Preface Introduction Chapter 1   Ages of Enlightenment Chapter 2   The Pattern of Universal History Chapter 3    A Frequency Hypothesis Chapter 4    Symphony of Emergence Chapter 5    Age of Revelation or Eonic Transition? Chapter 6    A New Age Begins Appendix 1  Fisher's Lament, Tolstoy's Locomotive, and the Freedom Hunch Appendiz 2   An Outline of Eonic History: Coming soon online, The full theory of the eonic effect

					This study, World History & the Eonic Effect, provides a useful way to look at world history in a unified manner with nothing more complex than simple periodization.  This book represents both an exciting historical discovery, the eonic effect, and a methodology for historical and evolutionary theories in this context. Our subject is the evolution of civilization and man in tandem. What do we mean by the term 'evolution' and how, if at all, can we define it as a universal generalization? This study can be useful for a debriefing of historical or evolutionary theories in general confronted with the spectacle of ‘evolution in action’. It can also be illuminating on the current debate over 'design', for we see the clear subtlety of 'design' in history in its elusive naturalistic yet ambiguous signature. This approach can be useful for putting these issues of design in their proper context as a subtler form of naturalism than anything current science will allow itself, do justice to the history of religion without succumbing to the quagmire of supernaturalism. The techniques shown will prove useful to many as a means to benchmark theories of evolution, especially as these are applied to the study of culture, often with inaccurate results. No theory of evolution that cannot account for the eonic effect is likely to have much relevance or accuracy if it is used in reductionist fashion on the historical givens of man. If evolutionary theories are your business, grappling with the eonic effect is essential.    Notes toward an Historical Expedition The existence of a pattern of universal history has often been denied, but the evidence of the eonic effect enables us to conclude the question once and for all. Although our subject is evolution, it is appropriate to summon the domain of 'philosophy of history' to contain it. The result suggests its resolution as 'self-organization', to use an idea of recent, still controversial, evolutionary research, in a very different context.   Such a statement, as with the much confused 'punctuated equilibrium', is descriptive, not explanatory. Self-organization in stepping progression is apparent at once if we use the correct periodization and apply it to broad field of world history as a whole. Issues of universal history are currently thought to be controversially metaphysical, but  the study of the eonic effect can resolve, or bypass, these issues, and in fact is one of the best ways, bar none, to study world history, for it automatically organizes the data of history in a dynamic fashion.  How can we justify the use of the term 'evolution'?  Our use is probably better than the Darwinian, its true meaning, but only in the context of history: to think the word has one universal mechanism is probably a trap.  We can't say how earlier evolution happened, since we weren't there to see how structures of complexity emerged.  Judging from history, our views of evolution are off the mark. In fact our use of 'evolution' matches its frequent use in economics, the study of culture, and history, to say nothing of cosmology, the 'rolling out' of large scale processes in any sense. The mechanism of evolution in the category of man's earliest culture remains unknown to us, although it must be compatible with the history that we do know, and this demands an account of emergent values, and the complexities of culture and consciousness. We underestimate the difficulty of understanding our evolutionary position. Invoking the philosophy of history can seem misleading. At a time when many social scientists and biologists attempt to apply evolutionary thinking to society, we can respond with a better version, because empirically justified, of evolution already present and visible in human history. And it is far more subtle than we had imagined. The problem with reductionist evolutionism (from which we might learn in any case) is that it underestimates the complexity of 'higher' evolution, e.g. in the realm of philosophy, art, science itself. This is confused with a spiritual domain, but that issue is really the result of antiquated language, and the debate of science and religion. We are inside 'evolution', it is our challenge to understand and transcend it, exit from evolution into 'history'.  The Logic of Evolution The logic of the eonic effect  is simple, either evolution is at random or not. If not, we should see some evidence of an evolutionary system at work. This system would not likely be continuous in its action, since that would require full control of the 'event space'. Thus we should expect a global-local system acting intermittently with geographical focalization. That what the evidence shows!  The eonic effect shows something that isn't supposed to exist, a macro-historical dynamic, that we can rubric as 'universal history', although this pattern also clearly fulfills the requirements for a true theory of evolution applied to the descent of man.   We have recently crossed the minimum threshold needed to observe 'sequence' in world history. No wonder the question was always confusing! We must examine comprehensively the evidence of culture, in a unified perspective of science, philosophy, art and religion. If there is a science of evolution, what of the evolution of science, and how can it maintain its objectivity if it rises in parallel to that which it demands some 'causal' analysis? This self-referential embedded character is addressed in our 'eonic evolution'. The term 'eonic' sounds 'ufo-ish', but the eonic effect is nothing more, at first, than a means to organize the data of history through time periods. Historical study is so specialized that its overall structure is neglected. The study of the eonic effect is really about trying to visualize world history as a unity. Its simple 'eonic' structure is visible at once, although its significance remains difficult to fathom. The choice is clear, we can know a lot about a little, or a little about a lot. A working model of world history will engage your natural ability to 'know a lot', more and more, about the whole,  now rendered dysfunctional h historical  'know nothing' by the organized incoherence created by bad evolutionary theories, we will name no names. Darwinism tells us history and evolution are basically incoherent. History must now be exempted from this claim. History coheres (up to a point), and once we make this point, you will graduate in a hurry from our 'eonic effect' and find yourself in the rich literature of the many specialists whose business is to converge on the local. Our global approach works, although we don't know why, because it is armed with the master key, which is nothing more than a table of contents, and a question, derived from Toynbee, what is the 'fundamental unit of historical analysis'?  Our approach is rigorous and starts with the harshest critics of historicism as it embarks on the analysis macro-historical dynamics.  There are, however, no simple theories of history, based on causal laws. Directionality is inferred phenomenologically, and 'forces of history' are replaced with 'relative contrast' concepts that allow us to survive the contradictions of 'freedom and necessity'. All philosophies of history are selective. We can provide a justification, and a rationale that will resolve the problem. This study will prove a gateway to the parts from the whole.  Our mood is science, but since there are difficulties with a science of history, our starting point is Universal History, as the granddaddy category of modern historiography, but this taken as 'evolution'. The reason for this Janus-faced approach is also the need to make the emergence of values explicit. What do we mean by 'evolution' and how can we define its usage for history? The many theories of cultural evolution have never gotten anywhere, because they cannot define the proper unit of analysis. These and many other questions are implicit in the depiction of the eonic pattern, which leads to a conjecture about the evolution of civilization.  Even as we invoke a theme of Universal History, we can detect a 'complex system' embedded in world history.  Since a system must answer to our own free activity, we must adopt a special approach to its study. In the process we must wonder if we are 'outside observers', able to theorize at all, as the complexities of 'evolution' close on our present. This paradox reveals at a stroke the subtle flaw in Darwinian reasoning.

A Pattern of Universal History

Looking backward, world history shows a mysterious rhythm, the Eonic Effect,  a sequence of turning points in a fixed wavelength. We can see it as three turning points that master all others,

1. the birth of civilization, 2. the classical era at its source, 3. the rise of the modern. The 'birth of civilization' is soon seen to be something else, and the rise of the modern invokes a host of ideological issues. These can be addressed carefully to discover the best way to reconcile directional modernism from teleological nonsense, Eurocentrism, and much else.  But the basic pattern represents an injunction to look at a 'discrete-continuous' model of history, rather than the usual, usually unconscious, unilinear model.

The eonic pattern is simple then, yet as we close in we discover something strange, among them an indication of evolutionary parallelism.   This mysterious structure began to be noticed in the nineteenth century, but has failed to become well-known, due to the complex subtlety of the pattern it reveals, and the failure of our theoretical concepts confronted by a macro-historical phenomenon. We must develop the correct concepts to enable us to understand what we are seeing in our own history, and this must do justice to the complexities that we see. Issues of 'Universal History' are confused by the legacy of idealism, historicism, ideology,  the claims for a 'science of history'. But this rubric will ensure that we not factor out the issue of emergent values from an account of dynamical analysis. Indeed, we see a confounding match of emergent values and mechanism in a confusing mix.

Note: Ideas of historical directionality can lead to great confusion, have ideological implications, and easily distorted into teleological belief systems. To make matters worse, Darwinists tend in some cases. to claim the 'force' of natural selection is 'directional'. Our use of directionality is much stronger, but short of any universal claim, and is based strictly on the 'progression' of history.  Questions of teleology are too difficult to begin with, we must start phenomenologically with data we have, with teleological speculation about the far future, which however is now openly considered by certain physicists. Our business is simple and direct. The question of the eonic effect is relatively simple, but gets tricky.  You must buy the book and study our approach in depth, before jumping to conclusions about historical directionality. You cannot graft this thinking onto some renewed theological history. A separate study of Biblical Criticism is essential.   The Darwinian research program was  a tremendous challenge to false ideas of teleology. And that challenge remains, although we can now see that the rejection of directionality is mistaken. 

The random appearance of world history is starting to yield to the spectacular evidence of overall patterning, once we know where to look. To obviate confusion over 'laws of history', we can adopt a simpler goal, given the evidence:

• The usual ideas of evolution stress continuity and randomness. We can  take as our prime objective to show that this claim of randomness is not true of human history, that there exists a long-range ‘pattern of universal history’ as a non-random emergentist system transcending the stratagems and potential of human free activity, which is itself a considerable ‘derandomizer’, but one, we can argue, that is insufficient to account for the rise of civilization. This pattern must answer both to the emergent derandomizing of ‘real evolution’ yet at the same time avoid the trap of universal generalization taken as surrogate universal law. Our pattern indeed suggests just this. This generates both the consideration of complex systems, and the displaced ideas of freedom, seen in the primal genesis as organismic locomotion.

We are unprepared after so much positivistic history for the idea that there is a pattern of universal history. The idea is subjected to ridicule especially by Darwinists with their 'blind watchmaker' agendas.. But we can offer the counterevidence--as of the invention of writing, no more, no less. Our model undoubtedly challenges the usual view of the Descent of Man, but offers no conclusive substitute. The idea that this Descent occur through directionless natural selection is probably hogwash. Darwinists have no right to jump to that conclusion in such a dogmatic manner.

We can proceed empirically with a gift of nature's model, for the eonic effect is a discovery, or, if we prefer, derive our method with the idea that if we 'sample' history, after the fashion of a student of economic cycles, in 2400 year intervals synchronized with the 'eonic sequence' the striking emergence of correlated data shows us indirect evidence of an historical dynamic, a strange periodicity of intermittent evolution, and a strange simplicity in the complexity of world history.  What is a pattern of universal history? The same, possibly, as a pattern of universal evolution, something we now find in the fossil record, whose uniformity is no longer defensible as it once was. The existence of a pattern is evidence of an overall dynamic. We see this patterning in the consistent alternation of directional fast advance, recurrent progression, if not progress. Our case is a matter of record, and stands as a caution to assumptions about the Descent of Man so dogmatically promoted by Darwinists.

 As we consider our sense of a postmodernist age, we realize that the rise of the modern is really a mystery that can be resolved if we see its context on a greater scale. World history shows an 'eonic sequence' of state transitions, in a complex pattern, and the modern version, from which we are exiting, follows the previous two, at the 'birth of civilization', and the onset of the classical era. That simple. We're done. There are innumerable ways to periodize world history, but this one seems to work best, the more so as it leads to all the others.

This eonic effect spawns our frequency hypothesis and in its middle phase began to be noticed in the nineteenth century, was considered by Karl Jaspers, for example, whose concept of the Axial Age was unable to correctly analyze the fundamental phenomenon, which requires a different approach to the 'fundamental unit of historical analysis', to use the phrase of Toynbee. Toynbee has thought this the 'civilization', but we can see that a more general concept is required. We will see that phase, or eonic transition, and ecumenization, in a sequential oikoumene become such a dynamic unit.  Nothing could be simpler, yet the full analysis can become complex and requires a special terminology, outlined in the Appendix. The basic ideas are organized around a frequency hypothesis:

  eonic sequence, distinguished from econosequence, and technosequence, t-stream and e-sequence, eonic transitions and divides,eonic emergents, evolutionary event regions, sequential dependency, jump diffusion, parallel interactive emergence, the 'fundamental unit of historical analysis', to relate all of the above, and to replace the 'civilization', eonic determination, and free action, along with 'relative free action.

1. Our study is based on phase and sequence, like a strobe light flashing intermittently. Instead of unilinear evolution, we see punctuated intermittent 'slow-fast' patterning. We must look at the full spectrum of culture, not just the economic or technological evolution.

2. This will result in a t-stream and e-sequence distinction. The temporal flow of culture enters a period of phase as it crosss the eonic sequence and the result is visible as the amplification or redirection of various processes. The Greek Archaic, emerging into the Classical, is an example of this effect of intersection, resolving its paradox at once. A look at the Old Testament will show the way it reflects this 'intersection of t-stream' with the general historical sequence.

3. These periods of intensity in the eonic or 'e-sequence' we call 'eonic transitions'. These are temporally intermittent locally separated 'evolutionary event regions'. The whole is too intractable for continuous evolution. The part is selected to lead the whole. The transitions are climaxed by a divide period. The most obvious one is the third, the modern divide coming ca. 1800. Once se see this, we understand why this generation is almost phenomenal in its creative explosion. It is not accident, and appears as the result of the whole transition, starting after 1500. These transitions are difficult analytical entities, yet stand out clearly against the backdrop of world history, looking backward. Once we see that the source of our tradition in Greece is the result of an 'eonic transition', many mysteries of historical understanding fall into place.

4. Sequential dependency is the reverse image of the transitional generation. It is like a generalized causality operating on populations, which are too diffuse for causal action. Sequential dependency is really diffusion from a source. The sequential dependency of the Romans on the Greeks is obvious in one way, yet hard to explain until we see the reason. Sequential dependency is really another name for 'medievalization', the reason we call certain periods 'middle ages', due to their sluggish containment, or sequential dependency, or the trigger period whose action is long concluded.

5. The toughest part about world history is understanding not only its intermittent character but the, at first, arbritrary sequence of hotspots or flourishing civilizations. Yet this pattern suddenly falls into place around 'jump diffusion', the resurgence of eonic transition in the fringe area of the previous zone in the sequence.

6. The classical era of transitions shows the 'axial' effect of evolutionary parallelism. We are forced to conclude that this whole era is the result of a mysterious synchrony. Even if we look at the cross diffusion of the parts, we find the surging in parallel too fast to be dependent. This independent parallel emergence is hard to explain, but obvious once we see the reason.

7, The basic idea is the 'fundamental unit of historical analysis', which we have just described as 'all of the above'. This 'unit' was thought by Toynbee to be the 'civilization', but this won't work. These are too diffuse. The fundamental unit is the 'eonic sequence', or, to close in, the phase period and area.

8. What is evolving? Noses, organismic bodies? No, we see a kind of Hegelian 'evolution of free action'. Note that man may have free will or not. In fact, he might stand in between these two. But if man is not free, how can he construct civilization? There must be a deficit to our vision, a process, like the 'helper' for a locomotive. This can't be a deterministic force, since that would obviate freedom. It must be a relationship of 'free action' not yet freedom and some intermittent, or eonic, determination. Note we can derive the eonic effect from this paradox alone. We see this intermittent action of emerging freedom. This approach obviates the danger in the 'law of history' concept, depriving us of the 'free future', for we are in between the periods of strong determination, looking at them relative to our current action.

This terminology can allow us to construct a complete model of world civilization and the evolution of religion that is very straightforward, but leaves us with a question as mysterious as the one we started with. In any case, the study proceeds toward the detective work required to uncover and elucidate this exciting simplification of world history, and in the process provide both an outline of world history in the light of a century of archaeology, and a perspective on historical theory in the light of Universal History that is free from metaphysical speculation. The study explores the meaning of evolution in the broad context of self-organization, but distinguishes 'Tolstoy's Locomotive', the individual and the historical system. We adopt a frequency hypothesis, and look at an 'eonic sequence' of 'evolutionary event regions'. We must say good bye to the 'differential equation' and adopt a new approach, confronted with an embedded discrete series. This sounds hard. But the task is simple periodization, armed with what history now shows us. The reason we can do this lies in the rising tide of archaeological data, as this encompasses a five thousand year interval, for the first time in our evolution. We are confronted with the 'eonic shard', a fragmentary view of a greater evolutionary system we must suspect includes the full descent of man.

Freedom and necessity: The unavoidability of the 'metaphysics' of Freedom

We cannot avoid the basic dilemma invoked by all theories of history, the issue of 'free will'. If our approach is causal, this free will cannot exist. If it cannot exist, we lose our subject, the evolution of man into freedom.   We can invoke the great Challenge of Kant to find the pattern of Universal History, and yet turn around and answer this challenge with the rubric of 'evolution', as a complex system dynamics suggesting 'self-organization', which is descriptive jargon, but appropriate in our sense.  This pattern is the answer to our dilemma about freedom and causality!!

  Kant is appropriate because he was a no-nonsense philosopher grounded in science (indeed one of the originators of evolutionary thinking, re: the solar system) who nonetheless pointed to the dangers of reductionist empiricism. 

• This hope is confirmed by the pattern we can exhibit as the 'Eonic Effect', but the terms of this Kantian discussion are likely to confuse our argument if we accept the idealist scaffolding that history has created here. In fact Kant was far more rigorous than those who blithely denounce 'idealism'. We need no decision procedure between the claims of idealism or materialism (the latter our rough starting point as scientific esperanto) to resolve Kant's challenge to an approximation of 'relative differential directionality', which is still short of deciding between teleological or causal interpretations of our own pattern. As scientists now distinguish 'hardware' and 'software' theoretically, we find a possible home for the basic consideration. We can adopt a basic directional interpretation, without involving ourselves in a commitment to finalist or fully reductionist viewpoints. For the directional can be an indication of causal action on a large scale, even if it executes a directed future as human free activity. The significance of this question lies in its implication that emergentist values are themselves the measure of evolutionary facts, casting these values into association with the instrument of facts.

• The interest of Kant's challenge lies in the ambiguity of the basic question. Does a 'law of history' predetermine the future of free activity? Then, as in the differential equation, we are involved in tracking the future of this activity from various starting points. But then this activity is not then free at all. We can reconsider the question, is there a determination of free activity, whatever concept we may hold of free will? In the later case, we are deprived of our equation, but with a possible variant as the determination breaks up into discrete intervals. We might expect an oscillation of free activity and historical determination, with randomness entering, and the potential of freedom remaining ambiguous. And this latter is just what we see in history.