2. Mysterious
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Theories
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2.
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| 2.5.2 Theories and Action Scripts | ||||
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Instead of a theory we can speak of an ‘action script ’ and the ‘action sequences’ related to them. These themselves can show eonic determination, i.e. ‘action sequences with ideologies’ are themselves eonic data. For example, the ‘ideology ’ of the Old Testament shows direct correlation with the eonic pattern. The term ‘action script’ is kinder than ideology . We could also speak of ‘protocols of practical reason’. In historical terms, theories are about ‘what people do’, behavioral descriptions causally intended, while ‘action scripts’ are statements about ‘will’, or ‘practical reason’, with built in implications for right action. And historical transformations show ‘ideologies of action’ as the output of the transformation. This makes theoretical objectivity very marginal. Karl Popper ’s idea of the ‘Oedipus effect’ is appropriate here: the existence of the theory itself will change the future for any predictions the theory might make. Eonic action scripts The terminology of ‘action scripts’ will be used sparingly, but it is useful temporarily to create an abstraction of the difference of theories and ‘protocols of practical reason’, taken as a synonym for ‘action scripts’. We could also take about ‘eonically timed action scripts and their sequences’, etc… Practical reason It was the philosopher Kant who gave us the most classic discourse on ‘practical reason’, i.e. in some distinction between theoretical reason doing theory and practical action under the rubric of ‘will’. Whatever stance we take toward Kant’s system here, the distinction is useful, crucially so. Is the history of scientific research a legacy of theoretical reason as a causal object or a construct of practical reason? Liberalism, a classic script A good example of an eonically timed action script is the emergent liberalism of our third turning point, to be discussed later. Liberalism (taken in the broadest sense) shows almost perfect correlation as a relative transform with the eonic pattern in its last phase. Such a statement requires defining liberalism, itself an action sequence script related to the transformation! Similar remarks could be made about Marxism. The Old Testament The canonical granddaddy of eonically timed ‘action scripts’ is the Old Testament corpus. Its ‘theory of reality’ is cast in terms of the need for protocols of practical reason and in terms of the nth god name sequence. This ideology/script springs into existence, as we will see later, just around the climax of our Axial transition era, a core non-random patterning of the eonic effect as a whole. Similar statements could be made for the case of Buddhism. The point is that action sequences, ideologies, and ideas and theories are themselves output of the transformation, rendering objectivity difficult. The action sequences emerging from the eonic pattern in direct correlated timing create a problem of ideology. Some notable instances are (to pick some with eonic correlation), viz. the absolute classic, the Old Testament ‘ideology’ crystallizing near the time of the Exile, or the Buddhist corpus, and then in modern times, liberalism, socialism (Marxism). This is what vitiates the objectivity of Darwinism, which is scrambling an economic script with scientific explanation. The piece de resistance is the Old Testament script resource, with a set of ‘prophets’ anticipating a future realization of their own eonic determinations. This led to hopeless confusion since ‘prediction’ and ‘anticipation realized’ became hopelessly confused, a clear record of the Oedipus effect. This one was especially confusing because the ‘eonic determination’ of the ‘nth god name sequence’ stood at the center of the historical transformation as a self-fulfilling anticipation, if not prophecy. Anticipation is not the same as prediction, and often has a good success rate, like looking down at a plain from a great height. We can assess a rough terrain ‘future’, more or less. In the same way, Marx, prophecies apart, correctly anticipates the latent issues of, e.g. class struggle, in the dynamics of liberal systems and their coming conflicts of globalization. In the example of the Battle of the Ancients and Moderns, perception of the rise of the modern era is recycled as a script amplifying the change underway, issuing this ‘script’ about ‘progress in history’, and the ‘progress of modernity against antiquity’, soon followed several centuries later by ‘organized falsification’. Note the eonic birth of the idea of progress, and then its subsequent fate in the wake of its own self-creating effect. The idea of progress recycled to theorize history has fallen on hard times, perhaps not surprisingly, since we see ‘eonic progression’ with the idea of progress (as a relative transform) as an inner script. As the transition to the modern becomes the period modern the script ceases to match the ‘middle era’, and tends towards chaotification. The Battle of the Ancients and Moderns correctly registered the exact point in the seventeenth century when the long doldrums of medievalism were over, and the achievements of our second turning point were being surpassed for the first time in millennia. So we could hardly produce a ‘theory’ of our pattern, since its truth or falsity would require an ‘evidence check at the end times’ of the future of the pattern. We are out of business here, as far as standard ‘theory’ is concerned. But we can rescue something, if we look simply toward the past. From this perspective we can see that a rapid turning of history is a fait accompli, as of now, so far. Since our subject is turning points, not the persistence of what they brought about, that’s a fair statement and a way to proceed. This does not preempt some future theory about the dynamics of people producing theories to create history, and this seems to be nature’s method, but so far that’s beyond our math level, so we will simply describe the history of theories using periodization. These theories may themselves show eonic determination, with a resulting realization as ‘free action’. In physics that’s not a problem. But with theories of evolution, that may be a problem. Our ‘theory’ of evolution is interacting with our present and may be simply a poor rendition of the ‘real’ evolution going on. This is not a trivial issue, then, since there is a big difference between the realization of evolution as between Lamarck a radical and Darwin a Whiggish liberal. We will discover the ‘eonic determination’ of evolutionary thought, and this could partially benchmark the ‘free action’ component of evolutionary realizations. Lamarck had a two level theory, progress and deviation. Darwin sheared that down to a one level theory, ‘natural selection does all’. The Oedipus Effect here makes a big difference. How can we speak of evolution in such ideological terrain? Actually, we can’t, strictly speaking. And yet we must. First we were in the Paleolithic in some stereotypical scene of survival, then we are in the midst of modern social transformations. However, there is no fallacy involved in bringing evolution into the present, and potential future. And it might even remind us that it is a question of our ‘representations’, and how we project our present on the past. At least, in the eonic model we develop has a failsafe in its distinction of eonic determination and free action. And also in the discrete series of ‘evolutions 1, 2,…’ that compress an evolutionary long sequence from primordial group to cultural stream to civilization into a common unity. A sequence of ‘evolutions’ is at work, with two levels, and we have little claim on the deeper level, since we see only the output as our own scripts in action. In the modern case we must see that we are inside the process, realizing some of its output. We can however, at least, assess the full range of these action sequences to realize that our ‘evolution’ stages a field of potential in which our theories are sequentially dependent outcomes of the process under description. Note: Embedded theories The eonic effect will easily show us that ‘theory’, indeed evolutionary theory, shows a history, the evolution of evolutionism, and is therefore required to explain its own self-emergence, a steep requirement. Please note that science is emerging from our system, but that science so initiated creates a secondary ‘evolution’, the object of which is to produce ‘theory’, i.e. causal statements about something. And this collides with our parallel processes emerging from the same pattern. These tend to be more closely matched to the nature of behavior, and don’t speak about causality. They say, ‘do this’. A good example is the emergence of ‘liberalism’, or economic ideology, which speak directly to the ‘shoulds’ of behavior. These emerged, by the way in tandem with the new physics. This parallel effect creates a snafu. We are going to speak of ‘action scripts ’ that pop out of the eonic effect as ‘action sequences’ themselves correlated with the pattern, e.g. religion, the politics of the state, the creation of democracy, economic systems and their ideologies. This can get confusing, because theories can become action scripts, and produce an immediate Oedipus effect. We can see this directly in Marxism. The ‘action script’ springs directly from the ‘action sequences’ of ‘revolution’, e.g. the French, and the effects of the new action sequence called capitalism . This Marxist script tends to collate the ‘theory’ of society it proposes (historical materialism) suggesting the system will produce a new transition beyond capitalism, via a revolution. We see all the same fallacies that we saw with Darwin’s theory. In a way that is unfortunate, because it was Marx who first sensed the problem! He say that theory was being used to say ‘Things should be like this because they are economic laws’, when in fact they were simply scripts of action, and decisions of one kind or another about economies. |
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