It is fascinating that J.B. Bury’s classic The Idea of Progress  sees fit to begin in the mysterious interval between the death of Machiavelli, and the philosopher Jean Bodin a generation later, as he casts off the ‘cyclical theme and variations’ of the idea of the Four Kingdoms and sees the three stage periodization of world history in a progressive mode, roughly corresponding to the Mesopotamian, classical, Mediterranean, and European stages.[i]  This arrangement of Bury’s account is altogether apt indeed, and proves one aspect of our thesis, that the appearance of historical ideas themselves corresponds self-referentially to the pattern we wish to point out. The idea of progress has been increasingly questioned at its roots in recent generations, after its great period of nineteenth century flowering. But the critique has itself gone to an extreme that is not intuitive, and is under suspicion of being perversely wrong. The idea of progress was essential in the labor of birth struggling against the inertia of antiquity.[ii]  Part of the difficulty is the use of the idea of progress for ideological purposes in ‘banner of the regiment’ meanings, thence to expect it to have theoretical standing unsullied by its history. The relation of slavery and warfare, and other negative aspects of the modern transformation, to the idea of progress requires careful redefinition, in order to rescue the basic idea to the creative ferment of ‘real progress in action.’[iii]

Theodore Olson , in Millennialism,Utopia nism, and Progress  Utopianism, and Progress , criticizes the assumptions of the idea of progress , as the doctrine that “there is a blind force, uncontaminated by historical contingency, dedicated to the continued improvement of man [that] is the central affirmation of the notion of progress”. This engages the issue perfectly. Defenders of progress often fail to answer to this sort of objection. He complains that the persistence of this idea can only be explained by its manifest convenience, and declares the notion to be at root a form of incoherence, a variant of Fisher ’s lament. Although it is certainly true that proponents of the idea of progress do not often realize the difficulties of their position, use the idea ideologically or in a salto morale, and suffer the confusions of this fact, Olson’s statement is as open to challenge as the view under fire, for its assumption is that there is nothing to drive progress. If we suspect that there is, the argument fails immediately.[iv]  The eonic effect reveals the evidence that there is. ‘Progress’ shows itself clustered around three great turning points of history, the last of which gave birth finally to the idea itself. But as we begin to realize the existence of an historical patterning, we can easily misapply the idea of progress to its explanation, but to deny completely the progression as progress of civilization from the time of Sumer would be almost absurd.

But in any case here is an example of the way our pattern will reopen an old perspective, and promptly be frittered away, if we do see the net equivalent of a ‘blind force’ or ‘progress pusher’ in our historical surges, and give it any cogency without a commitment to the real difficulties of historical systems, and these in the heritage of Newtonian dynamics, and the development of analytical reductionism. Quite apart from defining the meaning of progress, and its relation to issues of ‘facts and values ’, to hypostatize a ‘force’ to match the data in this or any other historical study, in the heritage of or on the grounds of the breakdown of post-Newtonian systems, will provoke more of the same endless controversy, unless we can truly catalogue this force in a reductionist manner without invention or metaphysical trappings. Since this is exceedingly difficult to do, we are struck dumb, and must confine our activities to empirical correlation, but with an ‘epur si muove’ of suspicion about the larger motion of historical development, the more so if we begin to realize such a process could not result from planned human futurist activity. This takes us out of the business of stating historical causality in the same breath as the assertion of historical progression. There is a great irony here. The linear sense of time, the idea of progress, the obvious connection to the Augustinian, and, thence, the Zoroastrian, schemes of history, are found to lack a driver. The only workhorse mule for this task will be the ‘cycl ical’, hopefully shorn of its dreadful implications of ‘eternal return’. The cyclical impostor is seen to be the real manifestation of the dynamics of evolution, as this applies to culture, or civilization. But this approach requires great caution, for it demands one extension against reductionist shortfall in the bootstrap of foundational notions arising from the hard sciences. No effort in this regard has ever succeeded without positing ghost forces, extra laws, vitalist trappings, ‘cgfx’ forces, Casper the Ghost Force X. It is almost ironic that our subject starts in analysis and ends in seeing that our eonic pattern includes this game of ‘cgfx-ing’ as downfield new-aging. Each of our great turning points will show the same outbreak of ‘involutionary’ preoccupation.

The basic point Olson is making highlights the further apparent contradiction between non-teleological science and its social vehicle inherited from the Enlightenment animated by the idea of progress. The grand force then becomes beholden to enlightened ‘rationality’ on which a sudden increased burden is placed to be the mover of history. The most we can hope is that it is on the way to becoming so as a developmental emergent, for it is unlikely that rationality alone can explain the process of social evolution . We have but to look at the history of science, draw a chart, and notice the rhythmic complexities of its emergence, and its nearly jump-started surges of development. Thus the all-important rationality is also an evolute, of the eonic variety. However, wary of the confusions of the idea of progress, we can proceed to a more generalized idea of ‘eonic progression’ as a generalized concept beyond that of progress. And this can resolve many of the idea’s difficulties, for the idea of progress is a product of this progression, not a name for its ‘law’. We need to admit to the change of meaning in the term ‘progress’ in our eonic sense, which simply does not correspond to its original usage, as a concomitant of a linear view of time, or a view that history is continuous incremental change. We are close to the arch-confusion, whereby the sense of ‘linear directionality’ is born during a cyclical interrupt.[v]  

             Eonic Progression and the Idea of Progress We must distinguish eonic progression, from the idea of progress , as this confuses the idea of a ‘law of history’ with the potential of ‘free action’, as indeed these are entwined during the period of acceleration. The idea of progress is a joyride emergentist free action script caught in metonymy of part and whole. Further, the idea of progress is a preeminent exemplar of what we call an eonic emergent, appearing, in direct correlation, during the rise of the modern transformation. It was nearly born among the Greeks. The modern idea swings in opposition to the cyclical as the linear, but we see that the relationships are more complex, for the cyclical restores the linear, and drives the path. Suddenly we see that the idea is suffering a level confusion, and might suffer it in our account. Keeping straight the ironic meaning of ‘eonicevolution  evolution’ ’ and one of its emergents, if this is applied self-referentially to itself must require some unknown new form of ‘escher-hand’ theory. And thus the issue of progress is indeterminate, for we are ourselves are creating our progressive means, even as the process of history moves through one of its great progressions. We can see progress without its idea. In antiquity we see the idea arriving at the threshold of being born during the time of the Greeks.