Periodization in World History: A Look at the Eonic Effect
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06.09.11 An exercise for buddhists:
following the ‘eonic effect’ (i.e. an evolutionary/historical
periodization) Posted in General at 12:07 pm by nemo
Climbing Mt. Improbable: The Eonic Effect. Buddhists, and anyone else who wants a more realistic sense of the meaning of evolution, should sit down and consider the eonic effect, both in itself, and as a falsifying tactic against Darwin[ist] nonsense. The ‘eonic effect’ is not a theory, but a periodization of world history that shows conclusively that a non-[random] pattern is visible to the naked eye, with all the implications of that surprising fact. The demonstration is ultra simple: every Table of Contents in a book on world history must show it, perhaps in disguise.
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A great invitation to look at the Eonic Effect again and lead-into reflections on historical periodization in human events.
At the outset, let’s think about “theory” and “periods” in world history, shall we? … It makes sense, after all, that the EE isn’t a theory. That’s understood! But, what about this notion of “periodization” … ? That’s a balancing act.
Most histories acknowledge strict-periodization to be an intellectual abstraction and construction of the historian/ student of history organizing the narrative of events in question. In other words, it a social convention and mental construction in order to assist us in making sense of the past.
But here we have something different.
Not a real “periodization” so-called but a “periodic” of human experience; one in which we’re not so much arranging history around our made-up ‘periods’, but considering how the events, flow, and conglomeration of trends in history form their own patterns and periodical structures.
That’s an entirely different project from the one usually classified by historians as being “periodization.”
Take a browse of the following pieces and you’ll see this.
- http://www.learner.org/courses/worldhistory/support/whatis_reading_2.pdf
- http://www.hudson-ny.org/323/the-periodization-of-history—excerpts
- http://www.jahsonic.com/Period.html
- http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5000485790
The Eonic Effect I’d argue isn’t ‘periodization”, but something more. As to the tables of contents in world history … Many of these still can’t get out of the mold of Western Civilization in their frameworks.
Still, I’ll grant this about such contents’ tables. Implicitly and deep-structurally, they do demonstrate – even in an offhand way – that there is something to human events that we’re missing if we only concentrate on the surface phenomena of human experience and our usual conceptualization/ perceptions of them alone.
Look deeper, and amongst them, and you can see the Eonic Effect in action.
Well, that’s my own observation on ‘periods’ in world history. I hope it helps people better scrutinize history as a subject and think about its material in a more critical, in-depth way.
dianoeidos 