Re: History and Evolution

In a message dated 7/17/2002 1:21:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Nemonemini@aol.com writes:


> Note that economists produce a host of differential equations models for economies, but when the chips are down they use empirical models of cycles of boom and bust, sometimes analysed with complex fourier methods, but basically remaining non-causal explanatory givens_ in which the free agent in the present can change the behavior of the system depending on what theory he espouses_!!!! 
> We are in a completely different ball park. 


Contemporary scientific methods are simply unable to handle historical evolution, yet such 'evolution' is clearly visible in the still limited data that we have. Thre is only one name for the 'eonic effect' (three turning points argument), 'evolution'. 

 This confusion over theory, further, is an old issue. It was clear in the minds of many in the nineteenth century, witness Dilthey with his pursuit of the 'Critique of Historical Reason'. It is latent in Kant. Witness the quiet protest of Popper, whose views, too often taken simply as anti-Marx propaganda. Consider the fact that Marx's critique of theory ideology is, before the construction of Marxist models (which don't work), is really a species of the same.  Popper contacts this issue when he speaks of the Oedipus Effect, p. 16 of Poverty of Historicism, when he discusses the way what Oedipus thought the future was influenced how the future happened. 
Marx touches the issue when he says, in effect, this 'theory' of the economists is pervaded by ideology, i.e. the 'law' of economies' contains a 'it has to be this way, that's science'. 

In any case, this issue of the embedded nature of theory inside the 'evolution' is one that won't go away. There is ABSOLUTELY NO THEORY POSSIBLE that does not attempt to self-refentially to make 'theory' an evolutionary object, thus creating a crisis in the objectivity of the theorist. 
What's more, it wouldn't be hard to backtrack with this type of argument to early stages of the descent of man, thus rendering the whole Darwinian account suspect. It is suspect. It is! 
Darwinism is caught up in modern scientism, and is a regression, in many ways, from the peak of the earlier thinkers. This point has been amply documented, cf. Hampshire's Consciousness and Society. 

The point, then, is that _theory (which we would have to define, however, to make this statement!) is output of the historical transformation_, and cannot be used to explain comprehensively the real phenomena we observe. 
This is especially evident in the 'eonic model' where the last historical transfrom, ET6, or the 'rise of the modern', is close to our present. We can make obvious the point that the issues we abstract as historical theory as themselves brought to a peak by the very process we are trying to examine. 
Check out http://eonix.8m.com/enx_theory1.htm, and then ../enx_theory3.htm. We see that our starting point is the output of the last 'eonic transition', e.g. leaving the question, what is our relation to Kant's Challenge, if this philosophical production (and its whole context, Descartes to Hume) is itself part of the transformation? 
Thus the term 'theory' yields to the term 'free action script'. 

This sounds bizarre, but economists do this all the time instintively, so it is not without intuitive examples. 

In any case, you will see there at the eonix material a clear differentiation of economies as 'econosequence' from something else, 'eonic sequence'. 

Mucking about with complex math models looks impressive to some, but it won't amount to anything except to show that math whizzes are as dumb as the rest, if not dumber. 




John Landon
Website on the eonic effect
http://eonix.8m.com
nemonemini@eonix.8m.com