2.1.1 Enigma Of The Axial Age

Table of Contents for
 
World History 
And The Eonic Effect
Civilization, Darwinism, and Theories of Evolution
3rd. Edition
The Book
By  John Landon

Home

 2. THE EONIC EFFECT: CLIMBING MT. IMPROBABLE  
      2.1 MYSTERIOUS DRUMBEAT  
         2.1.1 Enigma Of The Axial Age  
         2.1.2 A Second Axial Age?  
      2.2 AN UNEXPECTED CHALLENGE TO DARWINISM  
         2.2.1 Climbing Mt. Improbable: Evolutionary Directionality  
         2.2.2 Evolution And Ethics—At Close Range  
      2.3 THE GREAT EXPLOSION  
         2.3.1 A Photo Finish Test  
      2.4 HISTORY AND EVOLUTION: AN EONIC MODEL  
         2.4.1 A Gaian Matrix: The Need For A Global Model  
         2.4.2 The Myth Of The Continents  
ENDNOTES  
      2.5 STREAM AND SEQUENCE: RATCHET EVOLUTION  
         2.5.1 The Axial Transition  
         2.5.2 Archaic Greece: The Clue  
         2.5.3 The Old Testament As Eonic Data  
         2.5.4 Transition And Oikoumene  
         2.5.5 The Case Of The Missing Centuries  
         2.5.6 Econostream, Technostream,…And Eonic Sequence  
         2.5.7 History And Evolution, Darwinian Or Eonic?  
      2.6 AXIAL AGES AND EONIC OBSERVERS  
         2.6.1 Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation  
         2.6.2 Non-genetic Evolution  
         2.6.3 Art, Evolution and The Tragic Genre  
         2.6.4 World Line Of The Eonic Observer  

The presentation of the eonic effect takes the overall pattern, the transition sequence, as a starting point. That’s the simplest approach in the long run, and the data generates this gestalt upon examination of world history. But that increases the level of complexity, invokes issues of historical dynamics, then of ideology and modernism. But it is an historical given that this data was perceived at first in its second step, the so-called Axial Age. Thus it is also possible to take the eonic pattern as an unassembled puzzle, with its major piece, or pieces, the data and perception of the so-called ‘Axial Age’, as a study in itself. The pattern in this aspect was described by the philosopher Karl Jaspers, who summarized a series of perceptions by many scholars stretching backward into the nineteenth century.

The problem is that the phenomenon of the Axial Age finally makes no sense in isolation. Thus we have a sequential and synchronous pattern whose connection is not at first clear. Later the logic of globalization  will suggest one solution to the overall pattern of selected hotspots showing eonic transformation, according to a minimum principle. The sudden synchronous appearance of cultural innovation in Rome, Greece, the Middle East, India and China in a period centered on –600 is inexplicable under conventional assumptions. Standard causal reasoning about the ‘evolution of cultures’ fails because of the simultaneity of relative advances in these separated areas. The phenomenon does not emerge by slow evolution from the prior state of these separate cultures. There is some kind of global factor operating independently of particular civilizations.

This is not the evolution of cultures, but a series of trans-cultural time-slices of multiple cultures in parallel. Since this period produces a series of world religions a confusion has arisen over the idea of some kind of ‘spiritual age’, but a closer look shows that the full effect is multidimensional. For example, in the case of Greece we see the emergence of philosophy, science, democracy, and much else that doesn’t fit into a religious framework. Behind Buddhism we see Upanishadic yogis, and these figures shade into a set of philosophers. Heraclitus is a philosopher, but he is a little bit like a sage-yogi. Pythagoras is an actual ‘yoga philosopher’, almost explicitly. Confucius is a philosopher, but his work produced a kind of semi-sacred, semi-secular ‘culture philosophy’ rather than a religion. Clearly our categories blend between themselves at this stage prior to differentiation into philosophy and science. We really have two patterns in one, the synchronous emergence of the Axial period, and the sequential series operating in a kind of drumbeat pattern. The connection between the two is at first not clear, until we grasp logic of the overall pattern.

For the Axial Age period, we have at least five seminal areas suddenly showing characteristic ‘pivotal’ intervals in concert:

Archaic to Classical Greece The period from the Greek Dark Age to Alexander contains the great clue to world history. The period of Archaic Greece  overflowing into the Classical period lays the foundation for a whole new order of civilization, and produces the beginnings of philosophy, science, and democracy.

Histories of Israel The phenomenon of ‘Israel’ in the Old Testament is a considerable enigma but its significance falls into place once we see that it simply reflects its place in the Axial phenomenon. This involves the period from about –900 to the Exile, and does not include the (mostly mythical) accounts of Abraham to Moses. No historical myth, theory of evolution, or universal history has ever produced a coherent account of this history. But the eonic effect will clarify its status at once, and in a very simple and elegant way, if we see that the key issue is the core period of the Prophets around which additional history is adjoined as epic prelude.

China: The period of Confucius One of the strangest cases of the Axial effect is the sudden transformation in medias res of the Axial period in China. This comes right on schedule in the midst of an otherwise continuous history. The rise to organized states in Chinese civilization begins very early, and yet we see the synchronous effect right in the correct time frame, as an overlay on the prior development. China and Europe are both at the fringes of the ‘eonic sequence’, (at this point we notice nothing in Europe). The Chinese case is inexplicable in isolation. This shows that the Axial/eonic effect occurs on schedule independently of the local dynamics of civilization.

India: Upanishads to Buddhism The case of India resembles that of ‘Israel’ in producing a world religion from the temporal sequence, as if sifting from a tradition that is already clearly formulated (relative transform) and existing prior to the transition. We see that some dynamic is operating independently of the politics of cultures and empires in the reactions of religion to state integration. With the forest philosophers who renounce history, India creates a protected zone, a parallel world in the Axial spectrum.

Early Rome We should include the case of Rome either by itself or as a cousin of the Greek case. Note that when we speak of the Greek period we are referring to a network of city-states stretching all the way to southern Italy. The appearance of Republican Rome in the wake of the Axial Age is prime data for the eonic effect. Note that the Roman Empire is a much later phenomenon, and in fact dramatizes its own deviation and decline from the sturdy Republican beginnings appearing in the Axial interval.

New World?? Seldom considered is the possibility that the New World civilizations, in the Axial interval, might show Axial influence, given the clear global character of eonic action in the Axial (and other) intervals. A close look shows, remarkably, the Mayan generation period in sync with the overall pattern. That is, the Mayan, as a relative start in sync with the Axial Age, and thus not the earlier Olmec (analogous to the contrast of Mycenaean and Axial Greece). We should refrain from jumping to conclusions here since the isolation of the New World cultures creates hard-to-interpret evidence. We can’t analyze this case without a new kind of historical model, and much more data. The New World civilizations often give the appearance of being ‘one cycle behind’ those of the New World. Our model can easily handle this kind of possibility.  

A Eurasian integration Note the way the Axial interval samples the cultural stream regions all across Eurasia, almost comprehensively. Clearly the phenomenon is trans-civilizational. This ‘sampling’ is the other usage of our term ‘eonic’. The clearest example is Buddhism. The eonic series ‘samples’ the prior stream of religious history and ejects a streamlined package ready to ship outwards into global culture. With this example, the analogous process in the emergence of the Old Testament becomes clear.

Looking at this Axial phenomenon we are confronted with an inexplicable mystery. But one clue to the riddle lies in seeing that this period is not unique, but one in a series. The resolution of the mystery comes to us quickly, as long as we are not distracted by the interpretations of the Axial period solely as a spiritual age of religions. We ask, are there any other periods like this? The great clue is the remarkable resemblance of the Greek Axial interval and the sudden rise of modernity from 1500 to 1800. Moving in the opposite direction, can we find a similar period of rapid innovation and sudden advance? We don’t have far to look. We suddenly see that the birth of civilization, and the rise of modernity are different phases of a larger pattern, with the Axial Age in the middle. Seeing the rise of the modern as a kind of second Axial Age suddenly makes sense of the data. In fact it is a third, at least, the extraordinary rise of Dynastic Egypt and early Sumer being a giveaway. We are forced to consider that the Axial Age is really a step in a sequence, and moving backwards and forwards we suddenly discover the full pattern. We can see three turning points equally spaced, with an interval of about 2400 years, clear evidence of a cyclical phenomenon.

The idea of a turning point, or ‘transition’, the series of ‘punctuations’, means that there is a staging area and period for a major advance, which ratchets the overall development of civilization to a new level. In fact, starting with our second turning point, taken in isolation, we could ask, is this period unique? Once posed, the question answers itself: we can see three such periods, if we can see the unity behind them. The first turning point is by no means an absolute beginning. Clearly we have only a fragment of a greater pattern. A three beat sequence is difficult to analyze, the bare minimum needed to show sequentiality at all. Note the equal length of the interval between these points, about 2400 years. It seems like a frequency phenomenon, but our data thins out very quickly. We must have rich data for the Neolithic, and that we don’t have.

The question of the Axial Age has spawned a new historical myth of a spiritual age producing the world’s great religions. The fact that Buddhism (and Jainism) are ‘atheistic’ while the Israelite Axial interval spawns a theistic religion makes any simple interpretation highly problematic. The case of Greece is then downplayed because it doesn’t fit the religious pattern (it actually shows a last great flowering of polytheism along with the seminal emergence of a critique of such). The pattern is far more complex than an association with transcendental mythologies. If there were ever an age of ‘revelation’ it has to be the Greek case, whose multidimensionality is spectacular. Out of the blue, a frontier area relative to the Middle East undergoes a prodigious flowering. Note the extraordinary synchrony of the core Old Testament period of the Prophets, and Archaic Greece. Then note how the Indic zone recycles itself in Buddhism, Jainism, etc, stripped of all local associations with ‘Hinduism’ (a highly vexed term). In fact, ‘Hinduism’ itself recrystallizes as almost a new religion. Our historical dynamic thus transcends the content enclosed in the remarkable ‘Axial interval’.

The study of the Axial Age is useful in a first look at the eonic effect, but we will find problems with its definition, among them the wrong interval chosen, i.e. –800 to –200. We will find this collates two things, that the real seminal interval is a transition and slightly earlier, ca. –900 to –600, with an onset of a new period after that. We will use the term in an introductory fashion and then replace it with a more neutral term as we complete our model. Jaspers’ concept of an ‘Axial Age’ is useful, though flawed, for it tends to be a secular version of an ‘age of revelation’. We suspect a larger pattern where the terminology suggests a unique period. Nor can we find the origin of the sequence. Its goal is a speculative additional assumption. Jaspers’ brilliant insight, with its classic philosophical breadth, is still nonetheless theological, and he is really experiencing a reality check on his Christian assumptions, the shock of recognition, the particular seen in the general. He sees the handwriting on the wall, and honestly shows the greater context of his Occidental viewpoint. The embarrassing fact is that the great religions are all later medieval constructions, Judaism included, and, while they correctly sense the importance of the eonic period, they overlay the seed moment with misleading myths.

The problem is the extraordinary parallelism that places the ‘Axial’ period beyond anything to do with religion. This is also the era of the birth of democracy, science, and the proto-secularism of the modern period. These are all pups from the same litter in what must obviously be a form of multitasking parallel evolution, a shotgun effect exploring different possibilities. The Axial Age appears at first to be unique, but then shows itself as a step in a more general pattern, perhaps a sequence? With this question the real antecedent and continuation suggest themselves, the birth of civilization, and the rise of modernity. One problem is that we see a naturalistic phenomenon in the ‘evolution of religions’ and in general a dynamic that has nothing to do with religion at all.

This extraordinary synchronism was for millennia an unobserved fact of world history and only  began to be noticed in the nineteenth century, climaxing in Jaspers’ brilliant, and courageous, insight. Indeed, Sumer remained to be discovered. But the evidence is now obvious to plain view. A global process can act intermittently on a part of world history.

The eonic effect is a superset of this data seen as the ‘Axial Age’, arrived at from another viewpoint, that of asking if world history shows signs of cyclical behavior or ‘general sequence’. It shows us the master pattern behind the component histories depicted in the remarkable Old Testament with their mythologies of theistic historicism. Clearly what is being detected in those texts as an ‘age of revelation’ is the sudden phasing emergentism associated with our eonic effect. We should therefore treat these ancient accounts as obsolete, but with the dignity we grant first discoveries.

We will move to replace the term ‘axial’, indeed finally ‘eonic’, with a completely abstract terminology of a so-called ‘eonic sequence’, summarized in the construction of a model to organize this data. The ‘axiological’ character of this period shows us directly that historical facts and the domain of values are completely braided in a process of ‘some kind’ of ‘evolutionary transformation’, a major empirical contradiction to assumptions about the how evolution occurs.