The Eonic Effect        
 The Evidence for Non-random Evolution

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The debate over evolution is a chronic liability of modern culture, one long argument in Darwin's phrase, and never seems to go away or resolve itself. In fact, that is not surprising. Darwin's theory has been made the foundation for an entire world view, and yet it is patently unable to sustain such a project. This debate consistently fails to distinguish the 'fact' of evolution from the 'theory' that attempts to explain it, natural selection. We can critique natural selection, and still accept the reality of evolution. The problem is that real evolution is difficult to observe. Many criticisms have been given of natural selection, and as many criticisms of the criticism, but the key problem always remains, and is simply the inability to provide the conclusive evidence that would prove the case. Because of the difficulty of observation theories of evolution are prone to  concealed  metaphysical assumptions, and this is what tends to drive religionists especially to dissent from the claims.  

Reductionist Science

The emergence of Darwinism was in concert with a positivistic tide of 'Science Triumphant', and this has tended to enforce the assumption that science has all the answers, and that the methodology of science as currently proposed can produce a theory of evolution. The problem is that evolution is not physics, and the right foundation for a science of evolution has yet to be properly set. For example, one of the key issues is that of directionality. Darwinism is forced into a corner by its own reductionist tendencies, and uses natural selection to have its cake and eat it too. On the one hand natural selection is to banish all vitalist forces, on the other to account for the whole complexity of evolutionary outcomes. Thus directionality is claimed as a result, but never allowed to enter the form of the explanation. This situation can exist only in the absence of closely tracked evidence of how evolution really happens. 

Another problem with the reductionist project is its inability to handle questions of ethics. The fact-value distinction, so-called, seems to stand in the way. Values don't enter physics, physics is the foundation, therefore the successors to physics cannot do values either. Just there, in a line or so, we probably have the reason for the confusion. The subject of evolution, we suspect, requires the issue of values be taken into account. 

Random Evolution

There was always something implausible about Darwin's theory. It is really about random evolution. From the reductionist viewpoint, it is suspiciously convenient to simply claim that natural selection, i.e. random evolution, can produce the complexity of life-forms, this without actually tracking the process in real time. But random evolution once it is made intuitive suddenly stands out like a sore thumb. We never think that way about things we see at close hand. They don't 'just happen'. We should be suspicious here. The problem is that if random evolution fails, so does reductionism (probably), and the problem becomes complicated all at once. There are no simple alternatives to random evolution, at least in our limited technological environment where the four forces of physics seem to be sufficient to explain all. 

But we suspect Darwinism will go wrong on the issue of randomness, and we actually do have a source of counterevidence--the study of history. Remarkably, the question of evolution, as far as man is concerned, can be resolved if we detect non-random evolution. And this we can do by looking at world history as a whole. The reason this is important to do is that in history we have evidence chronicled at the level of centuries. What if there were some evolutionary process that happened very quickly and suddenly over a short interval of a few millennia, say, getting its work done in what would be an eye blink of time compared with the periods Darwinists take for granted? That is just what the eonic effect shows us. 

Turning Points in History

The rise of archaeological knowledge since the nineteenth century has transformed our views of history and in the process resulted in some surprising discoveries. The first is the clear sequential logic of world history, and the second related to the first, that of the so-called Axial Age. 

These discoveries of the archaeologists have pushed back our view of ancient history all the way to the Neolithic and before, but have especially made clear the question of the rise of higher civilization by showing us the world of early Sumer and Egypt. 

The strange way we always took traditional history consisted of taking arbitrarily as central the birth of our traditions in the time of, for example, the classical Greeks, the Prophets, Buddha in India, Confucius in China. It all seems to start in the middle of something. The world of Egypt and Mesopotamia seemed to be an obscure adjunct to this more central history, a sort of quaint prelude or sideshow to the main story. But now we see the reason we always took it this way. These earlier civilizations have their own histories going backwards several millennia to their dawn near the end of the third millennium. 

So we suddenly have a strangely larger picture with a simple logic. Suddenly we have the rise of civilization, then a long period of all that, with many successors to Sumer and Egypt, then the birth of our classical civilizations, after which there is a long period of the successors, once again, and with a long medieval period after the decline of the Roman Empire. 

Then, once again, we have a sudden upsurge, a new step in this odd series, the rise of the modern period. This suddenly transparent drumbeat effect is as obvious, once seen, as it is mysterious. 

The Enigma of the Axial Age

The discovery of the pattern of the Axial Age, which we can see is simply one part of our series of turning points, is the other unsuspected finding emerging from the extension of our knowledge of world history. However, the question of the Axial Age raises another issue beside that of sequential logic, that of synchronous or parallel evolution. 

Because the implications of this data are so revolutionary many students have tended to simply close their eyes to it. The basic finding is the way, all at once, in a period from about -900 to -400, or so, five, or more civilizations, suddenly undergo rapid renewal and change, with a host of seminal thinkers appearing suddenly in a way that is foundational for a whole era to come. 

We see this clearly in the period  of Archaic Greece, the core Old Testament, in India, and in China. This period produces a truly stunning amount of what constitutes the core tradition of humanity, including the birth of two great religions, the rise of Greek science, democracy, many literatures, and in general the sources of almost all the cultural forms that have persisted up to the rise of the modern world. 

The simplest, or clearest, case is that of Greece. The Greek Archaic period shows the whole effect in cameo, as Greece pulls out of a Dark Age, produces an immense amount of cultural change in a few centuries, then by the period after -400, everything is over, and the period of rapid innovation is over. 

This would be surprising enough, but suddenly we see that the whole phenomenon is replicated five, or more, times, from Rome to China. Especially remarkable is the light this throws on the Old Testament which is really a concealed description of the Axial Age, built around the various earlier myths and legends of the period that came before that. 

We see, then, that the Axial Age is really the second stage in our series of turning points. 

The Eonic Effect

We have an unmistakable non-random pattern right in our backyard! We see a sequential and synchronous logic at work in tandem. These two properties make for a very complicated system however. But the basic logic is clear. To summarize, 

Suddenly, we have a clear holistic interpretation of world history in the form of a non-random pattern behind us in the chronicle of known history. It is non-random in the way it demonstrates an intermittent clustering of creative action over long periods beyond the scope of individual will. It is a pattern that explicitly defies the logic of chance, as it generates a sense of coherence. We can even see ‘system return’ processes, like feedback, attempting to restore direction or elements that have died out.

The Eonic Effect We see a macrohistorical ‘volution' or ‘rolling out’ associated with the emergence of civilization in a long frequency or directionality, suggesting long range feedback or system return, morphing in direct and focalized fast transitions the large scale event-space of cultural entities. We can reverse-engineer this unmistakable pattern with a question, Does world history show evidence of general sequence? The answer is yes, and we see very strong correlation with an intermittent sequence pattern that can only be called ‘evolution’.

This pattern is so elusive that we barely see it, but we sense it, and it suddenly comes alive as we clock its strange timing, and adopt systematic periodization. It is made difficult by the need to examine relative changes, i.e. incremental change in a stream of prior continuity. 

One thing we must do is acquire the knack to distinguish the action of a system and the free activity that is mixed with it, like the difference between the motion of an ocean liner and the relative free action of the passengers in that context. Two categories of motion are superimposed. This is what blinds us to historical dynamics. This pattern explains at a glance many of the contradictions we live with and that characterize our sense of history. The implication is of a process that can act globally, generate rapid change in whole cultures in short bursts, and proceed across millennia in coordinated fashion. Careful accounting of time periods shows this global system at work.

An Unexpected Challenge to Darwinism

We have introduced the term 'evolution' to describe the eonic effect, and this might at first seem to misuse the term. Actually, we can define 'evolution' in many ways, and this process we see in history can best be defined as 'evolution'. The question that must haunt us is the suggestion that our views of earlier evolution are missing something, and what is missing is visible in the eonic effect, albeit in a different context. 

The data induces a reality check, for we see that 'evolution' isn't random at all, but has an associated driver. 

What's more we see the very high level at which this 'evolution' operates. It virtually remorphs whole cultures on the spot in a matter of centuries by seeding the elements of revolutionary changes in a short interval. Everything is included, culture, religion, art, philosophy, science, political forms, and much else. 

This 'evolution' shows a clear developmental mainline in the emergence of civilization, so-called, and is clearly associated with all the major advances of human history. It shows a definite global progression in alternating phases. 

The Great Explosion--A Photo Finish Contradiction

Once we see the eonic effect, we are suspicious of current accounts of the descent of man. Around 50000 years ago, a sudden explosion over ten thousand years produced modern man in his current evolutionary form. It was always hard to see how this could have happened so quickly, granting that the data for this was always less than adequate. 

But all at once we see another instance of this fast evolution in our own history. We can't be sure, but we suspect a connection, speaking generally. If even the late stage of emergent civilization required a background driver, how much more true that would be of earlier man. We don't want to jump to conclusions, but we should caution Darwinists against doing the same thing. We sought the one intangible thing, a case of non-random evolution, and found it. The stock of the usual accounts projected backwards on earlier times and places plummets and is seen for what it is, speculative. 

We see that Darwinian explanations seem to flunk a photo finish test. The last phase of emergent civilization shows one kind of evolution. How could be restrict ourselves to natural selection for the earlier period? 

We see that natural selection simply isn't the explanation for the emergence of world civilization, it is something much more complex at work. In fact, as the Axial Age makes clear, it almost seems as if our evolutionary process has to compensate for the effects of natural selection. It is bypassing the effects of competition and dominance by doing endruns around previous civilizations, starting over in each new period in a new area. 

We have finished the basic overall presentation of the eonic effect, and can conclude by showing the gateway to the construction of a model. 

History and Evolution

Our use of the term 'evolution' seems at first illegitimate, but we can see that it is the Darwinian usage that is problematic. Darwinists tend to restrict evolution to genetics, and thus confuse cultural and biological evolution. While it is perfectly legitimate to separate the two, that strategy won't work in defining species change, at least for man. The two aspects, cultural and biological, must be braided, and overlap in the period of the descent of man. It seems to Darwinists as if early evolution produced a 'man' who was free enough to create civilization. But we see that is not true, that even the late stage of cultural evolution involved in civilization required a macroevolutionary process. The attempt to reduce that to genetics is a clear problem now for Darwinists. 

 Nonetheless we are going to carefully delimit our sense of the term 'evolution' and we can do this by asking a simple question.

• When does evolution stop and history begin? 

This is a paradoxical question, since the 'when' is ambiguous. Clearly it couldn't have happened all at once. Some kind of transition must be involved. But that is just what we see in the eonic effect. A series of transitions. At each stage man becomes relatively more realized or free to proceed with the issues of civilization. 

We will define our subject then, not as 'evolution', but as 'eonic evolution' or the Great Transition, from evolution to history. We define history as the stage of relative freedom, one in which man looks backwards at the greater process of evolution from which he emerges. In this sense evolution and history clearly overlap, and are distinguished by the degree of freedom achieved. 

This means that man is exiting from evolution, so to speak. Note that the definition of 'man' therefore is up in the air, for man's speciation is not a completed process in the Paleolithic. 

This definition is much more flexible and allows us to bring evolution (the macro process in the eonic effect)  into the present or even future, even as the dimension of history (freedom) continues in tandem. This creates a two-level approach and this immensely clarifies the issues currently so confused. 

History, Historicism, and Historical Inevitability

Beyond the controversies of evolution lie those of what called 'historicism', the claims for Big History, or historical dynamics. We have stumbled into this other debate with the data for our eonic pattern. Clearly some kind of Big History exists, what we will call Universal History, to invoke a phrase from the philosophy of history. 

The issue of historicism, or historical inevitability was that of causality and freedom. But in our approach we already see the way to reconcile these two, for we have two levels, one semi-causal driving the evolution in the large, and the other 'free' in some sense (not necessarily free will) in the sense that people are inside the evolutionary system but still acting freely in a host of ways. 

 Take an example, an ocean liner and the passengers. The system dynamics is controlled at the high level by the ship's motion, but inside that system the passengers have relative free action. Whether you sit in your cabin or play shuffleboard on deck is your choice, and makes no difference to the ship. The interface of the ship's motion and those passengers also the crew is thus an important question, but doesn't change the effect of two levels. 

In the same way, but much more complex, our 'eonic evolution' operates on a scale of millennia, while the individuals of history are often doing something on their own. We see the intersection of these two factors in the eonic effect itself. 

In essence, speaking briefly, we have a way to bypass causality/freedom issues by looking at the way both operate together. 

Theories and the Oedipus Effect 

One of the issues of historicism in Popper's sense is the way in which theories are used make predictive statements about the future. The problem is that in most cases the behavior of individuals can anticipate the claimed prediction and try to falsify it. Deterministic theories can't forbid the choices of men in the present in order to produce causal explanations. 

We need a new kind of theory that simply stops in the present, and restricts its statements of dynamics to the past. But our emerging model is tailor made to do just that. We will create a hybrid where the system represents causality, and individual freedom. We call them 'eonic determination' and 'free action (not necessarily free will)'. 

Thus our theory is about the past, contains statements about what the system did, and what individuals did inside that system. Then as we reach the present the system is no longer operating, and the future is left to the free activity of the individuals who make it up. 

This is actually strange, but we do this all the time with our economic logic. We look at the history of economies, detect a cyclical rhythm, perhaps (boom and bust). We are free to choose inside that system, and yet it also shows some kind of dynamics. 

Then as we close on the present the situation changes. The system is open to our intervention, perhaps, and the set of cycles can be modified by our present activity, perhaps. 

This kind of modified theory using two levels, system and individual, has a clear precedent in economics, and we proceed to construct an analogous more complex version of this type for our eonic system. 

Idea For A Universal History

We see that our emerging model of the eonic effect, just as it shows an overlap of evolution and history, shows an overlap of evolutionary theory and the philosophy of history. 

And we have seen that the question of the 'science of history' is ambiguous, because we have conditioned causal statements to coexist with freedom conceptions. 

This kind of tandem model is essential since otherwise we would have no real history at all. The only way to reconcile the contradiction is a system of intermittent action where degrees of freedom alternate in sequence. It is remarkable that history directly reflects this situation. 

The philosophy of history is unfairly thought an old-fashioned subject, but our reference to it can be justified as precisely this discussion of freedom and necessity. And before Popper it appeared in classic form in the work of figures such as the philosopher Kant, whose essay on history asks us to find the 'pattern of Universal History'. We can see that we have found precisely what was asked for, an evolutionary/historical pattern that answers to the issues of the emergence of civilization, and freedom inside civilization. 

An Evolution of Freedom

We can conclude this all too brief summary of the eonic effect, then, as an 'evolution of freedom', seen in the Great Transition from passive evolution to free history, left with a question, which is whether the dynamics we see in the eonic effect is at an end. Whatever the case, we see that our position in history is at the end of the third of three great transitions, and we are free outside the eonic pattern, with evidence, looking backwards, of a remarkable pattern of 'evolution' in our own backyard, one able to resolve some of the paradoxes of the enigmatic descent of man. We can see that something much more complicated than natural selection is at work, and that evolution shows directionality, operates at a high level, and involves our consciousness. 

 Last Modified 09/01/05

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