World History
And The Eonic Effect

 
Civilization, Darwinism, 
And Theories of Evolution
Third Edition

 


 World History
 And The Eonic Effect

Third Edition

 
 

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World History And The Eonic Effect is about the detection of non-random evolution in world history. One of the most tenaciously held views of Darwinists is that of the random character of evolution. What are we to say if the visible evidence of history contradicts this assumption? One of the strangest aspects of current thought is the way we apply a speculative generalization about deep time, which we have not observed, to history, which we can observe, at close range, and whose character is something very different. The discovery of the eonic effect prompts us to create a very simple kind of model that can approximate the complex non-random pattern that we discover whose correct interpretation is that of 'evolution', evolution of some kind. In the process we must ask, what is the meaning of evolution? That the evolution of man shows something more than a genetic scenario is unexpected, and yet forced on us by the facts. We need to recalibrate our understanding of what we mean by evolution by devising a model that can free us from the 'theory trap' that haunts the oversimplifications of Darwinism. We can do this by asking a paradoxical question: when did evolution stop and history begin? And how is history different from evolution? That this could not happen instantaneously suggests a Great Transition between the two, and in fact this Transition might take the form of a series of transitions of short duration in a sequence of alternation. We have by reverse engineering derived the basic properties of the eonic effect: an eonic sequence of transitions alternating between the 'evolution dominant' and 'history dominant' alternations of a developmental series. We can actually detect a fragment of such a sequence in world history itself, as it expresses a directional mainline against the backdrop of world history in its totality. 

The text begins with a critical examination of Darwinism and its emphasis on natural selection. We look at the limits of Darwin's theory in the such questions as the evolution of ethics, and examine the legacy of Social Darwinism. This forces us to consider the liabilities of the so-called Oedipus Paradox, the basic contradiction in standard theories, as we move toward the construction of a new type of theory in the eonic model. 

We then proceed to map out the basic pattern called the eonic effect, so reminiscent of the idea of punctuated equilibrium. We also note the phenomenon of the Axial Age, as a sub-pattern of the eonic effect. The treatment is comprehensive and proceeds to lay the foundations of a new kind of model using periodization expressing the Great Transition from evolution to history. 

The text then constructs two outlines of world history, one going from the present to the past, the other from the past to the present, with an interlude in between exploring an 'idea for a universal history', and Kant's Challenge so-called, in a connection of our model with a classic theme of the philosophy of history. 

Our last outline explores the modern transition, the last phase of the eonic effect, and concludes with an examination of the questions of ideology and future action, in what has become a model of the 'evolution of freedom'. 

The text encompasses a huge range, from the issues of Old Testament archaeology, to the argument by design, theories of self-organization, cyclical theories/myths and the views of Toynbee and Spengler, Karl Jaspers and others on the Axial Age, the mystery of Archaic Greece, the evolution of religion and the case of Indic religious evolution, the emergence of civilization from the Neolithic to the rise of modernity, the place of Kant, Hegel, Marx in the philosophy of history, the Kantian paradoxes and antinomies as these impinge on the study of causality and determinism in history, and much else. 

The result is a new way to harmonize the question of evolution with the study of history, a theoretical self-defense toolkit for preventing the confusion of selectionist theories applied to history. And this allow us to bring the idea of evolution to bear on historical research, without the confusion usually created by such projects. Our model on two levels shows us how to braid the two together without the collision of concepts that makes Darwinism a tragically dangerous and misleading pseudo-generalization from the age of scientism. 

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