misplaced: we aren’t talking about real evolution here. The scenario of NS/RM or genetic drift just don’t explain the case with human evolution.
It is impossible to answer this question, has ‘evolution stopped?’ without considering the eonic effect as a manifestation of macroevolution in human history, with a strong question mark about earlier stages of human evolution, and particular headscratching about the Great Explosion (whatever the evidence for that).
We have to suspect that, while microevolution, NS/RM, GD, are relatively constant, other things being equal, the real ‘macroevoluton’ that we see in the eonic effect is intermittent over long periods of time.
Macroevolution in the sense of the ‘eonic evolution’ seen in the eonic effect switches on and off with system memory over periodic intervals (millennia). In the eonic model given World History And The Eonic Effect this ‘eonic macro’ factor is currently, off. The book makes the argument, or rather asks the question, ‘has eonic evolution stopped altogether? Reasoning: the ‘evolution’ seen in the eonic effect is clearly seen to stage its own replacement in human self-evolution as evolution turns into history.
Thus the question of whether evolution has stopped requires distinguishing micro and macro components, and, !!, gettting a grip on this ‘macro factor’ as depiction in the eonic effect.
It is important to consider and try to understand this question, because the periods after the ‘switch off’ of eonic evolution (witness the outcome of the Axial Age) can show rapid decline/deviation/chaotification and loss of general advance.
10.10.08
Reviewing WHEE 2: a world macro system
The first in a series of two posts, Reviewing World History And The Eonic Effect
The first post emphasized the issue of the dynamics of the eonic effect. This resulted in a frequency hypothesis, which is then set aside, as we zoom in on the actual structure that we find, called the ‘eonic effect’. We don’t need to solve the question of its dynamics to assess its significance. In the same way we can see how a mechanism functions, ‘what it does’, without knowledge of its hidden details. The study of the eonic effect can change gears thus, to look at issues of mechanism, and/or questions of historical content. The way to do this is to create, not another ‘theory’, but a model using periodization to track the operation of an immense evolutionary dynamic embedded in history. This model is a mirror of the elegant way the eonic effect shows the operation of historical evolution on two levels, which we call ‘macro’ and ‘micro’. Consider the Axial Age, embedded in the eonic effect. The ‘macro’ is the ‘system action’ on a set of cultures, the ‘micro’ the free action response to the system action. This action operates directly on human self-consciousness.
Introduction The book begins with the question of history and evolution, and the paradox in the question, When did evolution stop and history begin. cf. online selection: http://eonic-effect.net/TOC/intro1_1_1.htm
From there we examine the legacy of Darwinism, and the basic problem, that of natural selection. We study the limits of standard theories in the Oedipus Paradox, and the problem of the limits of observaton.
We then announce our basic strategy: to demonstrate a non-random pattern in world history, something that is not supposed to exist.
Before proceeding we look at the ‘metaphysics of evolution’ in terms of Kant’s critique of metaphysics.
Chapter Two We embark on a description of the eonic effect as a sequence of three transitions, and then begin to construct a simple periodization model around the data. We note in passing our sudden suspicion that the Great Explosion is going to show something like the ‘eonic effect’, had we the data.
Chapter Three In this chapter we formulate an hypothesis of frequency, and then set it aside, waiting on further research, a falsifiable hypothesis we should note. We recast the eonic effect as an ‘eonic sequence’ of transitions, and then note the so-called discrete freedom sequence inside it, a spectacular mystery.
Chapter Four We proceed to resolve, in spectacular fashion the question of theory, as this must involve the antinomy of causality and freedom, and then show how this mirrors almost exactly the Kantian so-called Third Antinomy. The result is a model that can in a most elegant fashion handle causality and freedom, these two now transposed into ‘system or eonic determination’ and ‘relative free action’ in a dynamism of system and individuals.
Chapter Five And Six We then produce a long outline of history from the Neolithic to tthe modern transition, concluding with the so-called Great Divide at the end of the modern transition, as the modern transition cascades in a climax of effects, concluding in the early nineteenth century.
To periodize world history with a continuous-discrete model is disconcerting, but it gives expression to the reality we uncover of a hidden driver behind historical development. It is difficult at first to credit this, but a slow and meticulous study using the model shows a set of correlations too massive to be due to chance.
Another advantage to the model is the way it harmonizes the duality of evolution and history and shows a way to use the two concepts together on different levels. The result prevents the hopeless confusion created by the mis-application of Darwinism to cultural subjects.
This is but a few of the topics covered by the book, which creates a vast panoply of concepts that can transform our study of history. The eonic model is designed to leave the data alone, and makes an excellent way to study history in detail, armed with a sense of coherence as to the whole.
In the process we discover that almost all our evolutionary concepts so far are false or misleading when applied to human culture, and proceed to construct an new approach to its study.
10.09.08
Kant and metaphysics
The issues raised by Kant, as discussed in the previous post, are discussed in
World History And The Eonic Effect. Here’s a short selection:
In an age where science education systematically avoids philosophy, Read the rest of this entry »
10.07.08
Reviewing ‘World History And The Eonic Effect’
A question comes up: reviewing World History And The Eonic Effect
The task is not simple, so here are a few things to keep in mind:
The prime objective is to describe a beautiful discovery: a non-random pattern in world history. This is called the ‘eonic effect’. The term ‘eonic’ is a pun on ‘eon’ and ‘eonic’ (as in digital sampling electronics, type ‘eonic in google’ and see all the DSP companies listed).
Even superficial inspection of world history has often suggested a ‘macrohistorical’ dynamic at work, witness the rising literature on the Axial Age, smoking gun evidence of something going on in terms of a dynamic. But the literature on the Axial Age has ended in confusion, because of distraction of the emergence of two world religions in the Axial Age. But this period shows that this aspect of the Axial interval is not the real issue: many other things occur in sync, among them the Axial interval of the Greek Archaic. Still more confusion has arisen from Karen Armstrong’s book The Great Transformation.
A careful method is required to sort out this confusion.
In fact, the eonic effect is discovered by a different route, with a question (or a set of them):
does world history show directionality? is the main one.
Is there a science of history?
How do with reconcile freedom and causality in a ‘science’ of history?
How do we reconcile evolution and history?
When did evolution stop and history begin? (?? this odd ‘sillly’ question has a useful contradiction)
The first question about directionality can be answered by constructing a very simple model, called a discrete-continuous model, and seeing by trial and error if the data corresponds, and at what frequency interval. This amounts to throwing a sine curve at world history, we just might get lucky.
This kind of model is really asking if something is oscillating, or doing some kind of alternation in a sequence.
With a hunch about the Axial Age as a beat in such a macrosequence, we get lucky and easily find, to our suprise, a clear alternating sequence in a rough frequency of 2400 years, and transition intervals of about three centuries: presto, an exact model of the Axial Age.
A three beat sequence is not enough to be conclusive so we leave the issue as an hypothesis, and restrict our study to the three beats we see, taken as transitions:
The onset of ‘higher civilization’ (wrong term!): centuries just before and up to -3000,
The Axial point, centuries just before and up to -600,
The modern transition, centuries just before and up to 1800
This very crude model, on closer examination, produces a virtual cornucopia of deep structure, and significant correlations. With this basis the descriptions in the text will be clear. The correlations of data are so strong that we can see that we are onto something deep, but what?
Note our other questions: The text proceeds to answer the ‘but what?’ question by showing that the ‘eonic drumbeat sequence’ is really an evolutionary sequence, and that this sequence can be seen as an answer to the ‘science of history’ question: the sequence reconciles the freedom/causality contradiction in a very ingenious way. The model turns out to be about ‘oscillations of degrees of freedom’ in an ‘evolution of freedom’.
There is a lot more here, and many other ways to approach/derive the eonic effect, but that is one way to get a sense of the strategy in the book.
[The DSP metaphor, not very important, arises because our transitions seem to 'sample' elements of culture the larger sequence encounters in its direct path]