EONIC THEORY
A REJECTION
JUD EVANS
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The Eonic Effect. is often characterised as depicting the
use of periodicity, cyclicity or the quality of recurring at regular intervals to isolate a non-random
pattern in world history called the eonic, or intermittent, effect. The word eon (or aeon) means: an
immeasurably long period of time. For
the Gnostics it signified a divine power
or nature emanating from the Supreme Being
and playing various roles in the operation
of the universe.
Ontologically as an eliminative determinist
I do not of course accept the existence of
such crude reifications as: periodicity, cyclicity, reoccurrence - nor (chronological) intervals, all of which suggest that an abstraction
called time exists too,. For me what exists are constantly
changing causal (matergic) objects subject
to constant internal and external impingement
which are timed by paleontologists and other scientists
by studying the forms of life existing in
prehistoric or geologic times, especially
as represented by fossils with respect to
their evolved states, by examining
their material remains and distinguishing
the morphological and behavioural differences
within the continuum.
That is not to say that I do not recognise,
respect, and appreciate the important contribution
provided by the emotive (often religiously
based) theories based upon such useful fictions
used in order to provide satisfying
explanations of genesis and change in the
furtherance of the understanding of ourselves
as thinking beings.
Regarding the so-called eonic theory and its putative: eonic effect. I have reached the same conclusion as most
people - the theory is completely lacking
in empirical foundation. The eonists claim
that they: "can use the data of history
to assess the earlier stages of human evolution".
Eliminativistically speaking all objects
are causal objects and the term history is a useful-fiction we employ to refer to a
written assemblage of accounts of past events,
or records of narrative description, which
most satisfies our preconceptions and personal
agenda.
1. Greek. historia a learning or knowing by inquiry, history,
record, narrative," from historein "inquire," from histor "wise man, judge," from PIE from
base weid "to know," lit. "to
see." Related to Gk. "to see,"
and to eidenai "to know.
For the eliminativist history is by definition the story of antecedent
causal objects which can be seen, or which
have been actually written about or recorded
in some way - perhaps representationally
painted on cave walls, or dug up from the
ground, or retrieved from the sea bed as
specimen causal objects. As we delve further
and further back into the past records and
examples of these informative objects, their
numbers become less and less, they eventually
peter out completely and the efficacy of
history as an exploratory tool of evolution
becomes attenuated and intuitive.
Without the fossils and bones that provide
the entablature of comparative study, which
is the paleontological domain of anthropology,
archeology and the earth sciences that study
such fossil organisms and related remains
(which is what the evidential Darwinian corpus
is all about) the so-called eonists are rendered
empirically sightless and therefore historically,
inquisitorially, gnostically, experimentally
and observationally speechless as far as
any meaningful scientific contribution regarding
earlier evolution (human or otherwise) is
concerned which extends backward in time
beyond a certain chronological point.
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An 'eolith' is a piece of chipped flint which
has the appearance of having been worked
by a human. When they were first discovered
in the mid-nineteenth century they were thought
to be examples of early human tools, and
were used as evidence for the existence of
humans in Europe before the beginning of
the Pleistocene era, more than 1.8m years
ago. Today eoliths are generally thought
to be naturally occurring geological debris,
but collections of them still exist in many
local and national museums. [1] (Ellen. 2008)
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 Whilst we can observe the cultures and tribal
organisations of the most primitive tribes
still extant in our world and we can attempt
to extrapolate these impressions and map
them retrospectively in order to guess what
the attitudes and practices of our primitive
forbears might have been, we eventually hit
the chronological buffers around the time
of the early Paleolithic. In fact the oldest
period of the paleolithic, which extended
from the Eolithic, some I50,000 years ago,
to the Neolithic or New Stone Age (which
began about 7, 000 B. C. and of which we
know more) is comparatively little known
to us apart from what we have learnt from
bone fragments and a few artefacts.
Early dates for bone tools, ornaments and
decorated objects found in sub-Saharan Africa,
North Africa and possibly Israel have led
some to argue that many characteristics of
the Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia are attributable
to the expansion of anatomically and behaviorally
modern humans out of Africa. However, other
researchers believe these developments to
be local or indigenous, reflecting parallel
evolutionary trends.
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The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis)
appear in the fossil record about 400,000
years ago. At their peak, these squat, physically
powerful hunters dominated a wide area spanning
Britain and Iberia in the west, Israel in
the south and Siberia in the east. Neanderthals
(l) were different from our species (r),
but not inferior Meanwhile, Homo sapiens
evolved in Africa, and displaced the Neanderthals
after spreading into Europe about 40,000
years ago. The last known evidence of Neanderthals
comes from Gibraltar and is dated to between
28,000 and 24,000 years ago. Technologically
speaking, there is no clear advantage of
one tool over the other. When we think of
Neanderthals, we need to stop thinking in
terms of 'stupid' or 'less advanced' and
more in terms of 'different'. Our research
disputes a major pillar holding up the long-held
assumption that Homo sapiens was more advanced
than Neanderthals. Technologically speaking,
there is no clear advantage of one tool over
the other. When we think of Neanderthals,
we need to stop thinking in terms of 'stupid'
or 'less advanced' and more in terms of 'different'."Our
research disputes a major pillar holding
up the long-held assumption that Homo sapiens
was more advanced than Neanderthals. It is
time for archaeologists to start searching
for other reasons why Neanderthals became extinct
while our ancestors survived. [2] (Eren.
2008.).
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I hold that all inter-object impingements
are concatenationally predetermined and are
the contemporary nexus of countless former
events. (see Laplace) I am convinced
that the copious empirical fossil evidence
satisfactorily backs up the theory of the
survival of the fittest. For me the abstractive
terms evolution and history are simply useful fictions or handy reifications.
Only the evolving, historical organic entities
matergic singularities (communities
of energised matter) themselves have ever
existed.
The fact that predictability is impossible
is not because causal objects are not subject
to the antecedent impingements of historical
causal objects, or that a putative freedom
of will is possible, but because for us humans
(indeed for anyone or any entity) the exponentially
biramous branches of concatenation are so
complex and the data so far beyond retrieval
it is unrecoverable, that any thought of
foresight or anticipation is a waste of time.
Our ability to make *educated guesses* is
limited to no more than a few concatenational
links backward.
Sometimes, in a court of law, we become privy
to the investigation of past events which
help reveal the concatenational causes of
an accident or crime - but it is seldom that
the protagonists' experiential causal chains
are traced backwards by the prosecution or
defence further than it is considered necessary
for the judge and jury to be influenced in
the matter, except for a few more isolated
and obvious biographical causal links. During
the final stages of a trial the defence team
may bring to the attention of the court the
defendant's unsettled and unhappy early home
life and the nature of the social environment
he endured as being influential with regard
to his criminal activity. This alone is a
tacit recognition that prior events do influence
later behaviour and perhaps are responsible
for certain outcomes..
 We see the boiling black clouds forming the
towering anvil of a cumulonimbus cloud and
then experience a sudden drop in temperature
whilst noticing a rapid drop in barometric
pressure. Such a chain of events allows us
to predict an imminent storm,
 We watch the path of a snooker ball as it
rolls about a crowded table impacting first
this ball and then that ball. It is all hard
to take in for it often happens so quickly,
but if we see the sequence played backward
on a film we can (with a basic understanding
of collision theory and ballistics) understand
why the cue ball ended up in the right hand
corner pocket.
But that is about as far as we can go - we
are concatenationally overwhelmed by the
multiplicity and profusion of causal objects
and their catenulate sequences that snake
back into the past. Such catenulate determinations
involve the physical condition and mental
attitude of the snooker-player, the construction
of the table and its tilt where one part
may be undetectably higher or lower than
another, not forgetting the smoothness of
the baize and if it has been recently ironed.
Then there is the cue and its straightness
of shape, the sphericity of the balls and
the very fabric of the snooker room itself.
Its temperature, humidity and any air movement
which may unbalance the flat plane of the
playing surface and effect the causal objects
involved in the game.
If we were able to trace back such a multitude
of causal data (an impossible task so bizarre
it is foolish of me even to mention it) then
as the great French mathematician Laplace
who strongly believed in causal determinism,
said:
"We may regard the present state of
the universe as the effect of its past and
the cause of its future. An intellect which
at any given moment knew all of the forces
that animate nature and the mutual positions
of the beings that compose it, if this intellect
were vast enough to submit the data to analysis,
could condense into a single formula the
movement of the greatest bodies of the universe
and that of the lightest atom; for such an
intellect nothing could be uncertain and
the future just like the past would be present
before its eyes." [3] (Laplace. Wikipedia)
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It goes without saying that the idea of such
an intellect is preposterous - but Laplace
was perfectly aware of this fact. He was,
as a mathematician and scientist, simply
stating the fact of the way the world appears
for humans, although he knew well that such
a world view can never correspond to the
way the world is for nature or what I call
the mechanical unfolding of the existential
imperative. Things (including electrons fired
like bullets at two slits) may appear chaotic
to the human observer (and indeed in the
past events appeared much more chaotic then
than they do now - because of our better
understanding of physics) but events determined
by previous events are not chaotic. The happenings
we see around us are simply the end products
of a number of sequential impingements of
causal objects that can often be unravelled
and explained by science or even the man
in the street. Lapland's stimulating but
recognisable counterfactual model of an intellect
which at any given moment knew all of the
forces that animate nature and the mutual
positions of the beings that compose it is...
as he would have agreed... an absolute impossibility
- as this account of a famous interaction
between Laplace and Napoleon amply demonstrates:
"Laplace went in state to beg Napoleon
to accept a copy of his work, and the following
account of the interview is well authenticated,
and so characteristic of all the parties
concerned that I quote it in full. Someone
had told Napoleon that the book contained
no mention of the name of God; Napoleon,
who was fond of putting embarrassing questions,
received it with the remark, 'M. Laplace,
they tell me you have written this large
book on the system of the universe, and have
never even mentioned its Creator.' Laplace,
who, though the most supple of politicians,
was as stiff as a martyr on every point of
his philosophy, drew himself up and answered
bluntly, Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là
[I had not need of that hypothesis.] 'Napoleon,
greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange,
who exclaimed, Ah! c'est une belle hypothèse; ça explique
beaucoup de choses. [Ah, but that is such a good hypothesis.
It explains so many things!]" [4] (Rouse
Ball 1908)
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Intellects and Gods do not exist anyway - only intellectualising
causal objects (humans) or that
which is intelligent and ideates exists.
References
[1] Ellen. Roy. The Eolithic Controversy as a Problem in the
History of Science, and of Archaeology in
Particular: an approach from cognitive anthropology. 2008. Principal Investigator: Roy Ellen
Project date: 2007-
2008 Funding: British Academy Partners: Maidstone
Museum.
[2] Eren. Metin.2008. Lead author. University
of Exeter, UK. The Journal of Human Evolution.
2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7582912.stm.
26 August 2008. [3] Laplace. Pierre-Simon,
Marquis de Laplace. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace.
[4] Ball. Rouse Ball 1908) wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace
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