World History and the Eonic Effect

Rating:
Summary: Hold On
Review: Here we have a book that commits one of the greatest taboos of modern science- it challenges Darwin. And it does a great job. While it must be said that I found aspects of the book unclear, I enjoyed the journey it took me on. Landon is convinced that history, if looked at with an open, flexible mind, is trying to tell us something. It is telling us that there are clear patterns of change which speak strongly against any attempt to explain away culture in a purely mechanistic/reductionistic fashion. I also delighted in the sort of creative chaos which this book demonstrates. It it obvious that Landon's imagination is fully engaged with a search for more plausible explanations of the evolution of culture. In fact, personally, I take this book to be an example of the beginning direction in which science must move if it is to begin penetrating the surface of things, if it is to begin presenting us with true knowledge, instead of abstract information based on hollow models. One of the primary indicators that somebody is engaging with this transformation in science, is, I think, the quality of imagination that can be experienced in their work. Now, obviously, I don't mean imagination in the positivistic sense of the word in which it is striped of any access to objectivity, but in the Coleridgian/Barfieldian/Goethean/Steinerian sense in which the imagination is understood as THE aspect of reality which, if applied in a trained, systematic manner, we must use to gain access into the inward aspects of reality. Unfortunately, modern science has quickly swept the 'inward' out, and we are left with ,as Barfield called it, "an epistemology of outwardness with no inwardness". I believe the ideas which this book is trying to present would do well to be grounded in a more explicit theory of knowledge- one which allows the very reasons this book had to be written in the first place to be addressed. The philosophical works of Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner are wonderful examples of this sort of epistemology. Anybody interested in this approach would want to read, "History, Guilt and Habit" and "Saving the Appearances" by Owen Barfield and "Truth and Knowledge" and "A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe" by Steiner.

The Eonic Effect should be read on two levels. Obviously, for the content, but also with a feeling for the quality of thinking which is going into its production. It doesn't matter if it is unclear in some places because actually, often, it is the places I find it a little unclear in which I sense the beginnings of the objective imagination mentioned above. A great and very particular book which I think will be treasured by many interesting souls over the years. I look forward to catching Landon's next work.

ps: just a little personal gaurantee: in fifty years it won't be nearly the big deal it is today to challenge Darwin because there will be so many strong movements in science which, while appreciating his efforts to articulate evolution, will be based on much more convincing grounds. If you stand back and look at the literature surrounding the Darwin debate, it is clear that we aren't fixated on Darwin's theory because it brings us the most insight, but because the possibility of having to let it go for new, challenging ideas, is terrifying...especially ideas which challenge the greatest taboo of all in science: the taboo which does not allow us to question the assumption that mind with all its creative activity is a product of nature with all its mechanical, blind forces.

Rating:
Summary: Hold On
Review: Here we have a book that commits one of the greatest taboos of modern science- it challenges Darwin. And it does a great job. While it must be said that I found aspects of the book unclear, I enjoyed the journey it took me on. Landon is convinced that history, if looked at with an open, flexible mind, is trying to tell us something. It is telling us that there are clear patterns of change which speak strongly against any attempt to explain away culture in a purely mechanistic/reductionistic fashion. I also delighted in the sort of creative chaos which this book demonstrates. It it obvious that Landon's imagination is fully engaged with a search for more plausible explanations of the evolution of culture. In fact, personally, I take this book to be an example of the beginning direction in which science must move if it is to begin penetrating the surface of things, if it is to begin presenting us with true knowledge, instead of abstract information based on hollow models. One of the primary indicators that somebody is engaging with this transformation in science, is, I think, the quality of imagination that can be experienced in their work. Now, obviously, I don't mean imagination in the positivistic sense of the word in which it is striped of any access to objectivity, but in the Coleridgian/Barfieldian/Goethean/Steinerian sense in which the imagination is understood as THE aspect of reality which, if applied in a trained, systematic manner, we must use to gain access into the inward aspects of reality. Unfortunately, modern science has quickly swept the 'inward' out, and we are left with ,as Barfield called it, "an epistemology of outwardness with no inwardness". I believe the ideas which this book is trying to present would do well to be grounded in a more explicit theory of knowledge- one which allows the very reasons this book had to be written in the first place to be addressed. The philosophical works of Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner are wonderful examples of this sort of epistemology. Anybody interested in this approach would want to read, "History, Guilt and Habit" and "Saving the Appearances" by Owen Barfield and "Truth and Knowledge" and "A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe" by Steiner.

The Eonic Effect should be read on two levels. Obviously, for the content, but also with a feeling for the quality of thinking which is going into its production. It doesn't matter if it is unclear in some places because actually, often, it is the places I find it a little unclear in which I sense the beginnings of the objective imagination mentioned above. A great and very particular book which I think will be treasured by many interesting souls over the years. I look forward to catching Landon's next work.

ps: just a little personal gaurantee: in fifty years it won't be nearly the big deal it is today to challenge Darwin because there will be so many strong movements in science which, while appreciating his efforts to articulate evolution, will be based on much more convincing grounds. If you stand back and look at the literature surrounding the Darwin debate, it is clear that we aren't fixated on Darwin's theory because it brings us the most insight, but because the possibility of having to let it go for new, challenging ideas, is terrifying...especially ideas which challenge the greatest taboo of all in science: the taboo which does not allow us to question the assumption that mind with all its creative activity is a product of nature with all its mechanical, blind forces.

Rating:
Summary: Darwinist book reviewers wanted, please within this century.
Review: This book is huge. Meaning in length and in import. John Landon has synthesized all of world history, look in the bibliography, enough books to last a lifetime, look at his Amazon.com reviews, a smaller number, still enough to last most people a very long time, look at this book itself, it is very detailed. What do you get when you synthesize this world's past? The eonic effect. There are three great turning points-the rise of civilization with Egypt and Sumer at -3000, the rise of all the great religious and philosophical traditions with the Axial age, (-600 to -400), and the rise of the modern during 1500 to 1800. You'll notice a periodicity of 2400 years. Not a predictive aspect of the book, just a fact that we can observe, and that we could perhaps nail down conclusively with more evidence stretching back into deep time, though around -5000 and -8000 there are suggestive concentrations of history. So random variation and selective survival, Darwinian evolution, is not applicable to humanity. In reality there is periodic morphogenesis, which natural selection can't account for. But Darwinism is not really the book's subject. There are many other books which easily dispatch that strange theory. (Beyond Natural Selection, by Robert Wesson. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, by Michael Denton). World History and the Eonic Effect is not a piece of theology, either. The world's religions, non-adaptive human endeavors, are of course one of the book's subjects, but the book cannot endorse theories of a deity, all of which for Landon face the same problems as Darwinian theory, except that now god needs to be explained instead of man. To me, god is that which naturally arises out of "nothing." How to explain it? It can't be explained, but it can make sense, if you're feeling right. To me, the complexity of the human brain proves intelligent design. One hundred trillion neuronal interconnections is too large a number, compared even to four billion years. 25,000 perfect, sublimely inspired in their level of genius, connections on average, every year the earth has existed? Seventy trillion cells in the human body, harmonically grown like an infinite symphony under the guidance of a string of base pairs a few billion long? It's not possible, except that it happens, as Wesson says. So read WH&EE today, or perhaps tomorrow, because it helps to be in the right mood/mode when diving into a study this expansive. Landon's writing is good to stare at, read if possible, think about, and ultimately tell everyone about, because the eonic effect is staring us in the face, and it's kind of embarrassing that we don't talk about it. How will the Darwinists explain this one away?

Rating:
Summary: an astonishing range and depth / captivation
Review: when you read this book, you feel wrapped up in the struggle of world history. And you should, and you are. You feel like you have finally found a voice of sanity, against the dogmatic darwinists, and the fantastic diests. A third way. Directionality, without a director. Without teleology. The social is our subject--values. A value-free objective theory of history would give us a less meaning'd flatness of time, where we could not say what was good, and what was bad. But some know. There is freedom, there is equality, at least a bit of it, these days. And when the social tends towards these things, we say it is good. There is creation, artistry, and some can perceive it. This book just keeps going on and on, meandering through all the intellectual and material craziness of history, and it reveals to you what you yourself would know had you read as much, and with as much vision, as Landon. We thank him for this work. I dare say, if you read this, your symbolic prison of intellectual confusion based on an entire culture of deception and blindness, will be exploded, and you may now be in the position to understand woman and man, and to bring to light a new age, where myth no longer rules--where nerve and creativity rule, unhindered by all the false theories of history, of reality, that are so seemingly easily undone in the course of this expansive, illuminating work. Great show.