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Nonlinear thermodynamics and social science modeling: fad cycles, cultural development and identificational slips
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 1995 by Elias L. Khalil
I
Introduction
Many social scientists and historians appear to confuse two kinds of historical change when they study socio-political phenomena.(1) With the advent of nonlinear dynamics metaphors, chaos theory, Prigogine's dissipative structures, spin glass models, Haken's synergetics, Thom's catastrophe theory, and so on, some historians have tended to apply such tools, which are appropriate to dynamics, to the study of developmental processes as well. But the nonlinear phenomena in physics would be at best homologous to only one kind of temporal change, viz., dynamics.
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Stated straightforwardly, modeling developmental processes of cultural evolution and deep socio-political change after Ilya Prigogine's, (e.g., 1980), notion "dissipative structure," Hermann Haken's (1977, in Khalil & Boulding, 1996) idea "hierarchy of order parameters," Rene Thom's (1975) catastrophe discontinuity, or any other fashionable theory of dynamics would amount to an identificational slip (Khalil, 1993b). Prigogine's research on far-from-equilibrium thermodynamic systems in terms of the entropy law is often cited by researchers as relevant to the study of development of human and biological organization (e.g., Binswanger, 1993; Allen, 1988, in Dosi et al., 1988; Allen & McGlade 1987a, 1987b). Also, Haken views deep evolutionary change as no different from cyclical discontinuity since, supposedly, both involve the discontinuity of parameters which differ only by their flexibility given their location in the hierarchy. Likewise, Thom perceives morphogenetic development as the outcome of positive feedbacks which push the "structure" beyond a particular critical point.
It is true that social and biological organizations are inflicted with nonlinear dynamics and that much of its development and evolution is extended by positive feedbacks. But the basic trend of development cannot be captured by such feedbacks. Contrary to Haken, the basic trend is simply not the outcome of lower-level dynamics. The order which typifies the technological/institutional regime such as those involved in production does not arise from non-purposeful dynamics as the order which typifies the stock market, the dominance of a certain standard of measure, or the diffusion of a fashion (Khalil, 1995a). Prigogine's thermodynamics and Haken's synergetics rather account for the emergence of the order which defines storms, ecosystems, and markets. This is not to deny that Prigogine's feedbacks and Haken's dynamics could also be found as aspects of living and social phenomena. As shown below, in fact, nonlinear dynamics might be helpful in elucidating economic and social cycles. The point is rather that Prigogine's and other research programs concerning dynamics are simply unsuited to capture what defines the constitution of purposeful organization - even as simple as that of the amoebae. These research programs are exclusively suited to the study of non-purposeful structures, as epitomized in storms and as they appear as non-essential aspects of purposeful organization.
Unlike purposeful organizations, storms do not suffer from senescence and are not characterized by differentiation of functions. Moreover, the transformation of the weather system follows certain laws like the equilibration of pressure. In contrast, the process of evolution of economic organization is not so certain. Also, nonlinear phenomena are, at least theoretically, cyclical. They cannot, at the most fundamental level, include the irrevocable process of development. They rather include output gyrations, the business cycle, fad cascades, and regional core/periphery polarization. Of course, in actual affairs, many phenomena which are cyclical at the theoretical level may not gyrate. This makes the phenomenal world complicated and often leads theorists to confuse dynamics with irrevocable developmental change. To avoid the confusion, we need to differentiate dynamics from development by simplifying the issue, i.e., by relating, at least theoretically, nonlinear dynamics to cyclical behavior. Consequently, the scientific tools needed to analyze nonlinear dynamics cannot be suited to the analysis of purposeful development.
The disengagement of the scientific tools should not imply that one, on a clear day, can witness dynamical phenomenon separate from development. Such a separation could only be undertaken ex post - when the central axis of a spiral can be abstracted from the gyration which surrounds the axis and which expresses the thrust of the axis. As a result of the developmental trend expressed by the axis, variables which fluctuate do not return to the same phase of development. While moods and stock markets fluctuate, division of labor and technological knowledge develop in an irrevocable manner. While the image of the spiral makes dynamics and development inextricable, development cannot be explained by dynamics as much as aging of the body cannot be explained by the fluctuation of health. Otherwise, if an organism never gets sick, it should not age or, more seriously, why should fluctuation of health lead the body to develop in an unavoidable path? Likewise, if development could be explained by dynamics, why would the influx of Schumpeterian creatively destructive innovations lead to development of technology - rather than simply to the reincarnation of old forgotten ideas, (e. g., product cycle)? This should lead us to conjecture that nonlinear dynamics is an insufficient explaining item (explanans) of the development of specialization and technological knowledge.
