The Axial Age

Contemporary science is completely stuck on the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. Its legacy of scientism has generated the assumption that science in its current form is all-explanatory, and that the forms of explanation are restricted to reductionist categories. But as we examine the implications for human history we see that this canon is simply not sufficient to explain what needs to be explained. The Darwinian framework, for example, completely ignores, it seems, the implications of consciousness, proves limited in the extreme in its interpretations of religion, and constructs a completely artificial approach to the evolution of ethics. In the immense promotion of scientific evolutionism, the unrealistic character of the forms of analysis are hidden behind a kind of euphoric celebration of Darwin’s theory of natural selection as if this could be applied in rote fashion to all levels of biological existence.

A careful examination of history shows us where Darwinism is going wrong. One of the most tenaciously held assumptions of Darwinists is of the random character of evolution. But the study of history at close-range shows us something that is not supposed to exist: a non-random pattern. This pattern is clearly visible in the phenomenon of the Axial Age, the massive synchronous emergentism visible in the onset of the phase of classical antiquity. This phenomenon is almost taboo in scientific circles. It seems as if no mention or reference is allowed. And yet it shows all the characteristics of a kind of ‘macroevolutionary’ process at work, operating in plain sight, in our historical backyard. We see the clear evidence for high-speed processes involved in some kind of ‘evolution’ effecting transformations at the level of centuries, very rapid indeed, and showing no direct connection to genetics.

The phenomenon of the Axial Age is a puzzle until we see it in its larger context, that of the ‘eonic effect’, as a step in a larger sequence of intervals of rapid transformation. Once we take into account this factor of large-scale history we are able to put our objections to Darwinism on a sound basis, because, all at once, we have evidence for just those things that biological reductionism factors out, the issues of consciousness, or the evolution of ethics. Thus, the Axial Age data shows us directly the way in which evolutionary processes act directly on consciousness, and give us a glimpse of the hidden dynamic behind the evolution of civilization and/or religion, and much else, a factor that we could not have expected without the ability, for the first time in history, to examine large enough temporal intervals in global denominations to detect the way in which developmental emergence occurs. And this is completely at odds with the crippled Darwinian form of explanation which must, for example, hunt for the ‘god gene’ to explicate religion. The Axial Age shows us the dynamics behind the emergence of two world religions, an awesome spectacle (as little understood by religionists) that is entirely beyond the style of Darwinian pseudo-analysis based on the study of scenarios of adaptation.

It is odd that  history should be the falsification of Darwinism, at first, but with some careful thought, we can see that our current sense of the meaning of evolution is too constricted, and seems to succeed only because it eliminates what it must explain, and applies that ‘explanation’ to immense vistas of deep time that it has not observed. The spectacle of history at close range ironically comes to the rescue and disciplines our thinking so that we can’t indulge in the fantasy of theory that animates the followers of Darwin.