One of the most controversial and baffling aspects of the study of history or evolution is this question of directionality, which impinges on the questions of teleology. Our stream and sequence contrast shows at once a resolution of the paradox. We tend to lose track of directionality because the frequency period of the eonic effect divided over five thousand years only shows three steps in its sequence, and we never realized the existence of step one until the coming of modern archaeology. The scale on which to measure directionality was far greater than we had realized.  Looking at the eonic effect we see strong evidence of historical directionality, the more impressive in that our sequence shows interconnection across several millennia. Clearly our system is under suspicion of being teleological, but we are not able to assess teleology, in part because we are embedded in the system in question, and don't see its end point. Teleological issues are also highly volatile ideologies already present inside the system we are studying. They are consistently in error. 

Discrete progression vs teleology Any intermittent series produces an unexpected complexity to teleology: the 'system return' millennia in the future can upset the 'teleological hallucinations' that arise in the mideonic periods. This effect is especially notable in the 'bolt out of the blue', the rise of the modern and its motion against the mideonic teleological formations of monotheism (which in any case were at odds with each other). This double level completely debriefs our teleological fantasies, leaving us in ignorance of the long-range future if we can't distinguish our actions and aims in the present from the action of the eonic system, and its future, if any. 

We will restrict ourselves to the directionality seen looking toward the past, keeping out of trouble with speculations about a future 'telos'. Claims of teleology show their hand too often as futile efforts to overtake the eonic effect itself, in a fight for the future, and the results have proven themselves by their violent character to have little coherence. We must devise a new kind of theory to protect our data from confusion. Directionality is a fairly weak requirement. It can be detected in the past, without making any claims on the future. Clearly the stream of continuous history drifts and meanders, and the eonic series perks it up and sets it going into new directions. Directions! The Axial Age shows five new 'directional complexes'. Any sudden change essentially resets direction, so to speak, for however long that lasts. Note again however that the Axial period therefore sets some kind of direction in five separate areas simultaneously. Note also that in many cases the outcomes of each of the Axial exemplars are multivalent, hardly a definite setting of direction.

Sacred/ Secular Compare Greek and Judaic history: one gives birth to modern secularism while the other gives birth to religious history. This happens in parallel. We lose the distinction of 'sacred' and 'secular', and must redefine categories according to content. The term 'secular' really means a change of 'age period' or 'seculum', and begins with a religious transformation, the Protestant Reformation.
New Ages The many myths of ‘eons’ and ‘New Ages’ fall into place around the eonic sequence. The rise of the modern  precipitates a ‘new age of religion’, which climaxes in the ‘secular’ New Age of Enlightenment. The failure of the distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ becomes evident in the way the evolution of religion itself shows directionality, and this sudden religious transformation beginning with the Reformation resembles both the earlier Judaic and Greek transitions simultaneously. The term ‘secular’ does not refer to a philosophy but to the net effect of an entire transition.

 Directionality in our sense essentially means something is interrupting a continuous stream and producing a 'non-random' patterning of effects. There is more than just historical happenstance or drift. Something starts up, does something and then stops. There is an intermittent direction setter, and it may change directions at each stage. We should call that 'evolution', while the ordinary activity of people in general is simply history.

Transtemporal sequence Despite the perception of loose directionality, we also see our 'system' resetting direction in successive steps of its sequence, sometimes in different ways (e.g. states, then religions), sometimes in a recursive restarting of some that had died out. Two outstanding cases are the birth and rebirth of science in Axial Greece, and modernity. We already noted this in the case of the idea of evolution. The other is the resetting of democracy, right on schedule, in TP2, TP3: 
Discrete Freedom Sequence The most spectacular case is the birth, dying out, then rebirth of democracy, again in Greece, and modernity.
So it seems as if our system tries to recover things that died out in the periods between its transitions.

Thus as we examine the eonic effect we begin to see an ingenious way to do 'evolution' on the surface of a planet where many separate cultures are undergoing their own local 'evolutions', just the ordinary effects of people doing their history, never planning things on the large-scale, or in terms of long term intervals. Our eonic sequence however seems to be based on a rhythmic return at the level of millennia.  This ordinary cultural evolution of the disparate parts is thus not necessarily the same as the overall development of the whole. The intermittency of the eonic series of turning points generates a sequence of alternating periods of fast advance in the midst of the greater field of cultures and civilizations. We can call this the 'stream and sequence' property of the eonic effect. Each cultural area is an historical stream, e.g. the stream of Greek history from beginning to end, and that period when it becomes part of the greater sequence, what we will call the eonic sequence. It is like a stepping stone sequence to cross a stream. Each step uses a different stone to create a crossing path. These stones are 'intermittent' stages of the sequence that reaches the other shore. The actual pattern is slightly more complex since it may use several 'stones' in parallel at each stage. Look at the Axial period. In five places simultaneously, a cultural stream crosses a (very fuzzy) temporal boundary, intersects with the eonic sequence, and gets ‘hot’, producing a host of innovations.   

This is a little tricky at first, but with the Greek example we can see the process very clearly. A similar analysis is then visible in the Judaic and other cases. Actually the Judaic case has all the pieces too, but we are totally distracted by the religious wrapper that throws us off track. The stream includes the whole mythological history from Abraham to Moses, then David to Solomon. The transition is the core period after that, and enters the eonic sequence. Note how easily we can restate the gist of the Old Testament in eonic terms. 

We take for granted as the source of a tradition something that the data of the Axial Age shows to be remarkable, which is the sudden take-off of Greek culture in the period from –900 to about –600, followed by the brief flowering lasting until about –400. This periodization revises the standard Axial interval (-800 to –200) just slightly backwards toward the less visible but more seminal gestation period roughly in the eighth century as it generates what is to come. The reason for this is that it reflects the data, and also because we notice that the three centuries of our transitional interval creates a divide at its stopping point.

Transitions and divides Any intermittent process will create a divide as its bursting effect stops. This is visible in the way we take the Old Testament, although the point is confused by the Exile. But the two centuries after -600 show the era of the Prophets coming to a close and a new tradition coming into existence. This divide is especially clear in the modern case, around 1800. 

The Greek Archaic is not as spectacular as its post-divide period but altogether as creative in less visible ways. In the eighth century it just takes off. This sudden explosion out of nowhere, yet in concert with similar transitions throughout the Axial period, is the clue to a new perception of world history, and leaves us dumbfounded in so far as local antecedent causal explanations can't be the whole answer. Once we set up a periodization matrix its action is almost stupefying in its concentrated innovations. In our new language what we see is that the stream of culture, the Greek, intersects with the mysterious sequence seen in the overall eonic effect. This form of evolution is clever indeed, and evolves the whole via the part, proceeding from a hotspot to an oikoumene created by diffusion. We have the key.

This is a 'next' step after an earlier cycle: Sumer and early Egypt are like Israel and Greece. We have even found transitions there too. Note that  the diffusing influences of Sumer and Egypt proceed outwards in the middle period between the two steps in our sequence. These reach the Minoan World, etc, which in turn influences a first period of Greek civilization, the Mycenaean. This is a considerable culture, but one that never comes close to what we see later. This world is one that echoes its heritage of TP1 diffusion, by and large. Note that the Mycenaean world is part of the stream, while Axial Greece is part of the sequence. This collapses. 

Then there is a period of chaos, for whatever reason (it has nothing to do with the eonic sequence, it is not present in China). A great period of confusion arises in the Middle East around 1200. And Greece falls apart and goes into a Dark Age until around –900 or later. There is no reason it has to happen that way, and China shows relative continuity instead. But this makes Greece a test case because it almost restarts from scratch, and the extraordinary explosion of advance beginning after –900 and especially in the eighth to seventh century almost seems turn on a dime, and does so in concert with the Axial interval, suggesting that this is a function of the higher level system, and not, as with the Myceneans, the result of relatively contingent diffusion alone. 

There are thus two types of culture or civilization, stream and sequence cases. We see both cases with Greece, the relatively imitative diffusion version of the Myceneans, and what happens as the stream crosses the eonic mainline. But this time, we catch the eonic effect, because the great advance suddenly seen shows Axial synchrony. This evidence of sudden advance, and yet in concert with the whole, is the master clue that preempts simple causal analysis. We must consider the discontinuity factor. This gives us several types of ‘civilization’ in one culture stream:

An independent stream, e.g. Indo-European Greeks

A mideonic entry into a diffusion field, e.g. Myceneans

A transitional time-slice, e.g. the Archaic Greek period

A post-transitional oikoumene

In each Axial case we can sort the ‘stream’ into these categories. In the eighth century we see a system of city-states emerge from the feudal decay of monarchy into aristocracy. Then the great miracle happens, and by the time Homer appears the system is set to take-off. From the time of Solon  around –600 to the period of Alexander we witness the most extraordinary flowering of culture, one that defies any logic of diffusion, and which creates a new plateau of culture that will persist as a tradition until the rise of the modern world. It is not at all unreasonable, however, to focus attention just slightly backwards to the era round about Homer and before where the gestation of this occurs in the early Greek Archaic, long before Athens produces its fantastic contributions. So very basic and less exciting innovations (like the adoption of writing) are occurring, even an early figure like Solon being somewhat late by comparison.

Once again we notice the brevity of this creative interval that by –400 is almost over. The effect of diffusion outwards creates a new series of descendants, and once again the world of city states and their creativity yields to empire. Note the way we can see that a great literature is arising on schedule in a frequency pattern. This is remarkable enough. But we see analogous, but not identical, effects, all across Eurasia. They are essentially in the same family, and Rome especially is a sort of far flung ‘city state’ of the Greek environment, whose remarkably similar mythology from the same primordial Indo-European stream is able to echo the Greek advance so easily in a condition of sequential dependency. The Greek advances flow into the Roman zone as it moves to create a later oikoumene. This creates a kind of evolutionary directionality. Our eonic sequence intersects the streams of local cultures in a kind of time slice, producing a local advance, which then flows outward to create an oikoumene. It’s like a strobe light effect in a dance hall. The continuity of the dancers dancing is joined by a discontinuous intermittent strobe effect that illuminates the faces of the dancers.

Finally, we can conclude with the example of Greek tragedy, a classic eonic emergent. The eonic effect is unsettling. All the major advances in civilization, without exception, seem to be system generated. And we seem to have left out the major part of history! Not at all! It is the mideonic periods that are crucial to the whole question of development. Real history has barely started if at all, and we only see the early flounderings of beginners at the game of civilization. Every step comes hard, and pathologies of civilization proceed apace, a good example being the slow but steady cancer of slavery, which reaches its endgame in the era of the Roman empire.

It is true that the eonic sequence seems to monopolize the development of civilization. But, and this is the point, there is nothing inevitable about it. If nature spawns a set of tools, then we should use them. Not always so simple.

Greek Tragedy Who can write a Greek tragedy to match Sophocles! And Greek Tragedy is a clear eonic emergent. Its fall-off is almost immediate, after –400. The genre seems to die out (although hundreds were composed that we have forgotten). Please recall our statements about objectivity and pattern immersion. We can barely describe what a ‘tragedy’ is as an art-form, and no agreed on definition exists. And we can’t produce such an artifact on demand due to its elusive difficulty. As a final piece of almost spooky evidence, we may note that the genre of tragedy essentially sinks without a trace until it is reborn-when? In the core period of the modern transition, again with evanescent results once again. So, our eonic system can spawn tragic art on schedule, and what a schedule, at millennial intervals. And yet we cannot even fully grasp this phenomenon. So much for historical theory.  In any case, note that you are free at any time to contradict this pattern by fulfilling its potential. As man’s consciousness develops he should begin to ‘falsify’ the eonic pattern (assuming it has a future) by filling in the mideonic periods with self-generated social productions at the peak levels seen in the eonic sequence. A look at the French and then the Russian revolutions shows how this is easier said than done. Note the divergence between ‘eonic revolutions’, i.e. our transitions, as system events, which succeed in the large, and their micro duplicates or realizations, as free activity inside the system, which show frequent failure.

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