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

Third, Roth argues against Wallace's revitalization theory on the ground that nonlinear dynamics could account better for the cycles in church membership:

Nonlinear theory . . . raises the possibility that nonlinear forces, analogous to those that govern ferromagnetism and auto- and cross-catalytic reaction, may be responsible for many, if not all, of the surges and fluctuations in church membership that occur during revitalization movements such as the Second Great Awakening (1992, 220).

But, in most cases, church membership seems to deviate from stability for erratic and exogenous reasons, rather than expressing deep revitalization development. The fact that accidental events may initiate the sudden reverse of a resurgence in church membership, or stimulate such membership, calls into question the operation of developmental processes. A developmental process allows a certain interpretation or incorporation of the accidental events. That is, if a surge in socio-political club membership proves to be an everlasting trend such that it takes hold and becomes a wide-spread successful revitalization movement, this happens because of an inmost process of development of the body politic.

The difference between the developmental discontinuity of constitutions (written or unwritten) and the dynamical discontinuity in church attendance is not merely a matter of temporal scale or organizational level of analysis. The disruption of a constitutional political community either leads to the decay and eventual extinction of the community as a political entity, or it leads to the revitalization of the community on the basis of a new developmental regime of institutions. In contrast, the disruption of a church recruitment, a fad, or a pedestrian traffic pattern usually leads to another stable constellation. The nonlinear dynamics metaphor cannot shed light on the political death or rebirth of communities, the very subject of Wallace's study.

In short, Roth criticizes Wallace's theory on the grounds that it is a linear, five- stage sequential model, and hence it does not fit nonlinear dynamics. But Wallace's theory is not about phenomena which could be subjected to nonlinear dynamics. This demonstrates that Roth confuses movements which end up as cycles premised on dynamics, on one hand, and movements which succeed in capturing and changing the fundamental trend of development, on the other.

IV

Conclusion

The essay argued that dynamical change as exhibited by the fashion cycle qualitatively differs from developmental change as expressed by cultural evolution. The dynamics of changing club membership should not be confused with the successful social reform movement which reconstitutes the sociopolitical entity on a new developmental regime.

The suggested dynamics/development difference runs parallel to the distinction between the cyclical dynamics of health which the body experiences, on one hand, and the secular trend of development and aging, on the other. While sickness and recovery could be induced by external causes exaggerated by "run away" internal dynamics, the cycle cannot explain the progression of the body towards general weakness. Whether a specific event of sickness precipitates death depends on the underpinning constitution, the developmental stage of the organism, and so on. Thus, the developmental process of aging cannot be explained by the same conceptual apparatus utilized to decipher the dynamical discontinuity of sickness and health? While the gyration around the axis of the spiral may be the only way that such an axis could move forward, this should not mean that the movement itself is the outcome of non-purposeful positive feedbacks which may characterize the gyration. The metaphor of the spiral also illustrates why the ex ante separation of dynamics from development is difficult. A particular nonlinear feedbacks could express the long-term potentiality of the body or the long-term forecast of the capability of an economy to attain a healthy growth.