The third edition of WH&EE is an exciting upgrade to the series editions, and I hope the text will prove more useful and reach a larger audience (beyond the already large online response to the first two editions). The second edition was preoccupied with the extension of the eonic model into the realm of Kantian discourse, after the discovery just after the appearance of the first edition of the close connection of the eonic model to the issues of the classic antinomies of Kant. 

In fact, the eonic model turned out to be a rediscovery of so-called 'transcendental idealism', a considerable coup, but the many complexities of that subject began to overwhelm in my mind the basically simple depiction of the eonic effect in terms of its basic matrix of periodization and empirical exploration.  Thus the material on Kantian has been both expanded, and yet displaced to a high crag overlooking the book, allowing us to proceed with the basics of the eonic effect directly with or without theory. Kant is a difficult thinker, but all that is necessary for subject, to start, is a consideration of his famous Third Antinomy. The result is an elegant and powerful insight into historical dynamics. 

It is important to consider that the model also provides a critique of the Kantian philosophy of history, as it ends up 'more Kantian than Kant for that very reason. The point is brought home in the material on Kant's Challenge. The issue of so-called 'asocial sociability' is dealt with, and bypassed, and the broader framework of the eonic effect provides the essence of a new philosophy of history along Kantian lines, that is, a way to transcend/harmonize the causal analysis of a science of history, much to be wished for, and the idea of freedom, that is, the 'dialectic' of freedom and necessity that haunts all efforts to grapple with historical evolution. 

In many ways the study of the eonic effect is about the nature of theories, and their paradoxical immersion in history itself, and one of the purposes of the eonic model is to produce a new kind of theory that reflects this fact. On the way we consider what we called the Oedipus Paradox, the way in which a universal generalization, or theory, applied to all times provokes a paradox in the action of the theorist/observer himself. We can show how this misuse of theories is responsible for the legacy of Social Darwinism in Darwin's work. 

The third edition brings in the issue of punctuated equilibrium, an idea that might have been present from the beginning, save for the possible confusions bound to arise from Darwinian claims on the idea. The eonic effect gives a striking image of the idea, if we take the words 'punctuation' and 'equilibrium' as if from the dictionary, with a fresh usage, rather than from the crippled debates on that among biologists. 

The text is now arranged so that it can be used an outline study of world history, and proceeds from analysis to periodization chronicle, ending in the careful look at the roots of modernity, and its post-transition outcome. I hope someone might consider it that way, and try to teach a course on world history using this approach. There is an integration of material at many levels, from science, to philosophy, to religion that can be helpful in sorting our the provincialism and ideology that inevitably undermine histories of the whole of Civilization. 

In the meantime, the eonic outline makes for a good project of self-study on both the issue of history and of evolution. Claiming to see 'evolution' in history is at first paradoxical, but with a careful foundation in the eonic model the notion seems less counter-intuitive, in fact, downright intuitive, once the operation of two levels is seen for what it is. The eonic model recalibrates the idea of 'evolution', which isn't owned by geneticists, and takes its definition from a generalized idea of an 'evolution of freedom'. 

The result is a definite falsification of Darwin on the descent of man, and the claims of writers such as Dennett to explain free will via an adaptationist argument seem quite off the mark once we are done. 

The eonic model is haunted by issues of ideology, and yet transcends them by, first, closing down its discussion promptly at the end of the eonic sequence, the issue of 1848+, etc, and by the way it summons up many contradictions, each requiring our equal attention. It is disconcerting to find ideological issues braided with issues of evolution, but the model is clever in that way, and you won't get away with any abuse of the potential there. The result, I hope, can help to put the question of globalization (and Eurocentrism) in perspective. 

The eonic model might at first seem strange, and yet its basics are rock-solid, for the simple reason that we are pointing to empirically simple entities, and then examining their periodization. We don't have to make exotic metaphysical claims to proceed. Some readers have been thrown off by the issue of historical cycles, but the method is clear, and empirical, and the data speaks for itself. The result is not a myth of cycles, but an expose of such, one that proceeds by asking a question, and posing a frequency hypothesis. That hypothesis not really needed for our conclusions, and can be kept to one side. 

The overall result can be the framework for something greatly needed, a way to understand universal history for an age of science, in a way that doesn't get entangled in distracting supernaturalism or religious mythology. In that sense the Old Testament is given a thorough X-ray, even as we recreate the genre of universal history for our own times. The alternative has been the frozen scientism of Darwinists trying to pontificate on culture, and inexorably challenged by fundamentalists who know enough to know something is wrong with Darwinian histories. The Kantian framework allows us to proceed with an account of modernity, and a secular theme of universal history, that doesn't founder in the metaphysics of religious histories.