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

The distinction between nonlinear dynamics and development should not mean that development is propelled by linear dynamics. The key concept here, "dynamics," is defined as non-purposeful interaction - which need not be cyclical or nonlinear - as opposed to purposeful developmental change. Thus, the key notion is not "linearity." In fact, we may have linear dynamics, like the Keynesian multiplier-accelerator model, which is not about the rise of new constitutions, deepening of division of labor, or development of more complex tools. Likewise, development is not about linearity, but rather is about non-dynamical aspect of adopting new institutions and inventing new forms of division of labor. This does not deny that nonlinear feedbacks reinforce particular nonergodic paths of development of technology, hysteresis, as Brian Arthur has shown (1989; see also David, 1985). But such feedbacks amount to an aspect of development and cannot be overgeneralized as the theoretical entry point to elucidating what evolutionary processes are about.

The basic thesis here is that the modeling of how fashions arise and die cannot also account for the development of institutions and ideology. The modeling of fashions can, at secondary approximation, be introduced to show the strengthening of particular paths of development - but it still cannot account for the initial choice of paths. To stress the basic thesis concerning the entry point of theorizing, we may ignore here such a secondary approximation. The paper commences with Randolph Roth's (1992) discussion of religious movements. Section two argues that fashion cycles are the outcome of positive feedbacks based on imitation and, hence, tools borrowed from nonlinear thermodynamics are suitable. Section three maintains that constitutions or the choice of basic socio-political paths is characteristic of development and, hence, tools borrowed from nonlinear thermodynamics are unsuitable. The final section draws some conclusions.

II

Fashion Cycles

Roth's employment of dynamics to illustrate development illustrates pointedly the confusion between two kinds of historical change. Roth (1992) treats the two kinds of social phenomena as springing from the same forces. Such symmetrical treatment is the basis of his enthusiasm for the disequilibrium metaphor afforded by the tools of dynamics nonlinearity.

Once we compare the members of competing social groups metaphorically with competing reactants in auto- and cross-catalytic chemical systems, the implications of the heuristic for the study of revitalization movements appear. If we push a society far from equilibrium by increasing the flow of people through communities (through death, birth, or migration) or by subjecting a society to extreme conditions that strain customs and institutions (thereby increasing the frequency and intensity with which people come into conflict over moral, spiritual, and economic issues and altering the receptivity of individuals to change), we can drive a community from a stationary state into various states of excitation, in which the concentrations of church members, religious society members, nonmembers, and antagonists can change abruptly and erratically (Roth, 1992, p. 234).