In our current predicament, I believe that we can find inspiration in the period that the German philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age because it was pivotal to the spiritual development of humanity. I From about 900 to 200 BeE, * in four distinct regions, the great world traditions that have continued to nourish humanity came into being: Confucianism and Daoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. This was the period of the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, and Jeremiah, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. During this period of intense creativity, spiritual and philosophical geniuses pioneered an entirely new kind of human experience. Many of them worked anonymously, but others became lumi¬naries who can still fill us with emotion because they show us what a human being should be. The Axial Age was one of the most seminal peri¬ods of intellectual, psychological, philosophical, and religious change in recorded history; there would be nothing comparable until the Great Western Transformation, which created our own scientific and techno¬logical modernity.

Armstrong speaks of four Axial regions, but that misses the point. There may be dozens. Something is acting across Eurasia in a manner we can’t easily understand.
Armstrong restricts the case of Greece to rationalism, totally misunderstanding what is going on. The Greek Axial interval is chock full of massive innovations in all directions, and it is a total transformation of culture.

One of the strangest side effects of the study of the eonic effect is the way it indirectly clarifies the confusions in antiquity over cycles of civilization.
We tend to reject all of this out of hand (but it always resurfaces, witness the debates currently over decline), but the simple periodization of the eonic model unexpectedly uncovers the empirical reasons for the confusion, and also shows clearly that, speaking empirically, the ‘new age’ effect is real (with many qualifications, and expressed in a different terminology), and is especially visible in the phenomenon of the Axial Age. This is a tricky subject, but it is possible, quite easy in fact, to restate this issue in terms that can satisfy the strictest scientific demand for rigorous analysis. All we have to do is lay down a detailed timeline, with an associated geographical component, and look at the sudden way the cyclical phenomenon stands out. Whatever the explanation.
This is at first preposterous, but the facts speak for themselves. Nothing like hard facts to kill a theory, here the ‘theory’ that non-random patterns don’t exist.

The prime objective is to describe a beautiful discovery: a non-random pattern in world history. This is called the ‘eonic effect’. The term ‘eonic’ is a pun on ‘eon’ and ‘eonic’ (as in digital sampling electronics, type ‘eonic in google’ and see all the DSP companies listed).
Even superficial inspection of world history has often suggested a ‘macrohistorical’ dynamic at work, witness the rising literature on the Axial Age, smoking gun evidence of something going on in terms of a dynamic. But the literature on the Axial Age has ended in confusion, because of distraction of the emergence of two world religions in the Axial Age. But this period shows that this aspect of the Axial interval is not the real issue: many other things occur in sync, among them the Axial interval of the Greek Archaic. Still more confusion has arisen from Karen Armstrong’s book The Great Transformation.

A careful method is required to sort out this confusion….(continued)

The Axial Age is really an attempt to describe one section of the so-called ‘eonic effect. The eonic effect is a complex non-random pattern of universal history and is described using a simple model of world history based on the idea of ‘eonic transitions’, as intervals in an ‘eonic sequence’, which is evidence of the ‘eonic evolution of civilization’. Don’t waste time worrying about the term ‘eonic’, use another word, like ‘intermittent’, as here the short duration of a swift moving period. The term ‘eonic’ as ‘intermittent’ in the context of the Axial Age is confusing because we are seeing historical discontinuity and can’t account for it. It is a little like ‘boom and bust’,   in economic cycles, or punctuated equilibrium in biology, but here with important differences. The transitions show directional change, and the initiation of a new era in a cascade of creative advances. These come within a brief time frame in the ‘classical phase’ at the onset of our source traditions, and this interval has three parts, from about -900 to -600, then the onset of a new period in itself, which rapidly shows a falloff. Note that this falloff is visible almost within two centuries in Greece. It is clear in the case of Israel, as the age of the ‘Prophets’ passes and the Bible begins to consolidate. This kind of ‘eonic model’ makes complete sense of the overall phenomenon, but still doesn’t explain. It is strange, but fortunate, that such a simple model can explain as much as it does.

The evolution of civilization shows three great beats like this, the first visible at the beginning of civilization where we see an earlier ‘axial’ age, but don’t recognize it, because its emphasis is different, and the stages of advance are more primitive. The study of the fundamental unit of historical analysis includes both the state and the ‘religion’ and the religions of the Axial Age are very advanced developments and reactions against the first beginnings of the state so clear at the time of the rise of Sumer and Dynastic Egypt. By the time of the Old Testament we see two, or more, great reactions to the corruption and decline of the original states as exploitative empires. Note the elegant and wondrous appearance of ‘Israel’ as an idea and a state (actually two states, the ‘Israel’ disappearing!). This play on the idea of the state and the emergence of the religion from this husk is one of the most dramatic aspects of the eonic sequence. Thus we see that Israel is connected in its reaction and novel evolution which has gone before, something indirectly indicated quite clearly in the myths of the Bible. But let us note that the birth of democracy in Greece is another of these ‘reactions’ and ‘rebirths’ in eonic time of the original foundations of the state, passing away in Egypt and Mesopotamia into their ossified endings. We should consider however that at the birth of the state in Egypt and Sumer we see something as important, in seminal fashion, for the development of civilization as this second phase.

Our secular age is now reacting against this religious ecumenization born in the second phase of our sequence, but that does not change its historical iimportance and the immense task of unification cultural and otherwise that it brought to man in the eras of its great flourishing, notwithstanding all the immense problems and calamities these religions have suffered. We should be clear as to the confusion of the world ‘religion’, now taken as a form of private belief. It was always so, and yet at the same time religion, as we see from the eonic effect, comes into existence as a play on the state, and the very idea of a real Israel and a later idea of a ‘kingdom of God’ makes this play transparent. The modern Reformation, let us not forget, was a concealed political revolution against a complex theocratic ’state’ of medieval Catholicism. And right on schedule our system is about its business with the remains of the previous period, just as it was in the time of the challenge to Mesopotamian and Egyptian eras.

The modern period seems to follow the Hellenic tradition as renewed in modern democratic state systems. All well and good, but our ‘eonic’ model shows the way this is partitioned into the different intervals, indeed shows us that the ‘modern age’, ’seculum or age-period’, reflects this eonic sequencing.

Note Jaspers also speaks of the ‘axis’ of history. Yet this is outside of the Axial period. This inconsistency throws Jaspers off, when he has clearly stumbled on the a very important issue of evolutionary parallelism. The question of the onset of the Christian religion is easily solved by seeing it as the first Christians saw it, in very general terms, as reflecting the period of the Old Testament, which they saw as an era of revelation. It was an eonic transition period, which is quite different! But the point is the difference between ‘generation’ and ‘realization’. Then everything falls into place, and, indeed, we see exactly the same phenomenon in India, of generation and realization, as between the Hinayana and the Mahayana phases. The question needs to be studied detached from the question of religion.  For this Axial  concept is being used as a surrogate for the ‘age of revelation’, and it won’t work. Note that our process generates two religions, one theistic, the other simply ‘null’, if not ‘atheistic’. The Buddhist were residual ex-polytheists, perhaps. Whatever the case, it is important to consider relative transformation, e.g. acceleration or amplification, growth, not absolute origins.

It is almost impossible to sort out the phenomenon indicated without a broader context of rigorous intervals laid down against the data to see what they show. This results in the frequency hypothesis, which may or may not be correct, but will indicate the broader context of the period of ‘Axial phase’. Then we see the first ‘axial’ age at the beginning of civilization, so to speak. These are not then ‘axial ages’ at all, but phases of transformation.

The study of the eonic effect resolves all the issues of the ‘Axial Age’ pointblank and shows, ( not necessarily with a full explanation of the full enigma in the large!), the overall context of the phenomenon, including the difficulties many have had with it. Our eonic approach to history is essentially a powerful technique of periodization (actually double periodization, interval analysis), and quickly uncovers both the significance of the so-called Axial Age, and the reason it is often misperceived. Much effort in the field of evolutionary theory and/or philosophy of history is speculative, or attempts the search for ‘historical laws’, which can be in vain. Using periodization we can see the the emergence of civilization falls into a definite rhythm. Indeed, if we adopt our eonic timing method, we suddenly notice a strange things about world history, it is on-off in some strange fashion. It is like an economist, he looks backward, and discovers economies have a structure. But note that this structure cannot violate the principle of ‘free activity’. Yet, an overall pattern often stands out. Free of crypto-deterministic assumptions, we see an intermittent effect. If we were to model the data as a ’system’, we would, so to speak, look through our toolkit book of differential equations for the section that says, ‘discrete-continuous’ type of equations. This is the clue behind the concept of the Axial Age. A clock shows this effect, a discrete system to measure hours and minutes embedded in a continuous stream of time, and so on.  This ‘double aspect’ is essential, since we cannot say either that determinism or free will holds, the result is mixed. We must wrest degrees of freedom from determination.

The Axial Age concept never quite made it into the realm of historical sociology, with its current domination by the ‘economic theories of history’, which tend to simply ignore or misanalyze the history of religion. The ‘axial’ effect makes scared rabbits of obsessive self-proclaimed materialists, but its correct understanding might deliver historical thinking from its reductionist monomania, without reinventing transcendentalism. Debating materialism and idealism is a complete waste of time, look at the data. The evidence could be indirect indication of an evolutionary dynamic. It resembles a discrete-continuous model of a special kind. The problem is that Axial Age concept is taken in isolation. Once we see what is afoot, we are suspicious of a system operating in a natural frequency, and we wonder at its period. Try 2400 years backward and forward. It’s hard to know what to do with this conclusion, but the concordance overall is exact, though fragmentary.

Our 1-2-3  pattern, in a limited form, was thus almost seen by Karl Jaspers, summarizing earlier observers, but he fumbled the ball and lost the thread of what he was trying to understand, in part because he wished to reconcile his findings with a sort of teleological Augustinian compromise to save the great religion of Christianity as unique, and which didn’t even arise in his Axial period.  The data was telling a plain story of another kind, although Jaspers’ classic treatment is of interest.. The great religions of Christianity and Islam are later phenomena, while their sources, which are so poorly recorded, seem to concentrate in a mysterious period ca. -600, along with the Greek Enlightenment, which is the first ’secular’ age. This makes no sense. What’s going on?

There isn’t, or wasn’t, really an Axial Age at all (indeed Jaspers could see as much, but his idea has become associated with a sort of historical equivalent to revelation). But the phenomena that he was grappling with were very real, and show a mysterious logic of evolutionary parallelism, in a brief period somewhat earlier, from about -900 to -600. This era is confused with its first climactic outcome, the age of Classical Greece, for example.But the real source is earlier, ca. -800 onward, as in the quiet but revolutionary period of Archaic Greece. The whole thing is quite over by -400. That is one part of the data. But it is only subset of a greater whole.

Some would now think that in a postmodernist age we will have a new ‘Axial Age’ to deliver us from modernism, as a gesture of renewed religious post-secularism. That is dangerous thinking, and a misunderstanding of the Axial concept (which is hard to understand, because it is not properly defined). The irony is, the rise of the modern is the only ‘new Axial period’ we will get. This idea is mentioned in Karen Armstrong’s recent new book, The Battle for God, in the context of the rise of fundamentalism. The reviewer for the Times notes:

We lie on the cusp of a great religious experiment, one similar to the upheaval that led to the decline of paganism and the rise of reformers and prophets during the so-called Axial Age (800 BC-200 BC) when the most important thoughts worth thinking were first thought. Regretfully, for the moment, all innovation, passion and energy lie with the adversaries of secular democratic society.

It is hard to see how democratic society has lost its innovation. But, in any case, as to some future ‘axial age’,  it won’t happen that way. Modernism is generates a postmodern reaction for many reasons, but the results are still modern. We feel ‘postmodern’ because of our distance from the explosive period of the rise of the early modern, which created our age, and then produced a great deal of confusion in the midst of ‘progress’. The idea is under challenge, but that cannot result in the complete abandonment of the idea. Since we can stand back and look at the outcome of something we call ‘modernism’, it is simply the way we define periods to speak of ‘postmodernism’. We can move on from that, but it would be hard to surpass the Enlightenment period. To speak of the postmodern, we use all the concepts spawned by modernism itself.  But if we deviate from its basic core, we can only go backwards. The point should be obvious, but we live at a point and time where many are attacking ‘Enlightenment rationality’ as a ‘postmodern’ gesture. We can attack rationality all we please, but it won’t make any difference, since the Enlightenment thought up the idea of attacking ‘rationality’, also.

In any case, the only solution for the future is creative advance that transcends the past, and integrates all that man really is. It is egregious to attack rationality. Take a vacation if rational smoke is coming out of your ears. But to abandon ‘rationality’ simply won’t work. It can only become worse. The failure of rationality is generally the failure to use it, and the mechanical tactics of ‘rationalist fanatics’ to hound all forms of discourse except narrow Enlightenment cliches. The future is never so easy, since we are still drawn toward the phantoms of antiquity in the name of tradition. And this can never succeed, since we don’t even know what that past really is. The idea that modern Protestantism represents traditional religion is quite ludicrous, since it is a modern creation.

After saying this, we should consider now the Axial concept.One danger in the Axial idea is the way it restates the myth of revelation in a secular guise, when, in fact, it is but one aspect of an historical sequence reconciling slow and fast evolution.   The idea of postmodern religion is simply a misdefinition. What does ‘religion’ mean? A close look, and indeed Jaspers was well aware of this, shows the parallel emergence in a sort of Axial fashion, of the classic Greek Enlightenment, in parallel with the birth of Judaic history, Indian Buddhism, the world of Confucius, etc,… It has nothing to do with religion, but with a mysterious creativity that breathed on the dying world of the Assyrians as the decrepit remnant of a still earlier epoch. Really the Axial concept is a clue to the evolution of religion, but one that requires a complete retreatment, confer, World History and the Eonic Effect, with its frequency hypothesis.

We can easily resolve the issue with our other, eonic, approach. It is the middle beat in a greater series. The ‘Axial Age’ is wrongly named and given the wrong interval, is not unique, and shows the second massive stroke of the eonic effect. It has nothing inherently to do with religion, a term bandied about, but rarely used with care, historically. It is misleading to attempt some philosophic generalization of an ‘Axial Age’, since the basic dynamic is revolving around something deeper, at the foundations of civilization. Once we generalize the terms of discourse to the broader evolution of civilization as such, the pieces fall into place, and we find the earlier stroke of the drum in early Sumer and Egypt. We see that the eonic mechanism is not associated with its content, and like something from electronics, simply surges in its proper interval, transforming whatever it in its wake.

One of the enigmas of world history is the phenomenon of the Axial Age. The study of the eonic effect can throw especial light on the resolution of its riddle, and the complexity of its interpretation. The discovery of the Axial Age in the nineteenth century is one of the fruits of modern historiography as it has become a global study for the first time. The Axial data is a reminder to not take history for granted and to consider that the issue of historical evolution must remain open as long we are confined to short intervals of chronicle, or isolated streams of cultural emergence. And the question arises as to how we should understand this spectacular phenomenon in which multiple civilizations in parallel undergo a relative transformation of their content.

The classic work of Karl Jaspers, describing in broad strokes the basics of the Axial interval in history, nonetheless falls short of what would seem the true significance of the whole period in question. And yet he came close to seeing the eonic effect behind the Axial Age, actually describing it without drawing the probable right conclusion. Jaspers is, and remains, a complex figure, and his theological acumen was nonetheless steeped in the philosophy of history, whose problematic status in the history of philosophy conceals the clue to the Axial conundrum.

Jaspers’ successors have, if anything, further confused, or even covered up the phenomenon, whether in sociological explanations that are scientistic, or religious interpretations which have run away with the data trying to fit the Axial Age into the metaphysical straightjacket of religious obsessions over an ‘Age of Revelation’. But the data is stubborn and won’t yield to the agendas of either scientific history (such as it is) or religious traditionalism.

Religious preconceptions have thrown observers of the Axial Age off the scent, and further have generated much confused thinking as to a possible ’second Axial Age’ in some kind of postmodern challenge to modernity or secularism. The antidote is to take a closer look at the Axial period itself to see its broadest scope, and proceed to consider what we mean by the evolution of religion in the context of the emergence of civilization.

An approach using science, or pre-scientific exploration, is nonetheless indicated as long we can remain open to what the data shows and ask, as if for the first time, the meaning of the question, What is a science of history? The study of the eonic effect is a major step in this direction, and is facilitated by a simple type of model that can be a kind of ‘theory prep’, allowing us to first observe what we are trying to explain, and then compare this to known systems studied by systems analysis. Whether this preliminary model can proceed to a science can and should remain an open question. And that question is, finally, Is there a science of history? Or do we need to reformulate our assumptions to encompass a broader interpretation of what we mean by science. In fact, the data itself will provide the clues, leading finally to an extraordinary insight into the question of evolution itself.

This short series will attempt to consider the Axial Age in a larger context beyond the data that lies at its interior. That is, we will try to describe the boundaries and overall structure of the Axial period, without trying to give a final interpretation or synthesis of the religious, philosophical, or other data that seem to describe it. We can discover Taoism to have an Axial signature without claiming to have given a complete or final interpretation of what that is.

World history shows unmistakable evidence of a massive parallel effect in the period ca -900 to -600+ across the field of Eurasia, Rome, Greece, the Near East, India, and China. This began to be noticed in the last century and led to the ambiguous idea of the Axial Age, but its character is hard to understand until we see the greater pattern of the so-called eonic effect.  This extraordinary evidence of the Axial Age by itself shows a non-random pattern in world history. The evidence is hard to explain because of the independent parallel emergence of greater advances in separated geographical regions.

The concept of the Axial Age is relatively unknown, although it has a considerable sideline scholarly literature. It is an embarrassment to secular thinkers, and Darwinians. Right in our back yard the most stupefying contradiction to random evolution. As noted, the term ‘Axial Age’ refers to Jaspers’ study of the period ca. -800 to -200 and focuses on the perception of parallel evolution that began to be noticed in the nineteenth century in the generation after Hegel’s Grand History burst on the scene, followed by the rise of positivistic and evolutionary historiography. In the words of Jaspers,

The most extraordinary events are concentrated in this period. Confucius and Lao-tse were living in China, all the schools of Chinese philosophy came into being, including those of Mo-ti, Chuang-tse, Lieh-tsu and a host of others; India produced the Upanishads and Buddha and, like China, ran the whole gamut of philosophical possibilities down to skepticism, to materialism , sophism and nihilism; in Iran Zarathustra taught a challenging view of the world as a struggle between good and evil; in Palestine the prophets made their appearance, from Elijah, by way of Isaiah and Jeremiah to Deutero-Isaiah; Greece witnessed the appearance of Homer, of the Philosophers—Parmenides, Heraclitus and Plato—of the tragedians, Thucydides and Archimedes. Everything implied by these names developed during these few centuries almost simultaneously in China, India, and the West, without any one of these regions knowing of the others.

World History and the Eonic Effect contains a complete solution to the Axial question on the level of periodization.  However, such a statement will not be clear at first. A solution is not an explanation, and the work of Jaspers is very significant, even as we slightly modify his formulation. The issue is one of resolving power, applied to the immense structure of world history. What are we seeing. We can’t take the histories of Israel at face value, but even with the contribution of Biblical Criticism, the data remains extraordinary. Jaspers is on the right track, but is still ambivalent about the questions of religious evolution.

One can only recommend a careful study of world history in light of the eonic effect to get the issues straight. The problem perhaps is that this introduces our ‘frequency hypothesis’, which takes the question to another level, which is controversial. One way or another, learning and unlearning the ‘axial’ approach can be  useful.  The result of our ’solution’  is another question, and the equivocation of a complex naturalism that is too mechanical to be spiritual and too close to ’smart evolution’ to be mechanical. The problem arises with questions of the type, ‘what causes the Axial Age’? Our tactic is phenomenological periodization, and the detection of a kind of phasing mechanism operating in discrete stages. This is the reason for the Kantian material, which can help to see the tricky nature of such a question. The eonic model clarifies ‘what is happening’ and has its own ‘how does it work’ logic, but it remains almost more baffling than it was before: the question resembles the noumenon/phenomenon distinction of Kant. One problem with Jaspers’ approach, as Toynbee pointed out, is that the ‘axial age’ doesn’t include all the ‘axial’ effects, e.g. the birth of Christianity and Islam, or, or the other end, the early forms of monotheism in proto-Zoroastrianism, etc… This pattern is strong evidence for a frequency system, for the change comes on schedule independently of the content, which has its own history.  Consider a sun-lamp and a garden. The content, plants, of the garden and the overall system are distinct things. The sunlamp does not invent plants! In the same way the ‘Axial Age’ does not invent religions, as such, which were there outstanding.  Further, the concept tends to be used on religious phenomena, but that misses the entire point that its synchrony includes many phenomena not conventionally religious, such as the birth of science and philosophy. We must master the concepts of relative beginnings, as ‘transitions’, then the content will be seen to be under transformation, but not necessarily at its absolute starting point. History is homogenous, which means it can produce ‘axial’ effects at all times. If we find them clustered, then we must find some different, special explanation, using a term different than ‘axial’. Clearly, to an electronics mind, this is a phase problem, and these problems Jaspers had leave us with a smile, he was right, but fumbled the ball just as he got it right. We will no doubt do the same, so don’t laugh.

• Note also that Jaspers’ title, the Origin and Goal of History bespeaks his Christian perception with an idea of teleology lurking. The correct treatment of historical causality and teleology is not possible with this data taken in isolation. A careful consideration of Kantian thinking here can be useful and will serve as a reminder that teleology is not part of scientific methodology, and must be handled, if at all, in a special way. yet Kant did allow such thinking, and the so-called teleomechanists of the generation before Darwin, influenced biology very considerably in a way now can back to the fore.  So Jaspers fine treatment veers away from historical sociology normally considered. Our stance is to consider a form of empirical directionality cut off at the beginning and end, since we don’t know, and take that by itself, first as data. This is not a rejection of teleological thinking, only a warning that confusion will arise, and that the idea cannot be brought into scientific explanation at the drop of the hat. Directionality as intermittent action is one realization of a possible unknown teleology, the how. That is, we seem to see a system changing direction, possible evidence for a long range process we do not see. And this must distinguish the actions of individuals and the action of the system, a very treacherous ground. The teleological myths of the Israelites are the output of the system modified by men and seen filtered in their perspectives, as they observed in their own way the history of their times. So be careful of how you analyze this phenomenon. We have no consistent methodology to analyze such a system.

Our dates seem different from those of Jaspers, with his Axial Age from -800 to -200, but the end date is far too late, and includes already a part of the fall-off period in the spectacular ‘fast advance’ that we clock somewhat differently, but it amounts to the same thing. The issue, for us, is the generative periods,  versus their initial takeoff, and then latter outcome. Thus the Classical Age after -600  resounds with spectacular effects, but the quieter, almost invisible, period just before, as in Archaic Greece, shows the seminal point. Note this is the period of the birth of the first democracy, from the many earlier thriving republics of Archaic Greek period. Setting up  some form of republic (in the real sense)  is an important step on the way to democracy, and is rare in ancient history.  Indeed the Old Testament makes this question of generative periods clear with its unwitting periodization of the history of Israel, the tell tale ‘prophetic’ phenomenon appearing to surge after -800. This does not include the period from Abraham to Solomon. Only the phase band. It is confusing at first, but the Old Testament is unwittingly describing an ‘eonic’ or discrete era inside a continuous one. This era was not yet monotheistic! That consolidates after the period or interval. This is the core period, and does not include the tales of Moses before around -900. The Exodus myth now is considered to arise near the time of the Exile. Note again that the Old Testament is roughly coming into existence from before, yet really crystallizes around -600+. Be careful here, for you must have the facts, and until the facts are clear, saying what is an Axial effect will prove tricky.  In any case, by -400 the results of the explosive period of change is well over, and matters begin to consolidate as new traditions. Note the extraordinary timing of this phenomenon. Almost to a generation, around -400, the character of emergence changes, as for example in Greek tragedy, as it flowers rapidly then wanes as a creative art form. Over and over this clustering of effects leaves us confounded by an analytical problem that has no simple explanations, beware of speculation.  This is not a simple problem. For example, it is essential to consider cross diffusion between each of our target zones, before speaking of synchronous emergence. But once we do that we see that the most extraordinary thing has occurred, parallel emergence in five, at least, separate areas, and within a short interval of centuries a massive new era of civilization is underway.

This is a huge subject, made difficult by the lack of real facts, e.g. the exact facts of the Old Testament era before the Exile. The clearest case, and the best place to start,  is the Greek, since it is rich in opposites, and clearly has no relation with the frequent religious interpretation give the ‘axial’ concept. The indications here are very brief. World History shows a mysterious evolutionary parallelism in which there is a sudden take-off across the Eurasian continent, at the source of our classical traditions. This is not the same as the Axial age concept, which is a near miss.

Summary: No, there wasn’t an Axial age, but… World History shows us one of the most remarkable evolutionary patterns, in fragmentary form, dead center in the sequence of civilization. The ‘derandomizing’ pattern of multiple civilizations rapidly consolidating in parallel began to be noticed in the last century, and was dubbed the Axial Age by Karl Jaspers. His treatment doesn’t work, there was no ‘Axial’ age, but we can easily recover serendipitously the real phenomenon by studying where Jaspers went wrong.

Summary 2 Yes, there emphatically was an ‘Axial’ age (in quotation marks), but… It can confuse the issue to try and make a correction in the ‘axial’ periodization, when the point being indicated is in many ways transparent. The problem is the name, ‘axial’. One thinks of Laotse, by the way, an ‘Axial’ figure. The minute you name something intangible, there is a problem. But here, the problem is the difference of scale between big and little history, and the difficulty of characterizing large-scale historical events.  What are we referring to? Evolution, god, celestial cycles, revelation? You see, we can only look at historical data, but we never see the mechanism. But we do see clear evidence of an unseen historical dynamic at work in the interval we would call an ‘axial age’. But the label can get us in trouble. That’s why we speak of the ‘eonic transition’, ET5, a term of global coordinate geometry, as one of a series of geo-focal transformation regions in particular time slices. Then the significance of what occurs there, in clusters, can be assessed without labels getting in the way. We would have the same problem with the term ‘evolution’ unless we restrict its use to an empirical map.

• The importance of the ‘Axial Age’ concept We can confuse the issue with over-analysis. The point is to get a grip on, ’see’, the massive almost ‘Gaian’ global evolution of parallel streams in a sudden burst of advance like a tidal wave that breaks around -600. The Axial Age data is direct smoking gun evidence of something extraordinary that current historical sociology would rather not see. Even as Darwin was writing this data was becoming clear, and got deep-sixed early on. And yet, once we see this ‘axial phase’ for what it is our views on the descent of man must change forever. This shows ‘real evolution in action’. To use the term ‘evolution’, which we will, is almost as much begging the question as the use of transcendental conceptualizing. The issues are ‘transcendental’ in a Kantian sense, and we will, in the eonic effect, use this approach to obviate the metaphysical problems that arise instantly in the approach to this data.  The problem is, what does it mean to say there was an Axial Age? Before giving a few cautions about the ‘axial’ concept, it is important to not let what it points to be lost to view. Current historical theory, by and large, is (brain dead and) attempting to either ignore, or explain away, this data. This is not a phenomenon of economic evolution, please!  The basic data indicates a very extraordinary phenomenon embedded in world history, one that should drive us to reconsider our views on both history and evolution. As Jaspers’ suspected, this is a demonstration of a true universal history. We can take this to be a glimpse of evolution, with the understanding that the data almost outstrips the word ‘evolution’. Any such analysis must make clear the usage of the terms ’spiritual’ and ‘material’, but that is just the problem. Neither religious, nor scientific Darwinian, thinking can properly mark out the enigmatic higher naturalism impinging on the ‘transcendental’, a dangerous term, so obvious in the Axial, really, the ‘eonic’ effect. Furthermore, questions of ‘teleology’, as in Jaspers’ title, will wreak havoc on the analysis. This evidence shows both historical directionality, and evolutionary parallelism. That latter is anti-directional in the sense of exploring parallel potentials instead of uni-directional linear teleology. The stages of the process can balance both aspects. Thus while directionality is evidence of concealed teleology, it is not proof, nor does it say what the telos is, since quite obviously the Axial period in its parallelism is exploring separate paths into the future at one and the same time.

• Caution: the term ‘axial’ is often associated with religion. But a close look at the ‘axial effect’ shows that this period is also producing philosophy, science, democracy, many forms of art, and the last beautiful flowering of Greek polytheism! What, please, is the common denominator here?

• Caution 2: We have criticized historical sociology, but the major religions are confronted in this synchronous effect, with a paradox. Either the age of revelation applies across the board, thus to religions theistic or atheistic, or the age of revelation was something else. It seems like monotheism is associated with the axial period. But, as is obvious, this produces the so-called ‘atheistic’ Buddhism. Further proto-Jainism predates the ‘axial’ period, as does proto-monotheism. So that doesn’t work. We are talking about a highly abstract transformation working at a deeper level than even religion. It could not be otherwise, for religions, as we can clearly see, are historically conditioned, and rapidly decay into mechanical instruments, as indeed many prophets have warned. So the essence of this phase, ET5, is neither an axial age, nor religion.

• Jaspers uses phrases such as ‘breakthrough to transcendence’ in his analysis, and this requires a definition of ‘transcendence’, which will undo the analysis with a term that may only token the ’self-consciousness’ of man in transformation, which can be taken as naturalistic, a view incidentally very much present in early Indian religions such as Jainism, influencing Buddhism. These traditions at their best consider all lesser spiritual experiences to be phenomena of nature. The ‘transcendent’ is not named, and is the only candidate for the truly spiritual, being beyond ‘experience’. So a transcendent experience is a non-starter as terminology. What’s that. The ‘transcendent’ would not be unique for this period, for it would a universal potential of man. This confusion of unique versus the potential realized in creative advance tends to vitiate Jaspers’ analysis. Is the ‘breakthrough to democracy’ a form of transcendence, or the Axial birth of Greek science?

• The best comment on all of this must have been Lao tse’s, ‘everybody shut up’.  Lao tse certainly was an axial figure, if he existed. Did he exist? Whether he did or not, everyone said he lived in the core axial period, which is highly significant, and to the point. The memory of the creative period endures.

• Confusion of the Axial Concept A new vein of ‘postmodern’ religious thinking is now warming to the expectation of a new axial age of religion to follow the modern era. This ‘revolt against the modern’, usually the Enlightenment, or secularism, is misconceived, is related to a kind of Toynbean view of civilizations, and confuses the character of the original Axial Age, which produced the Greek Enlightenment, in parallel with everything else.  The rise of the great religions came much later, outside the ‘axial era’. So what is happening? A look at the whole resolves the question. The real next ‘axial age’ is the modern age itself, the period ca. 1500 to 1800, by our reckoning. We just leaving it, sorry!  This makes the attempted comeback strategy of religious traditionalists probably futile, if not ludicrous. We may move into a postmodern religious age, but it will be new religions, and it must do justice to the advance of modernism. It was a point seen by a man like Hegel, now discredited or incomprehensible, but who fussed over Christianity and modernism at great length, and saw there was no going back, and the need for rethinking  man’s place in a secular age from scratch, whatever we make of his strange system. The now too positivistic, but fundamentally sound rubric, of evolution is the real candidate for new foundations. But this idea cannot yet do sufficient justice to actual history or the lore of self-consciousness visible in the peaks of religious antiquity. The issue is not the fetish of the ’sacred’, but this issue man’s ’self-consciousness’ in relation to history, or something to that effect. The modern remains of the religions of antiquity (in the west) are simply cut flowers living on their last tank of gas generated in the Reformation. The future must do better than try to perpetuate Constantine’s spiritual politics with a phoney Axial Age.

  The works of Karen Armstrong (following hints of Jaspers perhaps) seem, perhaps, to suggest a kind of postmodern new ‘axial’ age. That is not very likely. Part of the problem lies in the term ‘axial’. We think that could be a series of axial ages, not likely. There is a series of what we can transitions, but their character is different in each case. One reason for this postmodern reaction is the limitation on the Enlightenment conceptions of spiritual psychology. This will automatically drive these new age conceptions forward, but the results will not reproduce the Axial Age of antiquity. The only candidate for a new Axial Age is the rise of the modern itself.  As many New Agers well understand, the renewal of the decayed religions of antiquity will require the utmost of man’s reason! The decayed results that some think will be restored in a new postmodern ‘axial’ age–this is a futile hope.  You never step twice in the same river. The problem is one of man’s self-consciousness and the limitations of modern thought here, perhaps. But the solution is not retrograde motion against modernity, as such.

  This is not a prediction! Only a caution that a new axial age to produce the restoration of old religions in a postmodern traditionalism is a complete misunderstanding of what happened in antiquity. The sheer depth of the effect in Israel, Greece, India and China could simply never recur. That is not a statement that a deeper perspective on religion and renewal is not possible. But over and over this attempts to recycle derivative material that isn’t even at the level of someone like Gautama, let alone creative. But current views of scientism and much Darwinism have produced such an amnesia about man’s real psychology that a reaction is bound to set in. Whatever the case, it won’t be a ’second axial age’. That is a misnomer that might confuse the issue. These questions require very careful study. I recommend a complete study of the eonic effect.

  This period will tie your head in knots, relax and consider it, aware of the limitations of human knowledge. Kantian issues of causality, history, metaphysics, evolution, and the limits of reason all converge on one of the most interesting data sets of human history.