Re: Evolution Discussion - Landon's and Prugovecki's Posts

There is no real contradiction here. First, my definition of the transition from evolution to history is formal, and defined as a particular perspective on a vast process for which the terms can be flexible. 
 My definition in that fashion resembles the standard one, that history 'began in sumer' with the invention of writing. 
It is also true that evolution is still going on, but that is misleading because we confuse the term with Darwin's. 
The point is that the descent of man, we suspect, is more like 'eonic evolution' that the Darwinian. That means that man is constructing his own evolution, but in the context of a macro factor. 

 
The issue of randomness is simply up in the air with respect to the eonic model. There is no statement one way or the other. 
Consider a feedback device, like a themostat. It simply switches on a certain intervals, irregardless of what other things might happen in the environment, quite at random. 
So the historical drift in world history is considerable indeed. The eonic effect simply shows something operating over the long range, to reset direction. 

The contingency factor is obvious by comparing the periods of transition to the periods in between. Look how much is lost in these between periods. We should have had democracy since Greek times. But by the Hellenistic the first emergence of that was gone and never recurred again until the next transition. So the random factor is hardly absent from the eonic effect. 


In a message dated 5/12/2003 8:41:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, larondin@yahoo.com writes:

> Your recent post to WSN and Consilience-P is good, very good.  Let my try to clear up my own idea on the discussion – because I think my points may have been confused/confusing to an extent. I fully agree with your main pts. against Darwinism and Social Darwinism.  Leave it to me, though, to confound the matter somewhat also.  We see directionality and free action (in history) as your model makes clear.  We see ‘positives’ and “upward” developmental change.  Yet we see the ‘negatives’ and non-directionality in the process of history/evolution as well.
>
>  How can we?  Aren’t they contradictory?  They may carry the natural tensions of a contradiction, but they’re actually elements of a ‘true paradox’ in nature.   The tension is not resolved in better concepts [which unravel the puzzle and set events back to linear “order”]; the tensional balance between our ‘antithetical’ terms are maintained and held in a kind of dynamic equilibrium.
>
>  I believe we do see real “randomness”, “chance” in history and evolution.  I believe also that history/life has its nightmares, downside, and bad points also.  We can’t whitewash them or rose-petal them up; they do exist.  My argument however is they that exist in tensional equilibrium and paradoxical balance with the positive directionality and free action we see in history.  That’s my first argument.
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>  My second:  that in life, human experience, and physics, that what we see evidence all around us for is both a level of chance phenomena and randomness (+ at least an apparent “selection” of evolutionary units for change)(but maybe it’s not Darwinian ‘selection’ at all in fact) as well as the proof that things were produced through directional processes over time and via ‘design.’  In other words, we really see two brands of evidence about us in the world –> the chance and randomness we experience right now in a contemporary context and the effect of the non-random we witness in human affairs and our physical/biological world.  We see what we experience NOW … and we also see the product(s) of directionality in human history and the natural environment over time (in retrospect).  Hence, we’re faced with an unsettling paradox.
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>  I don’t believe we can pooh-pooh the randomness, chance, “chaos”, and “catastrophe” we witness in the world or through time.  They do exist as real features of the universe; they aren’t just phenomena we are mislabeling in our academic efforts.  As to whether, they’re actually ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ is anybody’s guess.  Regardless, they do demonstrate a strange, oddball, free-wheeling function to the universe (as it exists around people and/or other physical/biological agents, entities, and phenomena).  And, so it’s my supposition that – paradox of paradoxes – it’s precisely through (what we wouldn’t expect) the randomness and chance of our universe’s systems and entities that we’re given our directionality and order in evolutionary history over time.
>
>  If you (or anyone else here) disagree(s) with such an idea and wish(es) to propose an alternative, I would welcome such viewpoints.  The thing is, I think the ‘genetic superiority’ bit is silly and ‘Social Darwinism’ is ridiculous.  I even have my own reservations about Darwin and Natural Selection to begin with; but somewhere along the way, we have got to come to grips with “chance phenomena” and history’s more seemly side also.  We can’t push them under the rug or claim that they don’t really mean what they have traditionally (long before Darwin in fact) meant to scholars in either philosophy or traditional historical scholarship.  To quote the cliché with its metaphor for an example – “War is Hell”, &we can’t deny the fact that people for ages upon ages [in their ideas about history and life] saw it as such.  The data is there, and it was seen in a particular light (the “Hell” bit).  The downside and darker dimension of history exists.  However, despite this, I’m also arguing that the lighter, higher side of history exists also.  They exist via each other in the equilibrium of tensional paradox.
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>  Time/History and the Cosmos do balance things out (both ‘in the end’ and throughout the various stages of evolutionary change through the centuries and millennia).  They take the random puzzle pieces of human experience and biological/physical change and fashion them into the great tapestry/painting/or otherwise artwork we see as being World History (and that you have looked at such matters via the Eonic Effect).
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>  That’s my own interdisciplinary perspective on the issue.  I welcome yours and those of other people on Consilience-P.  (Luke R.)
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>  John Landon Wrote: 
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>  The relationship of history and evolution is currently incoherent, due to the confusions of Darwinism, with its purely genetic interpretation. In my interpretation is I look at history as a transition from evolution to history, in the sense of moving from something passive to something active.  Thus the 'evolution of freedom' might be seen as such a transition. The eonic model shows one way to harmonize the two contradictory ideas.
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John Landon
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