Re: Merging WST and complexity science

Thanks for your interesting response. Luke's response below The issue of numerical mathematics is in one way crucial, in another an obstacle. The existence of complex numbers beyond measurement status, yet still numbers, shows their is nothing inherently wrong with the idea. 
The fractal on the cover of WH&EE gives testimony to the starting point, complex systems, for the eonic model. But over time my general impression reverted to some variant of old-fashioned linear systems, though here of a weird kind. Nothing rigorous is easy achieved here, but... Such analogues aren't too helpful, specifically, but the 'system return' effect of the 'eonic cycles' is not inherently different from simple feedback, i..e response to some drift condition, a straightener. Not a coincidence that Norbert Weiner began to get edgy about teleology when he produced his remarkable stuff, way back. 
Note the 'freedom effect' in the eonic emergence of democracy, i.e. it emerges twice, the first time fading away, the second... we will see. 
 My point is that the simple is overlaid on the complex. The eonic sequence is a 'simplicity' emerging through diversity and complexity. 

In general, the resemblance to Kant's Antinomy shows the connection between models and some putative philosophy of history, e.g. the 'evolution of freedom'.
That is, causality is a root idea of physics. But it is not a binding idea in mathematics. Two operators, both 'causal', but operating in tandem generates much of the eonic effect. One seems anti-causal with respect to the other. 
This basic clue is hard to take further, but the basic idea can reach some mathematical domain even as it seems to contradict the physical domain. 

Let me note that students of electronics have long since produced their own version of this, in nothing more complex than the systems theory of devices, e.g the on-off switch. There is a complete contradiction made explicit in the model of such a device. 
And that brings the realm of Quantum Mechanis to mind. Scientists tend to howl if anyone applies these ideas outside their domain, but just looking at the overall contents of the theory, we see that measurement is a separate process to the inherent functioning of the system, and this causes a bugaboo of complications to the basically causal system of the wave equation. 
Some variant of that, mathematically, would be the best hope for the eonic model. I note in passing that the math used by electronics theories came to birth in Heaviside's work and also in Dirac's system of QM. 
In general the eonic model makes one think of all this and of simple Fourier Analysis. with its phasing character. But I can't quite see how to proceed there, and adopted the tactic of an autonomous model using its own concepts. If there is a mathematical realization of that I wouldn't be surprised. 

We have forgotten that Kant studied science first, and responds in many ways to Newton. His insights are basic. 
To prove that they are basic, read the first page of Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Time and find the classic antinomy of beginning-no_beginning clearly stumbled through by a major cosmologist. What can I say? There are limits to our inherent thinking apparatus once we impinge on 'total systems'. But the interesting thing is that Hawkings tries to move past this antinomy with a concept of imaginary time! 
Complex numbers again. 
So I have faith that there are natural methods for the eonic model, but the plain fact is that we may be stumbling on the noumenal, i.e. the limits of what we can know. 

Scientists are like hysterics, they have the answer to many things in QM, at least in potential, but they fly into a kind of 'turtle down' mentality whenever people try to use their stuff. Not surprising given the mystical mumbo jumbo at the fringes. 
The above remarks are pretty conservative, so I think I am roughly on track here. Alwasy check the creators. Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and Bohr were very much at home in the general humanities and knew the relation of what they were doing to considerations of Kantian issues. This is not to bring in Kant, as such. He might confuse the issue of QM. But QM has essentially stumbled on a variant of what Kant was wrestling with, although you won't find many physicists who will admit it. Save maybe N. Herbert in his little gem about Quantum Mechanics. 

I have a pretty wide background in math, but one thing I have learned is, don't get tricky, especially with humoungous math models adapted to phenomena that are allergic to them. That was the point of Prignone, the seminal effort to find something, anything, in an extension beyond normal physics adaptations where everything works out. 
Once out of the range of the siamesed physics-math  domain, all these smart nerds start to flounder, because everything starts from scratch. But Prignone no doubt hit on the basic context for biology, i.e. 'self-organization'. 
But all that still isn't quite over the threshold. 
The basics of the eonic model are 1. counting on your fingers
                                                  2. with the basic ability to whistle a tune. (the latter can be waived, if you can't whistle a tune)  
The real job then is to visualize what is happening as we 'keep time' counting on our fingers through the eonic sequence. That is a generalization thus of a deterministic model, which shows a collapse of the causal principle, or its generalization into something directional. And the model will assist in that visualization, like seeing three scene changes in a play, stretched over a global theatre.

In a message dated 6/12/2003 3:33:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time, larondin@yahoo.com writes:

> John Landon Wrote:
>
> <We can see the 'eonic effect' as 'some kind of self-organization' in the in the long rolling waves such a model tends to predict. The problem is that this process is at a very high level and operates beyond numerical parameters. Such a system emerges in a focused point and expands. We can't quite catch the source point. The problem is that it looks more teleological than mechanical, a character however that S. Kauffman's models tend to induce as a sense, as he puts it, that 'we are the expected'.>As always, this is amazing stuff.  Chiefly because, even though such dynamism “operates beyond numerical parameters”, I get the sense from the subject matter that it is still deeply and primordially “mathematical.”  It gives the impression of the most complex Calculus, mixed with the most sophisticated mathematical Logic/Set theory, mixed with the most intuitional of Prehistoric symbolisms drawn on tombs, shrines, and cave walls.
>
>  The old metaphysicians, I believe, were wrong.  They posited a world “beyond” [and therefore devoid of] “number” (in the physical, material world &upward …).   This higher “world” or level (of our universe) isn’t “beyond” number as much as it recasts it in a new, different, and more complex light.  Number and math engender something slightly variant from what we see them as being through our sense experiences and quantitative models.  “Number” must ultimately be relational and base-linguistic (that is, the underlying formal code) of physical entities in our universe.
>
>  Yet, this doesn’t make world history, world systems processes, or the Eonic Effect any simpler or easier to understand either.  We are still faced with operative dilemma outlined above; what changes though is that at least temporarily we wouldn’t have to contend with a vexing metaphysics of ‘the world up there operates by those laws’ and ‘the world down here operates by these ones.’  If we posit one “world” with one basic set of “laws” operating at two different levels and in two different contexts (or how many there actually are), then it greatly simplifies our understanding of what we’re actually witnessing as we look at human events and natural phenomena in the cosmos.
>
> <So it is something much more than 'self-organization'. It has the form of self-organization, but is much more. The reason it can seem like more than one thing is that any process of up hill evolution is going to involve willy-nilly some form of increased order, however arrived at. Current mathematics has no qualitative dimension. There is a domain, we suspect, of undiscovered formalism that operates on qualitative distinctions. Same with the eonic effect, as 'self-organization', we cross a threshold and it is 'self-organization', by only by a process of elimination. We need to zero in on it some more.> 
>
> How about an idea of “self/system organization?”  Elements arrange their own order in an apparently ‘random’ operation, but at the same time they’re guided to the actualization of such organized structure through a system directed process itself.  That way, both functions are fulfilled, and we can rightly say that - while elements build up fully into the system (as part of an unfolding process) – the system itself actually pulls them to the fulfillment or end of its blueprinted design …
>
>  <Still we do see something like 'self-organization' in history. We even see the seemingly space defying coherence effect, witness the Axial synchronism in the dead center of the process. Anyway, all that was my starting point. Is the appearance of the Iliad and Greek lyric poetry almost on a spooky frequency schedule in Archaic, in tandem with the Hebrew prophets, ditto India/China, self-organization?!.  … So history is about people. The theory has to explain people. Self-organization indeed.  Whatever the answer, it has to explain the eonic effect, which is hard data, if anyone cares to consider the odds against this non-random pattern that does art in an evolutionary blink.>
>
>  One layer more to this systematic/elemental complexity.  Not only do we see “self-organization” and “system [direction][to]/ self-organization” [a system that builds {into} itself through its elements, perhaps?], in human events and world history, this pattern expresses itself also through human self discovery and the “integration of fragmented self.”  (Lloyd DeMause, psychohistory)  There’s something at once very strange and also very revealing going on here in the development of “free action scripting” and human psychological-historical evolution.  It’s as if a field effect both precipitates the growth of freedom for people over the ages while providing the circumstance whereby self-integration becomes possible.  That’s weird because, we can also clearly trace the growth of freedom itself to self-integration [which the PH’ers, ala DeMause’s group, connect to better childrearing].  Yet, the evolution of freedom can also be seen as effecting both childrearing and self-integration.  So what’s the key to this conundrum?  Your insights?  … (Luke)  



John Landon
Website for
World History and the Eonic Effect
http://eonix.8m.com
Blogzone
http://www.xanga.com/nemonemini