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The
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The Darwin debate has always had an ideological cast, witness the powerful surge of Social Darwinism in the wake of Darwin's work. This is sometimes blamed on Herbert Spencer, but the fault lies as much in Darwin, whose conditioning was that of a century reacting to the questions of revolution and radical social change. Darwin's attempt to cut through much ideology by attempting to reduce metaphysical issues to questions of science should be noted. However, that terrain is more intractable than Darwin supposed, and the clues to his thinking lie in his class background, with its Whiggish roots, the influence of Malthus, and the implicit perceptions of economy inherited from Adam Smith. It is a complex picture that remains invisible to the naked eye for those who suffer the various fallacies of economic ideology that became current in the wake of the new political economy of the eighteenth century, notably in Smith's view of capitalism. Note how Marx, reacting to this, fairly or not, precedes Darwin, and yet by the time of Engels Marxists are often enthusiastic Darwinians. The question is simple: Adam Smith had the insight into economic organization that led to the new type of efficient capitalist social system. But what does this tell us about early evolution???!! Once we see the eonic effect, and the distinct levels of 'econosequence' and 'eonic sequence' the obvious trap becomes embarrassingly transparent. Creatures don't evolve like economies do. And civilization operates at a much higher and more complex level than the economic stream.
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Resources/
Tutorials Notes Toward an Eonic
Model
Was There an Axial Age?
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