3. Idea For A Universal History
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Stream and Sequence:
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3.
Idea For A Universal History |
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| 3.1.1 Stream and Sequence: A Frequency Hypothesis | ||||
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We have already connected the two ideas of evolution and history, seen the problems with laws of history, and we can proceed, optionally, to develop this relationship in a simple model , which can be set aside for a simple time-line approach. We will call this a discrete-continuous model because we see a discrete series of turning points overlaid on a continuous pattern of world history. What is our status as observers of this system? We need a model that carefully defines ‘theory’, ours at least, in the present, and which preempts the Oedipus effect by switching off after the close of our pattern, so that ‘theory’ applies only to the past, looking backwards. It helps us to deal with a system ‘black box’ about which we know nothing, attempting to assess its traces in history. It also allows us to consider teleology as directionality, without the metaphysical presumptions that would otherwise arise. It allows us to separate two levels interleaved: if there is a high correlation of the data with the model, then we probably detect a hidden dynamic. This model simply takes our three turning points and turns them into discrete transitions in an eonic sequence overlaid on our second universal history: Transition 1: birth of civilization Transition 2: Axial interval Transition 3: rise of the modern Note that this third transition switches off in our past, and our current action may or may not express the aggregate directionality shown, which is highly complex in any case, comprising multiple parallel streams. Thus the teleology, if any, inferable from the continuation of TP3, may be quite different from that of the overall sequence. This seems strange, but will soon make sense. In practice, this model, taken as a timeline using periodization can simply help us to visualize the eonic effect, and map out its structure, as a ‘tracker-approximator’, the same thing physicists use with an intractable system, and economists with economic cycles (where they can see effects, but not necessarily causes). Economists produce theories about cycles in the past, looking backwards, and their model switches off in the present, and they have ‘free action’ in this present (i.e. the ability to modify the cycles, maybe). Predictions may still be possible, but free action can change any such prediction, at least theoretically. This is a Hopelessly Non-linear Pattern, and the most we can do methodologically speaking is map it out, using a tracker-approximator. Since that tracker is suggested by greater nature itself in the eonic pattern, we are left to wonder if nature is not forced to reset direction on its own sprawl. That’s it. Our model is simply a grid on the surface of a planet, showing a sequence of transitions between different regions, sometimes with parallel connections. The Eonic Observer Toward the end (Chapter Six) we will develop an idea of the ‘eonic observer’ of the eonic effect. We can invoke the image of an ‘eonic observer ’, with a serious or humorous image of a scientific type, jungle hat, library card, lab smock and clipboard, stop watch, rocket ship, anthropologist and time and motion man of civilization, with his atomic stopwatch designed for time measurements on the order of millennia. One more piece of equipment: a paper stamp labeled ‘Eonic Data’. We need to promptly stamp the Old Testament, ‘Eonic Data’. Note: Historical forces Our problem is our commitment to reductionist science. We have only a few basic forces allowed, yet we see that in history something unaccounted for is at work. Although we have lost the idea of ‘historical forces’ due to the critique of historicism, we can see from our data, the eonic effect, that a ‘force-like something’ is breaking up flat history and creating two levels, it’s ‘as if’ there were a ‘force’ causing a coherent pattern. Partly that’s a question of our own representations, our built in software, which is more general than ideas of causality, what is sometimes called a ‘principle of sufficient reason’. Causality is a bit Newtonian, a very specialized concept now, often collated with some notion of the differential equation. We have already seen the problem with historical laws, in this sense. We need to ‘deconstruct flat history’, the myth that simple random succession describes this history. The idea of ‘deconstruction’ springs from current postmodern critiques, among them, of Big History. But we can deconstruct the deconstruction, to see that flat history is a highly charged ‘metanarrative’ with a hidden ideological agenda. The worst of all teleologies is the one hidden in flat histories under the rubric of denial of teleology. This defaults to theories of conflict (‘dog eat dog’ theory), of the Darwinian type, since all that’s left, apparently, is a ‘fight for the future’, anything goes, and winner take all. We can see that the eonic pattern shows nature’s way of outsmarting that type of process. Quite apart from anything else, the deconstruction of historicism by Popper was an inherently ideological gesture, against Marxist theory. The whole dilemma of theory reeks of a political debate. A contradiction arises in the idea of an ‘historical force’. The philosophy of history long ago addressed this situation, but current social science has banished the whole subject. Why? Partly the influence of Darwin, and the pervasive fallacy of the ‘free lunch’, ‘evolution just happens’. That’s an unrealistic assumption and any reasonably documented stretch of data, such as we see in history, is likely to contradict this fantasy. Right on schedule, the eonic effect shows a massive exception to ‘free lunch’ thinking. Emergence is highly organized, occurs on schedule, has its finger in the pie of all social categories, leaving art and religions in its wake, almost in an eyeblink, like rabbits out of a hat. Is this an energy intensive process, and if so, where does the energy come from? Is the information content the same at beginning and the end of the process? If not, we have violated standard causal thinking. The eonic pattern shows something very complex, but which obstinately demands some sort of naturalistic explanation. Bad theories are a trap. No theory at all is another trap. What to do? We can follow nature’s own contours with a periodization matrix that can fret the obvious historical coherence visible to us without the antinomies in statements about historical laws. There we can extend our ideas of science with the idea of freedom . Ideas of freedom and determinism, or causality, are suspiciously in league with each other. Maybe a duet of the two is the right approach. After all, our example of the computer and the agent, the ‘computer mouse interactive system’, shows us doing this already. We should like to eliminate ‘freedom’ to produce science. But our system is exploiting the very possibility of breaking the causal flow. It jumps around, as if staging surprise attacks against mechanization. It’s like an on-off switch. We can produce a science of such a switch, but we can’t eliminate the switch, or produce a uniform law that applies simultaneously to the psychology of the user of that device. This might seem obvious, yet we chronically make this mistake with historical theory. This is a classic paradox explored by the philosopher Kant. In some sense, by some principle of sufficient reason, we must apply causality to historical data. And yet it is also true that we cannot apply such thinking to history. It seems that both statements are true at the same time! Something has to give way. In fact, the eonic data suggests an answer. Causality becomes ‘generalized causal nexus’ and ‘freedom’ becomes ‘some degree of freedom’ relative to that nexus. These new terms are too vague to produce a real theory, but they correspond descriptively to the facts, a system, formally speaking, ‘evolving freedom’. It’s a funny fact that our data resembles the situation in the famous computer program, The Game of Life , with its switching between adjacent regions. That won’t quite work for us, and we won’t pursue that (although a generalized resemblance remains), but it’s a reminder what we thought acceptable explanation even twenty years ago has seen itself extended, so we don’t need to worry if our results are a bit strange at first. In any case the eonic effect speaks for itself. In any case, we can see that the core phenomena of the eonic effect outstrip all possibility of measurement as standard parameters for a numerical model. All our data requires assessment using complex forms of judgment. Scratchpad extensions Our approach can allow us to do theories wholesale because we summon up the elements of theory, and then leave them unassembled. This can keep thinking loose and undogmatic. That gives us a base camp near the summit of the Big Theory. Then we can turn around and propose ‘scratchpad extensions’ to explore variant theories. In one direction we note the resemblance to the formalism to Quantum Mechanics, in another the issues of the Kantian thematic of freedom. Our two levels modeling trick is also at a higher level of abstraction than the classic ‘immanence’ versus ‘transcendence’ debate, which is actually better that way. We can also free ourselves from the ‘eonic theologies’ e.g. the classic eonic structure of the Old Testament, because we see how they are constructed and generate their mystique. The only solution is to proceed empirically. It will take us several hundred pages to lay a foundation just to get started on that! Actually the eonic pattern makes sense if you consider that it shows something operating beyond space and time. But since we can’t handle such things without getting into speculation, we are left with the more fragmented approach of charting out the overall result piecemeal. We have one thing to fall back on. Whatever else is the case our data clearly looks like evolution. So we can define our method as ‘describing what something does’, short of explaining how it works. In any case the days of theological myths and one-line theories of Darwinian junk science are over. Note: Economic evolution? An essential issue is to see that while the question of economic systems is braided with this pattern, the two are not the same. Look at TP2. Multiple eonic emergents cluster there that are not economic by category. We can’t use economic explanations for the sudden appearance of world religions, philosophies in a spectrum, and everything else, including flowerings of art. The test case is the emergence of Buddhism. They began as beggars renouncing social interaction. This economic question, more than any other, confuses analysis. Look at TP3. What is it that creates a capitalist economy? Actually nothing, it already existed. What we see is a relative transform based on new technology and new ideas of how to create economies, modern capitalism . Where did the latter come from? Look at Adam Smith. Then trace his roots. A new type of economic thinking is gestating in TP3. It is a clear eonic emergent. It is also an action script process, how to create a particular type of economy. Adam Smith says, you should do this, counseling free action. So we switch to another type of system, and may be subject to its laws, but, supposedly, we chose to do that. So the software evolves one way in the eonic sequence, the economy another way, inside, outside the sequence. The two are not the same. This point takes time to see, perhaps, and needs elaboration. But we can begin to wonder if we haven’t put the cart before the horse when we call capitalism a ‘stage of history’. New software evolves, then a new economy arises. In any case, a new industrial society shows massive correlation with TP3, a non-random process inside our pattern. So if the software is an eonic emergent, and that creates new economic ‘laws’ or scripts, we can’t say that economic laws determine the third turning point. Other way around. It is easy to lose perspective here, but as we zoom out and look at the greater portion of world history we see that while capitalist processes are omnipresent, pre-modern capitalism was always stillborn, whether because of the factor of slavery, inability to assess economic interactions, or whatever. Then suddenly in the wake of TP3 all the social institutions and idea-innovations are there to produce a modern-style market economy. It becomes suddenly obvious that these eonic emergents, the software, are the key, not the economic motives, as such. And we should not forget that a figure such as Adam Smith is a complex thinker embedded in the history of philosophy as much as of economics. These people are the rarities that over and over appear in our eonic mainline. The third turning point is a highly complex cultural transformation, one of whose outcomes is the Industrial Revolution, which is not the prime mover. Later we will distinguish ‘eonic sequence’ from ‘econosequence’ to bring this point home. Another thing we will do is see the close resemblance of TP2 in Greece, and the rise of the modern. This resemblance suggests that something is happening over a large interval independently of the economic conditions. The emergence of democracy in one case precedes capitalism, in the other accompanies it. Seems like two independent things are overlaid, to the unending confusion of theory. One of the outcomes of our TP3 is capitalist society in its modern form. But we are talking about historical dynamics. Economy vs. economic ‘software’ We are already close to an answer to our puzzlement over Darwin and Adam Smith . We can see that we tend to confuse TP3 with its eonic emergents , one of which is capitalism. TP3 is at a higher level than economic action, and correlates with the ‘software generation’ of economic thinking, not its use in practice. The eonic sequence is not an economic evolution. But we see the initialization of a new economic order, which could operate without the eonic preparation. We can see the problems with any claims of science here, as ideology and the ‘action script’ enter into the formulation. Let us recall our terms. We are immersed in the Great Transition, as evolution passes into history. This evolution is defined as the ‘eonic or intermittent evolution’ of civilization, and is visible as a series of transitions, our turning points. This evolution is becoming history to the degree that ‘free action’ expresses freedom, and the question remains open as to whether we have reached the end of the eonic sequence. There would a simple test of that: can make replicate the action of the prior eonic sequence? Is he free from evolution to the degree that he can say, Now Man makes himself? The record of artificial turning points, if any, e.g. revolutions, might be one measure of that. |
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