1.5 History And Evolution
Last modified 05/21/2008
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The relationship of history and evolution seems to be a problem, how can
we make statements about evolution in the context of world history. Actually the
answer to that is simple: we have defined it that way. And that definition is
not arbitrary. The question remains, what does this have to with earlier
'evolution'? The answer is that, while we can't be sure, we suspect that
something like the 'evolution' we see in the eonic effect was also present in
the earlier period. But, whatever the case, our perception of a new form of
evolution puts a block in the way of applying Darwinian evolution to
history.
One way to see the issue is to ask a question: when did evolution stop and history begin? We can see the paradox involved in this question. Obviously it couldn't have occurred instantaneously. There must have been something kind of intermediate condition of transition between the two. But wait, that is the evolution itself that we have seen in the eonic effect, a series of transitions making up a transition. Transition to what? There are a number of answers to that suggested by the eonic effect: one answer is that we see increasing degrees of freedom in human action. We are moving from passive organisms to active individuals, relatively autonomously, and free from the evolution that characterized their beginnings. But what we have discovered is that that evolutionary process still accompanies man at the stage of civilization itself. There we see a series of transitions whose effect is to increase human potentiality in the context of civilization. So we can recalibrate our definitions of history and evolution so that they fit together: evolution is a macro process, history a micro process, associated with increasing degrees of freedom. With this approach we can bring a two level analysis to world history, evolution and history, the one emerging from the other, both applying at once, each showing a different aspect of one process, the emergence of man. The advantage of this approach is that we can develop a new kind of theory, one that won't suffer the flaws we saw in the Darwinian confusions of Social Darwinism. It helps to look at the Axial Age (and then the full eonic effect) in this light: we see the braiding of macro and micro directly in that phenomenon. Men were proceeding about their business of history, their free action doing that, but a sudden macro factor enters into that equation and transforms the context of their free action. There is a braided macro and micro process, connecting a larger process of evolution in our sense to the historical component of proceeding on its own level. Perhaps we can get a sense of the reason the Old Testament confuses us now in a secular age: it is a classic document describing just this: it is the (mythological) account, micro, of an historical people passing through the Axial Age, inside the eonic effect (macro)!
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