Central Projects and Axialization

26th May 2016

Post with 2 notes

Central Projects and Axialization

The central projects of many ancient civilizations were not for the squeamish.

In several recent posts I have considered the nature of central projects:

The latter two I edited together to create a longer and more unified argument, which I posted on Medium:

Civilizations and their Central Projects

It occurs to me now that the idea of a central project that serves as a unifying focus for a civilization can be employed to improve my earlier formulations on axial ages and what I came to call “axiailization,” i.e., the historical process of converging upon an axial age.

The term “Axial Age” was simultaneously introduced in the twentieth century by Karl Jaspers and Lewis Mumford. I took up Jaspers’ formulation and wrote several posts on axial ages and axialization, including the following:

Extrapolating from the idea of an Axial Age in antiquity, to a next Axial Age that would provide new institutions for the change to civilization wrought by industrialization, I eventually came to a generalization of axial ages I called axialization, such that, “…the institutions intrinsic to the civilization in question can produce the definitive mythological synthesis that expresses the central idea of the civilization in question.” This is a formulation that is not specific to any one civilization, or indeed to civilization at all, as I have also applied it to the human world of the Upper Paleolithic.

The Axial Age identified by Jaspers was an Axial Age for agricultural civilizations – what I often call agrarian-ecclesiastical civilization, to emphasize the centrality of agriculture as the economic infrastructure and an Axial Age spiritual tradition as the intellectual superstructure (cf. my talk at the 2015 Starship Congress on “What kind of civlizations build starships?”). I often also add that the distinctive feature of axial age spiritual traditions is the identification of a human nature posited as universal, the analysis of the human condition as a function of this universal human nature, and the response to the human condition that constitutes an axial age religious tradition.

I imagine many readers will disagree with me that a new axial age must emerge from industrialized civilization, since the axial age religious traditions of agricultural society no longer address the human condition of industrialized society and thus must be replaced. Even if the reader rejects this, there is still a sense in which we should recognize the possibility of another axial age arising from industrialization, if one agrees that axial age traditions are predicated upon a conception of human nature posited as universal.

Given that the technological maturity upon which industrialized civilization is maturing will deliver into our hands the means to alter human beings and thus to alter human nature and the human condition, when this does eventually happen, axial age traditions predicated upon past human nature will no longer be relevant (or, at least, not relevant in the same way) to future human nature once technological intervention in the human condition results in a new human nature, or several human natures, or humanity being superseded by some other kind of being with no human nature at all, but another kind of nature.

In this case, the Axial Age of Jaspers is the axialiation of Mere Humanity, while some future axialization would be the axialization of a successor species to human beings. In any case, whether we locate the axialization of industrial-technological civilization before or after a change in human nature (which could also come about gradually as a result of evolution), we can see that such an axialization is possible given that certain conditions are fulfilled. Whether or not these conditions will in fact be fulfilled is an entirely distinct question.

If we employ the idea of central projects to the idea of axialization, we could say that axialization occurs when the central project of a civilization is given a definitive expression. Previously I associated axialization with a mythological expression of an age, but I think now this is not an essential aspect of the process. If a scientific civilization came to maturity with a definitive expression of science as the central project of the age, its axialization might take the form of, say, something like a grand unified theory, and it might be expressed in a series of mathematical formulae. We might not be able, at our present intellectual capacity, to appreciate this like we can appreciate mythic or aesthetic expressions of a central project, but we may yet come to that capacity in the fullness of time.

The institutions that emerge after an Axial Age, when human beings or post-human successor species live in the full consciousness of the definitive expression of an age may be counted as distinct from the Axial Age or as an expression and realization of the Axial Age. This is related to the earlier distinction I made between interpreting a central project as an event or as an ongoing project. The example employed in the exposition of this distinction was the space program: was the Apollo program a turning point, a pivot, an axis, or was it the beginning of a new era of civilization defined by space exploration as a central project?

We could interpret events either way, and make a reasonable case for either interpretation. And, of course, from an overview of history, what appears to us to be an ongoing project, taking decades or centuries or even millennia, may in the future look like an “event,” as, for example, the “event” that we call the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, which spanned many thousands of years. So these interpretations are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but we must specify the scale of time with which we are concerned.

Civilization subsequent to an Axial Age or the accomplishment of a central project (or a subsequent post-civilization institution) may make no essential advance on the definitive expression of a central project, in which case the central project is more like a pivot, but the central project may also be used as a template for the expansion and iteration of the scope of the central project. Where a central project offers opportunity for expansion, that expansion may be creative or uncreative, opening up new ground for human beings or our successors, or simply constituting more the same, but in new environments and circumstances.

I realize now, after a few days of posting about central projects how much more there is to say on the topic, which is unfolding itself before me the more I think about it. So I regard this as an active area of research in the scientific study of civilization, and I will be returning to it as my ideas develop.

If the civilization of the early scientific revolution – what I call modernism without industrialism – had been the kind of civilization to construct monumental memorials, perhaps Etienne-Louis Boullée’s Cenotaph for Isaac Newton would have been built. That it was not built tells us something about this civilization and how it differed from the builders of pyramids and cathedrals.

Tagged: Axial Age Karl Jaspers axialization central project central projects civilization

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Central Projects and Axialization