Re: The Eonic Effect and the problem of evidence

In a message dated 9/25/2002 9:34:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time, larondin@yahoo.com writes:


> This “step” metaphor is interesting.  A few years ago I loosely hypothesized a step model from 1500 to 1800 AD for the Rise of Europe in which social/economic change would not have been apparent until 1800 but whose potential was starting at 1500.  Problem is:  It doesn’t work.  If ReOrient is to be taken into account, Europe wouldn’t have “arisen” until the mid to latter 19th century and until that point Asia (esp. China) filled the role of hegemony/core power functionary in the World System largely until Europe’s true (“temporary?”) rise to prominence later on. 
>
> A “step” metaphor is fine, but somehow we’d have to go beyond the literary frame of the metaphor to an actual defined, detailed “structure” of such in our social scientific, world historical modeling.  I am not at all sure how we would do it or even if it would be actually possibly or historical valid to do.  Any ideas either on the ‘validity’ issue of it or the modeling of such? …


The terms of the eonic model are all laid out at http://eonix.8m.com/enx_theory1.htm
The descriptions are in terms of a new fundamental unit of analysis, transitions, and eonic sequence, parallel emergence, jump diffusion, etc....

I think the question of metaphors is answered by these terms, and the result accounts for the overall dynamism of world history, which is not the same as explanation. 
This model has all sorts of possibilities for mathematical treatment, but I can't think just how to do that!  Not so easy. 
Acceleration as a metaphor is a problem, but does it matter, since it has been demoted from the list of terms to describe the model. Acceleration is a stand in for the 'force' question in any dynamic, and that 'force' is abstracted into the relationship of the transitions to the whole, etc...

What is it that makes the eonic model succeed, in my view? It shows what a world system has to amount to. 
Take the surface of a sphere. Suppose that development is sluggish, or will meander, a point clearly visible. 
How induce directional development with limited resource and a minimum of interaction? The eonic model follows at once, and is based on the evidence. 
But it is strange to see it this way!  But the intuitive sense to it is clear. 

The question of the three centuries from 1500 is more exact than it looks. Look at the generation around 1800, why is it such a massive period of seminal changes?