Our overview of world history puts a special emphasis on the rise of the early modern, yet we see a tremendous sense of the 'postmodern' in many quarters. Relative to the eonic model there is no problem in this, in fact, we see that such things fall into place quite easily. Note that our analysis ends with the completion of the modern transition. We are not in this transition, we are 'post-transitional'. This effect of a post-transitional era is visible throughout history in different forms, as in the Greek Hellenistic. 

However the main thrust of the analysis is the period from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. We are attempting to position ourselves in the wake of this period, as know all too well. The point is to understand this, not necessarily to let a model enforce a particular viewpoint. 

The theme of rationality is a clear association of this period, but it need not follow that we must endorse the viewpoints associated with our transitions.

It is a crucially difficult question. For we see that it involves the issues of the future course of world civilization, even as the local and the global are balanced in the eonic model, while they are unbalanced in the wake of the modern transition. We need to keep a steady course, yet also to invoke a renewal of the first fruits of a great transformation. 

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The student of the eonic effect casts an ironic smile on the fashionable currency of the postmodern idea. Although the term has created considerable confusion and debate, and has become snared in the cultural wars over the social construction of knowledge, its usage proves itself by the spontaneous sentiment with which it has come into existence. Why is this so? Without taking sides here on the many issues raised (we could easily write two dialectical essays for and against), we can note that it is a term of periodization, invokes an epoch or age, and indirectly asks us to define what it comes 'after', i.e. to define what we mean by the modern age.  None of this, please note, is a comment on the content of the many 'ism' issues of postmoderns, or their critics, but simply highlights the use of the term for periodization. But the term 'postmodern' in many ways is a fine term suffering a botched definition. Instead of indicating a reasonable suggestion to stand back and look on modernism as a whole, it tends to be taken as indicating a rejection of the modern, and  the too facile hope one will simply rewrite the whole of modernism with a new beginning. It won't work that way. In many ways a real 'postmodern' work in a true sense would be, say, The Communist Manifesto, this irregardless of one's ideology, in its critique of the modern transition and a subsequent aspiration to redirect that transition as an ideology or universal history of freedom. Or some such. It is not possible to really establish such a usage, so the term may be a lost cause. The modern should be distinguished from the threshold that created it. and the term 'postmodern' really should be 'post-threshold'.  That perspective neither affirms nor rejects the 'metanarrative' of the modern, but considers the relation of historical transformation and the free realization of that potential. The postmodern arises if we sense a problematic with that realization. But the result should not lead to the rejection of the historical source, for, as with the Industrial Revolution, its ratchet effect on history is fixed. Our aim should be the disposition and realization of the given, without succumbing to the idea that it is fixed.  Postmodernists seem at times to want it this way, but the term has simply fallen on hard times, and like the Indian term 'guru' that once meant sage and now means stock market predestigator may suffer the fate of lost or soon defunct terminology. 

These questions in the debate are difficult to answer unless terms are defined. Our 'eonic' definition resolves the paradox, if you accept the definition suggested (which we might call 'e-modernism' or 'eonic period modern'), and adopt a perspective on world history as a whole, and take 'modernism' as a transformation relative to world history, starting in 1500, with a divide at around 1800. Then, if you adopt a view concerning a dynamic of history for this definition of the modern, and if this dynamic is discontinuous, the 'postmodern' automatically arises with increasing distance from the the dynamic era. This outrageously adopts a 'metanarrative' of Big History, something postmodernists frown on, but that's another story. Right on schedule, then, the sense of the 'postmodern' arises. A close look shows the same phenomenon in the ancient Hellenistic era, as men spontaneously looked back on the great flowering that had suddenly passed. The problem is that we cannot define a dynamic of modernism, although, looking at world history as a whole, we see that there probably is one. In any case we can see that the era 1500 to 1800 is especially seminal, whatever the reason. Thus a postmodern gesture is both natural and yet open to chaotification in the sense of rudderless 'going off on a tangent'.

We can adopt a simplified definition here, that distinguishes

1. the modern transition, 1500 to 1800

2. a divide near 1800

3. a plain vanilla  period starting in the nineteenth century  Note the postmodern is not defined here, but rises as you look backward toward the modern, i.e transitional era, followed by the realization era of this modern transition. The 'modern' period is really two things.

This definition of term 'modern' is not standard, but is often (but not always, sometimes the terms are mixed with the history of art, or architecture, the modern coming at the end of the nineteenth century...) the way it is taken, but usually without the full scale of five millennia since the onset of written history, which leads to a 'postmodern' isolation as a preferred present outside of history and the modern, or else a postmodern conservatism, usually denouncing modern materialism or some such in a celebration of the pre-modern roots of 'tradition'. This is the danger of the idea, that it will lead to reactionary antimodernism or another futile attack against the secular. Same problem again, periodization, what is the 'secular'. If it is a belief, then we may argue for secular beliefs. But if is periodization (secular means, saeculum, age period), then the 'secular period' might include a dialectic of beliefs. A close look at our 'transition' shows that it includes the Protestant Reformation, beside Copernicus, and the full complement of beliefs, arts, philosophies. The secularist view tends to hope the Scientific Revolution will move to embrace and recreate a new world view that is coherent, and fit the for the secular age, etc,.. This may be justified, but the secular really shows its first face in the sixteenth century, as a period of many explosive novelties that bear fruit much later. 

In fact, noone owns the term 'postmodern', and Toynbee was one of the first to use it, so there is no ideology with a monopoly on the word. He is challenging the whole modern age, it seems, a confusion of retrograde thinking, no doubt. A rightist 'postmodernism' is surely fallacious nonetheless, and is a warning the leftist ruminations on postmodernism will be cheated of their concept, a la the Toynbee declinist with his confusing mix that really still begrudges modernism its very existence. If you wish to decline, and erase the modern advance, noone is stopping you, except those who would rather not on the other side of an impregnable boundary, e.g. the Thirty Years War, after which the secular as social pluralism became fixed. To do that right, you must renounce modern economy, so there goes the TV dinner, no more rights of man, no more free copies of the Gideon Bible. Check all the papal bulls between, say, 1524, and 1900.  Toynbee was very confused, yet he got one thing right: the system is moving toward a greater global integration, beyond the local stepping of 'European' civilization. There is only one civilization, that of man as man, a point quite clearly made in the Communist Manifesto, quintessentially modern and postmodern at once. An ominous postmodern spectre indeed, the quintessential dialectic of directionality. 

The term 'postmodern' needs to be grounded in a perspective of periodization. But our periodization comes with a twist. Postmodernism is really a concealed protest against teleological modernism, not the secular, or the modern (which has to include the Protestant Reformation).This is not the same as being against 'teleology', although that is much the effect of current science. More power to it, but 'directionality', theory apart, can refer to nothing more than a 'quo vadis?' applied to the powerful idea of progress, powerful, yet suddenly out of fashion. Why? Study our eonic effect, and the point is clear, as the metanarrative becomes a 'discrete-continuous' evolutionary sequence. Progress means progression against the past, for civilization as an evolution in itself, until progress as idea degenerates into an ideology of directionality, and a paradox 

In our version of historical directionality, simple periodization is replaced with a double clustered period boundary, a 'phase', in this case the modern 'transition', 1500 to 1800. This is directional for a durational interval, after which the system crosses a divide (ca. 1800) and changes its character. It's like a slingshot, and the difference between impulse and momentum. The waning momentum of the modern period promptly produces a postmodern reaction two centuries after our divide. This is also sensed, and confused with decline. There is no inherent reason for decline!  Only deceleration (amdist technological acceleration which is quite different).

Why does it work this way?  Beware of historical force arguments, but consider the facts. Nevertheless, the reason is simple, under the questionable assumption of 'historical forces'.Consider the following abstract argument as an exercise, then, as a hunch, or what if. Either evolution is force-less or forceful. If it is forceful, then it is either continuous or discontinuous action. If it is continous it must control the whole system space, and the entire future. Not likely.(Why?) Therefore it would seem a priori a forceful system will be discontinuous.  If so then its future will be ambiguously directed and undirected, intermittently. Note that 'freedom' will change its meaning in this intermittency, voila, look at the period 1750 to 1848, and later, and the definitions of freedom. The system will breakdown into directed and free eras. The latter will risk the future, but will be unforced. Whatever the case, the forceful period will suddenly transit to another type. What does this near gibberish mean? Look at the last five centuries, you have a complete model, complete with postmoderns standing to one side, saying, look at the outcome. We see the transition to unforced history right at the beginning of the eighteenth century with an instant bifurcation of left and right. Yet it was the 'forced' period that generated the 'freedom effect'. Strange. Beware of this thinking, it requires a full foundation, but the paradox is eerily obvious in the account of modernism, and part of the reason for the extreme tension between liberalism turning reactionary, and the left becoming a new entity. A little eonic periodization will go a long way, used with care. You will likely flunk Historical Force 101 and end up reading Karl Popper on historicism, repentant.

Eonic intermittency (note the biologist has invented his version of this, punctuated equilibrium) is speculative, but answers to the facts, so we can use it on a tentative basis, to clarify our position. It is like a computer mouse. First the system acts, the computer, it is determinate, a machine. Then the user acts, input, a free agent, clicking on input boxes, whether this is free will or not. Then the system responds, etc...We have a hybrid mixture of different actions.

To simplify, this means there are two eras involved in modernism, a primitive but more seminal phase, gloriously germinal with the Martin Luther, looking backwards, looking forwards, profound and primitive, the idea of freedom bursting from the seams of his gothic-modern prose.Soon the birth within the birth is visible in the Scientific Revolution. By the end of the Enlightenment, the secondary phase is beginning. There is a change in the character of 'freedom'.   The modern transition, and that to which it transits, evidently the 'modern age', ca. 1800 measures it beautifully. The difference in character is confusing if you believe in linear progress, then becomes unmistakable once you take it this way and look at the change in character at the time. In total we have a combined five centuries which are often annexed as one modern period, with a postmodern period at the end. There is something to it! But the sticking point is that a close look shows a de facto 'postmodern', i.e. post transitional period, starting at the onset of the modern period!!!? The point was clear to Hegel, defender of modernism, yet the first postmodern, in the sense of defending modernism against the reactionaries pointing to the French Revolution, the de Maistre's and Burke's raising their cry against new fangled civilizations. We see why the terms simply confuse, yet point to something real. Endless studies, theories, failed attempts, have been gyrating around this issue, whose simple resolution, must however invoke 'universal history' in our sense, and apply its 'discrete-continuous' model to the differential of historical 'force' and the 'free action' of the participants. That requires our full scale expedition into the eonic effect, and a very special terminology to handle the theoretical dangers of invoking 'historical forces'. Good to beware of the analysis, for although rescued from the random, the result is not teleological, although it might be in a more exact theory, on the scale of five millennia we can reach no conclusion, confronted with millions of years. Directionality is a step backwards theoretically to semi-causal systematics, yet fulfills a part of the teleological concept. A drunkard taking steps, that is directional, the telos of reaching Kilarney, perhaps with another drink.  In any case it resolves all the paradoxes at a stroke, for we can see what the system is doing, without knowing how it works. Further it is necessary to adopt world history as the backdrop. By the way, don't believe in historical forces, physicists will chase you down the street. It's just a gimmick, facon de parler, implicit in the periodization. On the scale, instead of the historicism of historical forces, we can look at the contrast of fast and slow. On that measure, the period from 1500 to 1800 shows interior coherence, massive creative seminal generation, and produces the decisive threshold crossing after which we exclaim, modern, then postmodern.

This, and much else, spills from a thimble of eonic analysis, with its powerful integration of period concepts in one rubric. There we see the exact analogue of the 'postmodern' in its previous incarnations, e.g. the Hellenistic period coming after the flowering of Classical Greece, a grim reminder. Remember, the transition of history is evolutionary directionality, but the transition of man is to his individuality. That means not getting stuck in passive history. There is no inherent legacy of postmodern decline. But is worth remembering the Hellenistic example (forget Spengler). Within a few centuries ancient man lost everything, it would almost seem. In fact, although this analogue is correct, it can be misleading. The modern world has the potential to create permanent advance, where antiquity was still too diffuse to maintain the stupendous level reached in a few centuries by the Greeks. 

None of this says anything about any of the many seminal texts on postmodernism, which will simply join the modern canon!

  So is there a Postmodern Age? Take it as a quiz question, once you've read "World History and the Eonic Effect'. Stop scratching you head, and beware of debates on this issue, they will simply end like the dog chasing its tail. Next case.