Post at Darwiniana on the question of punctuated equilibrium as treated in the third edition, a selection from the text.

From the Archives to History And Evolution.com: to be upgraded.

A frequently asked question is, What is the eonic effect? The term simply refers to a basic set of three turning points or transitions visible in world history, the birth of civilization, the classical period, with its remarkable so-called ‘Axial Age’.

We speak of the eonic ‘effect’ rather than a theory, since we can detect a pattern but may not be able to explain it so easily. That’s it. However, this pattern conceals something very deep indeed, so a short answer to the question needs to be followed by a close study. Actually the methods created by our so-called eonic model (a formal scheme of periodization using the idea of transitions) usefully force us to examine world history in depth. We keep thinking we understand our historical past, but we rarely consider historical totalities in their full scope.

This seems like a strange way to deal with history. Let it seem strange, just try it, until its enigmatic significance becomes clear. The eonic effect is the simplest case of a non-random pattern possible, intermittency in a sequence, and, amazingly, world history shows the evidence for it.

Note on the term ‘eonic’: the term ‘eonic’ is a pun on ‘eon’ and the term ‘eonic’ from digital signal processing’, or DSP. (Type ‘eonic’ into google). DSP devices sample waves a discrete intervals. (Don’t worry about the DSP metaphor, that’s all it is, a metaphor, never pursued in the text). It can be taken as a synonym for ‘intermittent’: the ‘eonic’, or ‘intermittent’ effect. A feedback device switches on intermittently, and is not a continuous process. So feedback devices are ‘eonic’ in our sense. The ‘eonic’ model is a discrete-continuous model, because it breaks things up into a series of intermittent stages.

World history seems to switch on and off in periods of rapid change in a precise pattern. It is quite mysterious, so look at the Axial period. A very sudden burst of rapid cultural change and innovation, that only lasts a few centuries. ??? That’s part of the ‘eonic’ effect.

Note the resemblance to the idea of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ The eonic effect shows a clear pattern of punctuations interrupting equilibrium. The term as proposed by Gould the Darwinian biologist is given a restricted meaning in its own context. So we won’t use it, which is too bad since it would have worked well in our subject.

Time for this blog, so far specialized around ‘Site News’ to branch out into history, evolution and the eonic effect. Here, to begin, is an interesting book on the father of history, Herodotus.
Students of the eonic effect will note that Herodotus, and the emergence of ‘history’, is correlated with the eonic effect itself, Herodotus appearing neatly in the Greek Transition.
Arms and the Man
What was Herodotus trying to tell us?
Daniel Mendelsohn

History—the rational and methodical study of the human past—was invented by a single man just under twenty-five hundred years ago; just under twenty-five years ago, when I was starting a graduate degree in Classics, some of us could be pretty condescending about the man who invented it and (we’d joke) his penchant for flowered Hawaiian shirts.

Toward A Postdarwinian Liberalism

WHEE has now been discounted to $16.75 at Amazon, cheap!

World History And The Eonic Effect, Third Edition

There is a file of Stanley Salthe on natural selection and complexity in the /docs directory:

http://eonix-papers.com/docs/NatselinComplexityALife.pdf

The third edition is now available at Amazon! World History And The Eonic Effect

The hardcover is not yet listed.

Be careful of the second hand copies for sale: these won’t be third edition.

A new intro page: WH&EE, Third Edition.

Update:
I have changed the format of the index page, putting the essay series into the background.

The longer essays, although they have had a lot of hits, are too long, and distract from the introduction to the book. The essays are still there but are displaced to general website archive.

Get the book!

Another short intro essay: Recalibrating the idea of evolution