The Coming Coeval Age
Nick Nielsen2024, Isonomia Quarterly
visibility
…
description
21 pages
link
1 file
Of the many scenarios we can entertain for the future of civilization, the most expansive is that which projects human civilization onto the cosmos at large, with humanity building new settlements for itself in far flung outposts of the solar system, then other stars, and even other galaxies. A macro-civilizational expansion in which civilization itself will be iterated on other worlds in other planetary systems with no prior human history would constitute a pristine re-founding of civilization with each new settlement established, whether on another world, or some artificial construction in space. What happens to a civilization when it distributes itself on a cosmological scale? How must its institutions adapt to cosmological expansion?
Related papers
Expanding advanced civilizations in the universe
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society
A Manifesto for the Scientific Study of Civilization
The study of civilization has been a primarily historical enterprise, and secondarily a sociological enterprise. This historical and sociological approach to the study of civilization has not been sufficient for understanding civilization as a distinctive phenomenon. Civilization needs to be studied as a sui generis object of scientific knowledge. Ten imperatives for approaching civilization in this way are outlined, which touch upon scientificity, interdisciplinarity, the definition of civilization, temporality, concepts specific to civilization, thought experiments, theoretical models, formality, regulative principles, and scholarly institutions. If civilization has a future, i.e., if it does not succumb to existential risk, civilization then has before it an expansive future with few intrinsic limits. Our knowledge of cosmology and of the history of the universe points to plentiful energy and material resources that could be exploited by any civilization possessing a sufficiently advanced technology, and these cosmological conditions should prevail for several billion years. Restricting ourselves to obvious extrapolations of civilization as we know it, supervening upon life as we know it, civilization appears to become more robust as it matures, experiencing fewer lapses of shorter duration and less loss of heritage, so that once a civilization has established multiple independent centers beyond its homeworld, there is no reason to limit its extent in space and time except for the limits of energy and material resources exploitable by such a civilization. The path from civilization to supercivilization 1 is not inevitable, but also not impossible. When the first starship departs from our solar system with human beings bound for another star, we will begin the process of the expansion of terrestrial civilization to other planetary systems. An interstellar civilization will come into being at this time. Before this happens, civilization will have expanded beyond Earth, making the entirety of the solar system its home, using the plentiful energy and material resources nearby Earth. Already at this stage of development, civilization will have established multiple independent centers of spacefaring civilization, though still clustered closely around the sun like moths fluttering around a candle flame. The interstellar expansion that would follow upon this buildout of a spacefaring civilization within our solar system would extend these multiple independent centers of civilization to multiple stars and their planetary systems,
From Global to Universal-Complementary Civilization
Information Technology and Societal Development
The purpose of this chapter is to define processes triggering the emergence of global civilization at the beginning of the 21st century. In addition, a proof is provided that the fourth wave of globalization leads towards the emergence of global civilization as one of facets of world civilization, including a proposal of the direction in which one must lead the further development of world civilization. The further purpose of this section is to define the sources of crisis affecting civilization and to define a solution by developing the concept of universal-complementary civilization. The study is based on the critical theory of civilization, which not only analyzes “how it is” but also provides some solutions “how it should be.” A graphic modeling of civilizations will be applied to move from scenario-driven considerations to system-driven synthesis of components and their relationships. First to be analyzed will be symptoms of the civilization crisis in general. Later, the questi...
" Our Last Century " : Is the Earth Civilization Cosmologically Relevant
A series of independent calculations done by scientists from various countries and professions show that the 21st century is expected to be crucial for the human history. Current generations' activities will determine how exactly the turning point will happen and what direction the subsequent evolution will go. From time immemorial, the relative sustainability of human communities (from primitive tribes to nations, social classes or world confessions) has been provided by the image of a common enemy. Inter-group conflicts have been abridging in-group violence and with it, have been setting the vector for the creation of life's meanings. Yet, the current level of technological development completed by blurring lines both between war and non-war technologies and between the conditions of peace and war has made this psychological inertia suicidal. Therefore, the problem of life's meanings is becoming the nucleus of the 21 st century global problems: Will the human mind prove ready to develop strategic meanings beyond religious or quasi-religious ideologies, which are always built on, the " them-us " mental matrix? Insights of great philosophers and prophets, as well as special socio-psychological experiments and some crucial episodes in political history have demonstrated that besides the image of a common enemy, both human solidarity and strategic meanings can be built on the image of a common cause (not aimed at an enemy agent), although the experience of assimilating this kind of construct by the mass consciousness is scanty. Instead, historical evidence is abundant showing that after long periods without real or potential wars, life's meanings " hang up " and the masses feel nostalgia for new demons. Actually, we observe an intensification of this trend in many regions of our planet accompanied by a growing instability in global geopolitics.
Earth Civilization and Universe
viXra, 2021
Our civilization is on the verge of self-destruction. This is not in the public eye, as the media are obsessed with corporate and political interests and politicians and economists are unable to see the danger. The fundamental reason for this critical moment is the perceived misconception about the space and Universe. In theoretical physics, there is a problematic field that misleads contemporary science and directs human knowledge in the wrong direction. A direct consequence of this is the misunderstanding essence of our existence as civilization and the connection with the Universe. This leads to underestimation of the role of the spiritual value of the human being and deformation of the social life. All these conclusions are apparent from the new perception of the microcosmos and Universe derived in the Basic Structures of Matter-Supergravitation Unified Theory.
Long-Term Trajectories of Human Civilization
Foresight, 2018
Purpose: This paper formalizes long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. Approach: We focus on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. Findings: Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation, and astronomical trajectories appear possible. Value: Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue.
CO-EXISTENCE OF CIVILIZATIONS IN THE GLOBAL ERA
GLOCALISM: JOURNAL OF CULTURE, POLITICS AND INNOVATION, 2020
In the most general terms, "civilization" relates to the unique constitution of a "life-world", defined by a coherent "worldview" (Weltanschauung) on the basis of continuity. This includes a community's religious beliefs and metaphysical views, its social organization, value system, esthetical perceptions, etc. These factors also determine specific notions of dignity and societal behavior. Civilization in this multidimen-sional sense may comprise a variety of different cultures as subsections , mainly on the basis of different languages. In today's global environment, the constant encounter and interaction between different-often incompatible-worldviews and value systems has an entirely new potential for conflict-with one humanity, whose members are constantly aware of their living in one "global village," but with more than one, indeed a multitude, of competing global civilizations. Culture-driven conflicts-or conflicts where antagonists use culture as a tool of legitimation-are much more difficult to resolve or contain compared to conflicts where diverging (economic) interests are clearly defined and not hidden behind "ideals". Values are not a field for realpoli-tik whereas interests are negotiable. The rapid development of technology, in tandem with the global pursuit of economic interests, has made interaction (encounter) with the "other" a structural fact of society. One of the major challenges of our time will be whether civilizations can agree on a set of meta-values on the basis of mutuality (such as tolerance, non-interference, etc.). Only this will enable them to avoid confrontation at the level of values of the first order ("material" values). This could also open the field for a new dialogue of civilizations in the spirit of Enlightenment, transcending the traditional missionary paradigm. Such a "meta-dialogue of civilizations" would also fit into a new approach of realpolitik towards issues of cultural identity.
The Civilization Grand Model
Information Technology and Societal Development
The purpose of this study is to develop a comprehensive model of generic civilizations and world civilization, applying the cybernetic technique of analysis and synthesis. Identifying the role of information-communication processes is particularly important for this quest, because these processes strongly influence the progress of civilization at the beginning of the 21st century. Three models, developed by Braudel (1993), Toynbee (1957), and Koneczny (1962), serve as both justification for this type of study and the foundations for a new model. The spectacular progress in technology and living standards achieved by mankind at the beginning of the third millennium prompts research on the grand view of the human condition. Numerous questions need to be answered: 1. What is a civilization? 2. What types of civilizations can be recognized at the beginning of the third millennium? 3. What are the relationships between any particular civilization and the world civilization? 4. What is th...
Civilizational futures and beyond
Futures, 1996
Brisbane, Australia-my vision of the future is, as you might expect, committed to cultural diversity and civilizational integrity. At the same time, I am not particularly romantic about life in the past. True, one of my most precious memories remains falling asleep on the rooftop of our mud-brick home in our village in the Punjab and waking up, with the entire village, at sunrise. The stars at night, the smells of fried par&as being cooked in the morning are cellular memories. But I did not do the cooking, nor gather the cowdung fuel.
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
SECURITY
73
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
The Coming Coeval Age
by J.N. Nielsen
f the many scenarios we can entertain for the
O
future of civilization, the most expansive is that
which projects human civilization onto the cosmos
at large, with humanity building new settlements for
itself in far flung outposts of the solar system, then
other stars, and even other galaxies. A
macro-civilizational expansion in which civilization
itself will be iterated on other worlds in other
planetary systems with no prior human history
would constitute a pristine re-founding of
civilization with each new settlement established,
whether on another world, or some artificial
construction in space. What happens to a
civilization when it distributes itself on a
cosmological scale? How must its institutions adapt
to cosmological expansion?
civilization that expands into the cosmos will be
A
subject to the same natural forces that shape the
universe itself, and the greater the expansion, the
greater the extent of the resulting cosmological
civilization, the larger the forces that come into play
74
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
in shaping that cosmological civilization. Space,
time, gravity, and thermodynamics will become as
important as population, tradition, law, and
education, and, at truly cosmological scales, these
natural forces will becomemoreimportant than
human factors. As a cosmological civilization
converges on totality, coinciding with the universe
at large, civilization will become indistinguishable
from the universe at large, with the civilization
transformed in the image of nature, and the universe
transformed in the image of intelligence. Each will
approximate the other, meeting somewhere in the
middle between mind and nature. Such a grandiose
vision, however, is contingent upon human beings
(or some peer species) first taking the initiative and
expanding beyond Earth, and this initial phase of
expansion will be, of necessity, a human
undertaking defined by human possibilities and
limitations.38
oth the spatiotemporal and institutional structure
B
that a spacefaring civilization takes will be a
function of its technological attainment, the
38
In the case of a peer species, other and non-human
p ossibilities and limitations will be the determining factors of
spacefaring expansion, but the principle is the same in each
case.
75
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
p ossibilities of which cannot be known before the
technologies themselves come into being.39 The
particular technique of transportation—velocity of
travel, rate of expansion, resources required, and
ability to communicate,inter alia—will all bear
upon the structure of a civilization that interacts
with itself and with other civilizations through
technological means. And we must take into
account both the scope of a spacefaring civilization
and its developmental arc, i.e., the synchronic and
diachronic dimensions of expansion in space. Even
within our own solar system, without travel to other
stars, a robust spacefaring civilization could be built
on other planets, moons, asteroids, and in
settlements constructed in space, but, if travel to
other stars becomes possible, then prospects are
even more expansive. Developmental arcs could
39
Karl Popper made an argument for historical indeterminism
b ased on the impossibility of predicting future scientific
knowledge (part of hisPostscript: After Twenty Years,in the
volume titledThe Open Universe: An Argument for
Indeterminism, and summarized in the Preface toThePoverty
of Historicism). If technological development is predicated
upon the prior development of scientific knowledge which is
the theoretical basis of a technology, then Popper’s argument
for historical indeterminism is equally applicable to
technology, including spacefaring technologies.
76
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
r ange from very rapid, if technologies like the
Alcubierre drive prove to be practicable, to very
slow, if we must wait to make our journey to other
planetary systems only when they pass near our
solar system in the natural course of stars
circulating within the disc of the Milky Way
galaxy.40
I f interstellar civilizations are the result of outward
migrationnotfrom Earth, but from space
settlements fromearlieroutward migration from
Earth, the distinct technological milieux of distinct
settlements will be translated to the civilizations
that descend from them, as indeed will their cultural
40
For this delayed developmental arc of spacefaring
c ivilization cf. “Stagnant Supercivilizations andInterstellar
Travel.” Note that a distinction can be made betweendelayed
spacefaring expansion andslowspacefaring expansion.If a
civilization waits until a planetary system comes close enough
to Earth to journey there with near-future technology, that is
delayed expansion; if a civilization launches a generational
starship at its first technological opportunity (also,
presumably, near-future technology), that is slow expansion.
On the different temporal structures of expansion cf. “The
Large Scale Structure of Spacefaring Civilization”(included
in100 Year Starship 2012 Symposium Conference
Proceedings)
77
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
a nd legal institutions.41 As these traditions each
co-evolve with a distinct suite of technologies, the
organic relationship between tradition and
technology will be strengthened, with the result
being that civilizational structures associated with a
given technological solution to transportation on
cosmological scales will be specific to each
individual civilization. This was true even for
agricultural civilizations on a geographically
regional scale. Particular staple cultivars and
particular domesticated livestock entailed particular
agricultural and pastoral technologies, and the
social institutions that grew from the management
of these technologies co-evolved with the
technologies and were handed down to subsequent
societies, with these institutions often remaining in
place even after other cultivars and livestock
become available.
here are, then, many possible structures of
T
civilization on a cosmological scale that reflect both
the possibilities of technology to overcome natural
barriers (like distance) and the human ingenuity
invested in framing novel social institutions to
41
Cf. my paper “The Develes Engynnes: Technological
extures of Life on Earth and in Space”Journal ofSpace
T
Philosophy, Fall, 2023.
78
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
f acilitate these technologies, and perhaps also novel
social institutions supervening upon these
technologies. Each technological possibility for the
structure of a civilization on a cosmological scale
represents both the institutions that could bring
these structures into being, and the institutions that
would grow organically from these structures. Thus
the future for civilization may be represented by
pathways branching out from the present, and it is
possible that distinct societies exploiting distinct
technologies may come to embody distinct social
structures that diverge at least in part because of the
technological selection pressure exerted on social
institutions.
ith relativistic spacecraft, settlement initiatives
W
could be undertaken to planetary systems at
distances great or small, as shipboard times would
approach insignificance as the spacecraft
approaches the velocity of light. But the distance
covered in light years would be equivalent to the
number of years elapsed on Earth, so that a
settlement at any significant distance would
effectively be cut off from the spatiotemporal milieu
of its terrestrial origin, but it would not necessarily
be cut off from historical peers. Given slower
spacecraft, together with some form of artificial
79
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
h ibernation or suspended animation, the radius of
effective settlement would be more limited, and
time elapsed during the journey would be
considerable, but the resulting spacefaring
civilization would exhibit a similar spatiotemporal
structure.
ach settlement, and potentially each civilization
E
that could grow from a settlement, would constitute
a temporal enclave that preserves the characteristics
of the period of history from which the initial
settlement initiative derived. It has been a
characteristic of immigrant communities to preserve
the ways of their homeland in a form that changes
less than in the experience of those who never leave
their homeland, and so archaic customs and forms
of language, among other traditions, live on in
ethnic enclaves.42 This is an artifact of
synchronically distributed civilizations. In
civilization on a cosmological scale, civilizations
will be distributed both synchronically and
diachronically. We can call the latter a structure of
42
f., e.g., Jan, J. S. (2019). Ethnic Language Retention and
C
East Asian Endogamy in the United States.Marriage&
Family Review,55(1), 59-77. There is a significantliterature
on language retention and the preservation of cultural tradition
in ethnic enclaves.
80
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
d istributed temporality, in which communities are
established not only across a spatial distance, but
also across a temporal distance, due both to the
scale of time needed to reach them43 and the
relativistic effects of crossing interstellar distances
rapidly.
ecause the scale of time represented by relativistic
B
cosmology is so disproportionately great in
comparison to human time, and even to the entirety
of human history, human temporal enclaves can be
constructed throughout the universe, with the
limitation being that one can only travel forward in
cosmological time. But because of the disproportion
between human time and cosmological time, the
cosmological time sequence need not exhaustively
correspond to the human time sequence.
43
Slow interstellar expansion scenarios could be coupled with
a rtificially induced torpor or hibernation, allowing individuals
to experience multiple spatiotemporal milieux. In rapid
interstellar expansion scenarios, time dilation effectively
forbids returning to the same spatiotemporal milieu, but one
could skip ahead in cosmological time to other spatiotemporal
milieux, which may have their origin in periods of time earlier,
coeval with, or later than the milieu from which one departs.
Traveling forward in cosmological time does not necessarily
entail traveling forward in human historical time.
81
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
I f two settlement initiatives, S1 and S2, launch from
Earth at time t0, with S1 ~100 light years from Earth
and S2 ~1,000 light years from Earth, settlers atS1
will arrive ~100 years Earth time (plus travel time)
after t0—call this t1—and settlers at S2 will arrive
~1,000 years Earth time (plus travel time) after
t0—
call this t2—but both t1 and t2 will representthe
same spatiotemporal milieu as t0. Each settlement
will be like a time capsule of Earth at the time of
departure, though subject to independent
development once established. Thus a settler at t1
can travel outward to t2 and find another settlement
derived from his same historical period. Say that
about time t1, a hundred years after t0, another
settlement initiative S3 departs Earth, arriving ata
planetary system ~500 light years’ distance from
Earth, at a time that can be called t3, which is Earth
at t1 plus travel time to S3 at t3. Someone from S1
can travel ~100 years into the future of Earth at the
time of their departure (t0) by traveling outwardto
S3 at t3 (allowing compensation for travel time,
which remains unknown since the technology for
transportation remains an unknown), and then, if
they like, they can return to their familiar temporal
milieu by traveling further outward to S2 at t2.
82
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
I t is easy to see how, with a spacefaring expansion
involving a few million persons, the resulting
timeline of civilization could become very tangled
over just a few hundred years. If an expanding
spacefaring civilization can endure for thousands of
years, establishing new outward settlements
throughout its history, the already incalculable
complexity of history is raised to a higher power of
complexity. A mere million persons involved in
spacefaring expansion could populate a hundred
settlements of ten thousand persons each, and the
possible permutations of pathways between a
hundred settlements over hundreds or thousands of
years are limited only by the number of stops on a
given interstellar itinerary.
civilization spread out across spatial distances
A
that constitute a barrier to rapid interaction,
therefore entailing some degree of isolation, are not
new in human history. The Greekpolis(πόλις) was
a microcosm of the Greek world, connected to other
cities not only through ties of communication and
commerce, but also through ties of descent. A
mother city, grown great in both population and
wealth, would establish a colony, a daughter city,
that would be closely linked by connections of
history and blood. Other cities were rivals,
83
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
s ometimes competitors, sometimes outright enemies
in war, but no less Greek for that—we might even
sayGreek, all-too-Greek, for that. Isonomia44 was
realized (insofar as itwasrealized) only withina
polis, not an empire, and, to a lesser extent, through
a network of mother/daughter cities maintaining
cultural ties. Larger political structures did not fare
well among the Greeks. Thede factoAthenian
empire that was the Delian League was acasus belli
for the Peloponnesian War. Until Philip of Macedon
there was node jureGreek empire, and after the
meteoric career of his son Alexander the Great, his
Greek empire rapidly disintegrated and eventually
the Greeks were subject to the expanding reach of
Rome.
e know that ancient Greek societies prided
W
themselves on their isonomia, as in the praise of
isonomia in the Constitutional Debate in
44
It is now commonplace to translate “isonomia” as “equality
o f rights,” but that is a contemporary projection of our concern
for rights into a past. “Equality under the law” is closer to the
meaning, but that did not mean the same law for everyone. No
Greek even considered the possibility of judging an aristocrat
by the same standards as a slave.
84
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
erodotus45, which seemed radical in comparison to
H
the royal absolutism of Persia, but the isonomia of
thepolishad no quarrel with distinct laws for
distinct social orders. On the contrary, Greek law
emphatically affirmed its customary social orders.46
It is a bizarre anachronism to project equal rights
into classical antiquity, which knew nothing of
human rights and would have found the concept as
we know it today incomprehensible. Isonomia was
about correcting the abuse, corruption, and
perversion of the traditional unwritten law of the
polisby tyrants (τύραννος), who were, by
45
The Histories, 3.80-3.82. Isonomia can be understoodas a
s pecial case of the rule of law, or eunomia generally, which
came to be the standard of political legitimacy among the
Greeks. Cf. Canevaro, M. (2017). The Rule of Law as the
Measure of Political Legitimacy in the Greek City States.
Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 9, 211–236.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-017-0054-1
46
“Greek philosophers came to conceive of the general
security in broader terms and to think of the end of the legal
order as preservation of the socialstatus quo…Theythought
of law as a device to keep each man in his appointed groove in
society and thus prevent friction with his fellows.” Roscoe
Pound,An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law(New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 34.
85
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
d efinition, ruling outside legal legitimacy.47 This
historical transition from unwritten tradition to
written law is a unique period in the development of
any society, and will be for every society that makes
the transition from custom to institution.
e still have something to learn from this ancient
W
world, profoundly different though it is from the
world we know today. The Greek colonies around
the Mediterranean constitute sometime like a
microcosm of what may come to be with the human
settlements of a spacefaring civilization. The
traditions that will appear organically in far flung
human settlements, suited to the unique conditions
of a non-terrestrial environment, will eventually be
formalized in written law, as was the unwritten
47
“…oppression, injustice, the arbitrary interpretation and
d istortion of traditional law and time-honoured custom by
aristocratic judges—Hesiod’s ‘gift-devouring kings’, handing
down ‘crooked judgments’—were, it is said, a major cause of
social discontent among broad strata of the societies of these
early cities. Blatant manipulation of ancient unwritten norms
and procedures gave rise, it is claimed, to the demand for ‘the
law’ to be fixed and made universally accessible through
‘codification’ and publication.” Hölkeskamp, K.-J. (1993).
Written law in archaic Greece.Proceedings of theCambridge
Philological Society, 38, 87–117.
doi:10.1017/S0068673500001632
86
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
c ustom and tradition of thepolis. Again and again
the drama of transition from unwritten tradition to
written law will be played out, but in the future this
transition will be played out against the backdrop of
an increasingly irrelevant legal tradition held over
from Earth, or from the first generation of space
settlements in close proximity to Earth.
he change in the spatiotemporal structure of
T
civilization, driven by the technology of spacefaring
expansion, will change the human experience of
time and history fundamentally. The institutional
structure of civilization, including its legal
institutions, will be forced to adapt to this changed
spatiotemporal structure. The predictable sequences
of historical development, in which one stage
follows another in familiar periodizations, and even
the slow rhythm of the rise and fall of civilizations,
belongs to the infancy of humanity as a civilized
species—an artifact of our earliest history as a
species. Once brought to maturity, the distinctive
historical stages that antedate the mature realization
of human society cease to be an inevitable birthright
and become a choice and an opportunity.
ecause we have no civilization other than the
B
civilizations of Earth as the basis of our knowledge
87
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
o f civilization—we have not yet had occasion to
observe another planet on which civilization has run
its entire course from cradle to grave, as a basis of
comparison for terrestrial civilizations48—we do not
know where we stand in the overall scheme of
civilizational development.49 If the future will be
48
I f we were to detect another civilization, say, by way of
SETI, our research program into the history of this civilization
would have to extend over a period of time commensurate
with the full history of civilization to adequately capture its
developmental arc. Its pre-transmission history would be
known to us only through that history of itself that it chose to
transmit, which is not likely to be representative.
49
A temporally distributed civilization of the Coeval Age
described herein could study a civilization throughout its
entire developmental arc from cradle to grave. Suppose, as a
thought experiment, an intelligent species capable of
constructing a civilization were located. By means of
relativistic travel, researchers could return to this world at
regularly scheduled intervals—perhaps every 100 years or
every 1,000 years, presumably leaving data-gathering survey
equipment to monitor developments during their
absence—until the civilization had run its course. If the
monitored civilization goes extinct, its entire historical record
is known. If it flourishes and joins the comity of spacefaring
civilizations, it can join the research project that once formerly
monitored its development and thereby come into a complete
record of its own development as a civilization. Such a
research project would carry researchers tens of thousands of
years into the future, so that the community of researchers
88
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
like the past (which is the basic condition of
inductive reasoning), then we ought to look forward
to a sequence of historical periods, distinct from all
that came before and different from each other.
However, as the fine print on an investment
prospectus always tells us that past performance is
no guarantee of future returns, so too the past
performance of civilization is no guarantee of the
future course of events. On the contrary, we can
expect the unprecedented to occur.
hen all ages are effectively co-present for a
W
temporally distributed civilization, this will
constitute a revolutionary change in the human
relationship to time and history. During the
European Middle Ages, an entire civilization came
into being that was defined by its transitional
character between antiquity and modernity.
Medieval civilization is so called because it
appeared between (medi-) two ages (-eval). In the
coming Coeval Age, the strata of sequential
civilizations, once arranged in an orderly diachronic
sequence, like the layers of geological strata that
define deep time on Earth, will be stretched out
ould have to agree on a future rendezvous to compare notes.
w
This process could be iterated throughout the Stelliferous Era,
as long as there are civilizations to study.
89
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
a cross space, distributed both synchronically and
diachronically. The promulgation of a uniform code
of law under conditions of a temporally distributed
civilization will present unprecedented challenges
to future civilization, which may involve as yet
unexplored meanings of isonomia, including
isonomia through time, or diachronic isonomia, in
contradistinction to the synchronic isonomia
exemplified in Greek colonization of the
Mediterranean.
he coming Coeval Age will be an age of
T
unprecedented historical complexity. The simple
linear history of our civilization to date is, in fact,
among the simplest of histories possible for a
civilization; the only simpler history would be one
in which only a single civilization existed on Earth,
without the rhythm of the rise and fall of
civilizations, and the transmission of traditions
between them in space and time, that we have
known. In such a civilization of ideal simplicity,
enjoying a unity and uniformity of institutions, and
without unpredictable shocks from any exogenous
civilizations, the problem to which isonomia was
the Greek solution, may never have arose, or, if it
did, it would have appeared but once, and, being
solved, as soon forgotten. In a history of greater
90
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
c omplexity, the problem appears time and again,
and each time it must be solved anew. But if the
problem is continuously iterated, it becomes a
tradition, as does its solution. Thus the possibility of
a diachronic isonomia, supervening upon the
synchronic isonomia that was the ancient Greek
ideal, appears with the advent of civilizations of the
Coeval Age. And not merely diachronic isonomia,
but isonomia within branching, crossing,
multiplying, and complexifying history.
here are other technologies (other, that is, than
T
spacefaring technologies) that are gradually
bringing coevalism into being through other
mechanisms. As our recording technologies
converge upon perfect fidelity, and our computing
technology converges upon simulations
indistinguishable from life, we face a time to come
when nothing will be truly past, truly inaccessible.
The first few thousand years of human history,
fascinating though they are, are a mere prelude to a
future that stretches into undifferentiated sameness,
in which each distinctive part of history can serve as
a model for a given spatiotemporal milieu,
re-created in the image of the past, whether for
education, edification, the human need for variety,
91
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
o r mere amusement.50 Coevalism, then, could be
realized in a limited way on a future civilization
confined to Earth, but the full range of possibilities
of distributed time would only be found in the
civilization most widely distributed in space and
time.
s the Greeks transformed the ideal of a transition
A
from unwritten to written law into a tradition and a
norm of isonomia, we may someday be able to
extrapolate isonomia over scales of spaceandscales
of time. The unprecedented historical complexity of
temporally distributed civilizations will call forth an
unprecedented intellectual effort driving greater
depth and complexity in our legal and political
traditions, and we will need all the depth and
complexity we can manage if we are to survive as a
civilization and as a species. As our distant
ancestors made the transition from being
hunter-gatherers to farming and living in cities, and
50
A fictional realization of this is to be found in the M. Night
S hyamalan filmThe Village(2005), in which disaffectedrefugees
from modernity establish a seemingly timeless nineteenth
century agricultural village. These “refugees” arehistoricalrefuges,
fleeing the present. Other fictional intimations areWestworld
(1973) andFutureworld(1976), in which differenteras are made
available as vacation destinations, and theStar Trekepisode “All
Our Yesterdays” (1969).
92
Isonomia Quarterly2.2
Summer 2024
later our recent ancestors made the transition from
agricultural civilization to industrialized
civilization, future generations will make the
transition to a new experience of time and history.
This transition will be as unprecedented as living in
a city or working in a factory or an office was for
previous generations. Such transitions are spiritually
dislocating, often debilitating, frequently violent,
and no society is guaranteed to successfully
negotiate the change. We will need to wring every
last drop of rationality out of our traditions if our
posterity is to be among the successful coeval
societies.
J .N. Nielsen is an autodidact philosopher with a
wide range of interests. He writes from Oregon.
Send him mail:[email protected].
93
Related papers
Analytical and Numerical Analysis of the Strength Performance of a Novel Ship Construction Profile
Journal of ETA Maritime Science, 2021
Total quality management (TQM) practices, ISO9001 implementation, and organizational performance: A literature review and a proposed framework in an Iraqi manufacturing context
The 5th Innovation and Analytics Conference & Exhibition (IACE 2021)
Programa de necessidades, projeto e avaliação de escolas: uma parceria comunidade-universidade
Ambiente Construído, 2007
Integration of ASTER and Airborne Radiometric Data in the Exploration for Hydrothermal Alteration Zones Associated with Mineral Deposits in Igarra Schist Belt, Nigeria.
International Journal of Earth Sciences Knowledge and Applications , 2024
Competitive trait hierarchies of native communities and invasive propagule pressure consistently predict invasion success during grassland establishment
Biological Invasions, 2021
Sedimentary phosphorus dynamics in epicontinental systems: a literature review
Homage to Ramon Margalef or Why There Is Such Pleasure in Studying Nature 1992 Isbn 84 475 0019 5 Pags 113 125, 1992
Microarray Data Analysis for Detection and Classification of Viral Infection
Journal of Applied Biotechnology Reports, 2014
Conceptualization of Vulnerability, its Linkages to Climate Change and Policy Implications
International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences, 2017
Synthesis and desulfurization of 2,5-dihydrothiophene transition-metal complexes: models for the hydrodesulfurization (HDS) of thiophene
Inorganic Chemistry, 1991