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

Spin glass theory tries to explain the stability of ferromagnetism despite the rise of injected temperature, even though the orientation of spins of the electrons (which is a physical property) is not unique. Given the arbitrary initial orientation of spins of electrons, the spins reinforce each other and, hence, their common orientation remains correlated towards one direction despite the rise of injected temperature or external accidents. However, once the critical Curie temperature is reached, the orientation collapses with great speed. It becomes easier to break up the correlation of spins in one region if the correlation in adjacent regions has already broken up. On the other hand, as injected temperature is reduced, the electrons' spin also suddenly start to align themselves according to the orientation of their adjacent electrons. Thus, a stable orientation is reached, but it is not unique; it could be towards any direction. That is, the specific new equilibrium state cannot be predicted since the orientation of spins is not unique (Wilson 1979; Stein, 1989).

As the physicist Philip Anderson (in Anderson et al., 1988, 268-70) suggested, economists could learn a great deal from spin glass theory with regard to sudden discontinuities in the interest rates, stock market rallies, or geographical discontinuities.(3) Roth also shows how the study of sudden disruption in church membership could be elucidated by nonlinear dynamics generally. I may add that fads, mob behavior, and club membership in general exhibit multiple equilibria and hence could benefit from the tools suited for the study of spin glass. In fact, one could argue, with substantial support, that the spin glass or nonlinear dynamics metaphor is homologous with regard to economic discontinuities exhibiting multiple equilibria.

III

Cultural and Constitutional Processes

However, do fundamental institutional developments, the rise and fall of great powers, and revolutionary processes exhibit multiple equilibria? That is, are successful movements calling for new constitutive tastes, usually based on ideological fervor, similar to the profusion, stability, and sudden discontinuity of club membership, fads, symbolic goods, public vs. private involvements, and to occasional spurts of interest in fundamentalist religion and politics? Another way to ask the same question, does the work of Paul Kennedy (1987) about the secular process towards the decline of economic/military power resemble the works of Albert Hirschman (1982) and Arthur Schlesinger (1986) about the cyclical shifts in American history between public-spirited action and private concerns?

The development of institutions and organization of labor resemble the evolution of species and biological organization rather than the discontinuity of ecosystems or chaotic structures. As stressed by J. Maynard Smith (1995, 30), the modeling of the evolution of species after the discontinuity of ecosystems and chaos theory amounts to "fact-free science." The reformulation of Darwinism after ecological and chaos theories by, inter alia, Stuart Kauffman (1991; in Varela & Dupuy, 1991) and David Depew and Bruce Weber (1994), what I call "ecological Darwinism," commits an identificational slip (Khalil, 1995b). Nonlinear thermodynamics and chaos theories might be useful to the study of storms and ecosystems. But they are impertinent to evolutionary theory concerned with the evolution of species and biological form. There is simply no genes and phenotypic form in storms; and they do not exist at the level at which the boundary of the ecosystem is identified (Khalil, 1995b).