Systems and Systematic Processes

Here’s my attempt to pull some of the material together that I’ve gotten 
from David Christian’s essay “Science in the Mirror of Big History” and 
John 
Landon’s posts on History and Evolution (with some additional material from 
his Eonic Effect Website) plus a few of my own developing ideas on the 
overall topic. 
__________________
John Landon

Thanks for the post. I am delighted to see someone try to wrestle with the 
material on the eonic effect.  Let me reflect on some of your interpretations 
a bit. 
There is no doubt the 'eonic model' is suggestive of a 'world system'!  We 
sneak up on it with indirect inference and simple periodization, and then are 
confronted by something that at first defies our intuition. But the data is 
stubborn. 
There is something we just don't see, but whose effects and traces are clear. 


It is almost like hopscotch. However, the result resembles, in that respect, 
the game of life programs where just this type of property is explicit, yet 
noone notices. That is, we see, if we divide a surface into regions, a 
dynamic of those regions, just as in game of life programming. !  We see the 
point, a whole system operates in 'differential time-slices' and fuzzy 
regions, and for an obvious reason of minimaxing. 

We can derive the idea simply if we consider the energy expenditure of 
transformation in the whole at all times and places, in a supposed 
deterministic model of a vast world system. That would never work, and nature 
doesn't show that. 
Instead we see the pinball machine 'thwack' process. Just the right 
acceleration in a series of sequential or adjacent hotspots, and the result 
'evolves' the whole. 
Sounds strange, but I think the evidence speaks for itself, and my portrait 
of that evidence is laborious. 
The problem is our mathematical methods lag behind such sophisticated natural 
processes, small wonder Hegel gushed over a geist. Smart evolution. But it 
does look like evolution, and the results seem derivable from minimum 
principles, applied to a true global system, if we could define it. 

Note that the elementary properties of such things are visible in economies, 
lest it seem we are speculating wildly. The field of human free action has a 
structure, and there is no necessary contradiction. 
But the result here is applied over large time scales and regions, and if it 
weren't for the hard evidence, we would find it hard to see. But it is there. 

Again, I am delighted to see you wrestle with the eonic model. Watch out, it 
can be tricky. I will try to continue some of its exposition. 





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