Eight Epochs: The Fine-Grained Solution

The coarse-grained solution to the arrow of history is the tuple myth - religion - science.

The fine-grained solution is the tuple of eight epochs.

First, we describe the epochs in ordinary historical language: boundaries, events, boundary figures. Then we look at visual arts: which compositional structures an epoch places inside its key works. Only after that do we introduce the mechanism of movement.

Eight Epochs

This table does not close the question of exact boundaries. It gives us a working map. Next we need to understand why such boundaries can exist at all.

Why Composition Matters

In every epoch, the most important artists place certain structures into composition. This is not merely decoration, and not only “style”. These are the structures along which the viewer’s eye moves while looking at the work. And this movement of the eye gives the viewer a special pleasure.

Therefore, in the key masterpieces of an epoch, we look not only for subjects, symbols, and technical devices. We look for compositional structures: sign, row, line, parallel rows, plane, several planes, an authorial world, worlds shining through one another.

When an epoch changes, the viewer begins to receive pleasure from different structures. This means that not only art changes. The type of thinking of the epoch changes: the structures by which the epoch thinks, sees, and organizes the world.

One Visual Example Per Epoch

The Sequence Of Structures

1. One object: sign, symbol, separate figure.
2. Row: repetition without development.
3. Line: movement or rivalry along one line.
4. Parallel rows: many one-directional processes gathered into a system.
5. Plane: multidirectional movement in one plane.
6. Several planes: an external plane, a social plane, an internal or distant plane act simultaneously.
7. Authorial world: the artist introduces new rules for assembling reality.
8. Worlds shining through one another: different realities are visible through each other.

Usually we take the epoch as the basis and treat visual structures as its consequence: they painted this way because the epoch was like this.

I propose the opposite move: take the change of structures as the basis, and treat the properties of the epoch as logical consequences of the structure through which the epoch thinks, sees, and organizes the world.

Elementary Conflict

Now we need to introduce the mechanism of interaction between levels.

When two sides meet, each side has one active level. The outcome of the encounter depends on the distance between the levels.

The Engine and the Propulsor of History

Every epoch has its own reference level X.

This level is demonstrated by the elite of the epoch. And conversely: if a person demonstrates level X, he may be recognized as “one of us” and taken into the elite.

Engineers distinguish between an engine and a propulsor.

An engine transforms stored energy, for example the chemical energy of fuel, into the energy of motion.

A propulsor transfers the energy of motion to those parts of the machine that guarantee the resulting movement of the apparatus.

In a car, these are the wheels. In a ship, the propeller. In a rocket, the stream of hot gases.

The engine of history is the desire of young people to rise to a higher social status, where such movement is possible.

In agrarian communities, a person’s status grows together with the seizure of land.

In ancient empires, a person’s status grows together with the status of the state, and that, in turn, means the seizure of land.

In later epochs, status growth becomes a personal movement along the scale of examinations.

But what is the propulsor here? What transforms the personal movement of separate people into the movement of society as a whole?

The propulsor is the mechanism by which the reference level changes.

From below, from the people, young people rise. They try to enter the elite, that is, to learn how to demonstrate the reference level of the epoch, X. But some of them overshoot.

If a person reaches levels X+2 and higher, the epoch does not understand him and destroys, expels, or marginalizes him.

If he reaches X+1, however, neighboring levels appear. And neighboring levels can cooperate. Therefore the old elite uses people of level X+1, protects them, and lets them closer to the center. They accumulate, grow stronger, and gradually become the new elite.

Thus history moves from reference level X to a new reference level X+1.

The Legalization Band

The same type of behavior or thinking may receive different evaluations at different moments in time.

At first it is punished. Then it is tolerated or admitted. Then it becomes exemplary.

This means that during one time interval the same level passes through three positions relative to the epoch:

1. first it looks like X+2 or higher: too distant, dangerous, to be destroyed;
2. then it becomes X+1: a neighboring level that can already be used;
3. then it becomes the new X: the reference level of the new elite.

The legalization band is the time interval within which the next level moves from punishable to admissible and then to exemplary. The true boundary of an epoch lies inside this band. Therefore the boundary of an epoch exists, although its exact date can be discussed.

Examples:

For levels 1, 2, and 3 the situation is different: they are legalized immediately, but locally, and then gradually take over the world.

Variation, Inheritance, Selection

Now we can see the whole mechanism.

Variation: people, groups, practices, styles, ideas, and tasks of a higher level arise in society by chance.

Inheritance: successful forms become fixed and are transmitted through education, tradition, institutions, texts, schools, and technologies.

Selection: the epoch preserves the forms that solve tasks better and win in conflicts between levels.

Variants arise by chance. But directed movement emerges from chance because a distant leap is destroyed, while the nearest next level becomes useful to the old epoch, accumulates, and gradually replaces its reference standard.

This answers the question: where and why does history flow?

History flows from X to X+1, because only the next neighboring level can be accepted, used, accumulated, and turned into a new reference standard.

A Short Course In The Philosophy Of History

(hussars, keep quiet!)

In the history of philosophy there have been many attempts to understand the history of humanity.

The Greeks and Romans thought locally: near history was the testimony of eyewitnesses, distant history was myth.

In the Middle Ages the Christian Church understood the history of humanity as what is described in the Bible.

The French Revolution called into question the truth of all concepts connected with the old regime, including church ideology.

The first university of the new type appeared: the University of Berlin, 1806.

Philosophers appeared who were ready to understand the history of humanity “not according to the Bible”. The first was Hegel. In 1818 he received the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin.

After Hegel came Marx.

Then came Spengler, and after him Toynbee.

The last two rejected the history of humanity as a single process and portrayed it “according to Darwin”: as a struggle of civilizations-organisms.

Then came two world wars and the Iron Curtain. When the Iron Curtain fell, Francis Fukuyama arrived with the book The End of History and the Last Man (1992).

Fukuyama tried to combine history as a process and history as a struggle of organisms. Roughly: capitalism and communism fought. Capitalism won. The process reached its logical end. But after ten years or so it turned out: no, it had not.

Then came Yuval Noah Harari and Steven Pinker.

Pinker showed with numbers that humanity is becoming less violent. Harari gathered the latest data from historians and archaeologists and showed how global connectedness of humanity emerges in history.

Once again, from the beginning.

Does history have a direction? Can we speak of progress, development, movement from worse to better?

The Bible: “we are moving toward the Last Judgment and the Resurrection of the Dead.”

Hegel: “rationality is increasing” (by the way, who knows what that means?)

Marx: “we are moving toward a classless society” (and the Resurrection of the Dead)

Spengler and Toynbee: “we are standing still, there is no progress.”

Fukuyama: “I thought that Good defeats Evil, that humanity is becoming better, but I was wrong, nothing changes.”

Pinker: “It changes! We are becoming kinder!”

Harari: “the global connectedness of the world is increasing - this is progress”

We: “rationality is increasing, that is, complexity is increasing, that is, the level of TAI is rising.”

(Hegel: “wow!”, the others are silent in confusion.)