Re: Re: Assignment on Eurocentrism

[Nemonemini]

One of things Blaut (I will not as such tackle the Brenner issue) points to
is the way his Eurocentric historians are trying to derive the 'after 1500'
from the before and in the process getting into Euro-glorifications. As he
points out, it is not really the case that Europe was all that special, and
it is hard to find the special qualities he criticizes in these historians,
perhaps excessively critical.
He has stumbled on the one type of  macro answer we aren't allowed to use, if
we accept linear history.  And that is discontinuous arguments, both temporal
and spatial. But, again, those are verboten, so we can try it anyway, as a
hypothetical model.

Thus, in the modern case, we see 'history on the move' after 1500 in a
relatively small area, not the same as Europe. This solves, then compounds,
the Eurocentric problem. Or does it? What is going on? Here's the answer,
based on our verboten 'macro' mixed with 'micro'.

We need a larger scale. We couldn't possibly solve this problem without
including the whole of world history since Egypt and Sumer. Then we see
examples, from a greater distance, and they all have the same structure as
the 'rise of the modern' problem, focalized, short duration, followed by an
ecumenization of the source, viz. one and the same issue we are dealing with
now.
Looking at Greece, we see one and the same instantiation of what we are
dealing with.  We cannot derive Archaic and Classical take-off from the
Myceneans. This temporal stream of the whole is not the same as the 'fast
cluster' starting at the outside ca. -900, accelerating after -750, exploding
after -600, about done by -400, and at that point entering its ecumenization
period (Hellenistic). Soon there will be charges of "Helleno-centrism" (cf.
Augustine) and the great achievments of the Greeks will either be stolen,
absorbed, or buried, quite thanklessly, and their achievement the foundation
of a new era most of it taking place elsewhere. Parallel phenomena are
occuring in Mesopotamia-Israel, India, China.

We are five hundred years from 1500, and this 'five hundred year stretch',
really three hundred plus two centuries of initial expansion, are isomorphic
to an uncanny degree of precision in all these cases. This is the
discontinuous in action. Unless we make the distinction (of continuous, and
discontinuous, temporal and geographical) we will end up in the kind of
confusion we have now of 'somewhere and everywhere' and Eurocentrism that we
are experiencing. It does not follow that the middle ages didn't have some
effect here, please. But even the outside chance that a macro system is at
work requires examination of basic assumptions, for almost all the problems
disappear at once, although the discontinuous-continuous model is only that,
and a bit crude.

One might note also, that Greece was external to the prior phase of
civilization, as was Israel, India, and China, relative to the Mesopotamian
core source. All stages of the discontinuous sequence always follow this
rule. Thus Europe is one of the last 'near far' places in the Eurasian
system, external in this case to the outer boundaries of the old roman
empire.

So back to Europe. We see discontinuous takeoff in a subset of Europe,
ignited behind the partition created by the Protestant Reformation, after
triggering in Northern Italy, at the external boundary of the prior Roman
period. Thus the phenomenon cannot be explained from the middle ages. The
macro system hopscotches to its farthest fringe, and generates the illusion
of 'Western Civilization'. Its three century accleration ignites what we have
seen in the last two centuries, and its immediate turning outwards toward
ecumenization is what we are experiencing now.

It is too much to accept, crazy, so back to each other's throats in the old
model.







John Landon
author
World History and the Eonic Effect
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://eonix.8m.com