Re: Merging WST and complexity science

The bit on entropy dissipating from North to South is intriguing - I have
been toying with this idea for a while myself as a necessary corrective to
much of conservative-leaning political philosophy/world history which
addresses the issues of political order. In a detailed study the
mechanisms of transmitting entropy would have to be clearly outlined - and
they are not just (or purely) economic.  Much of this literature stresses
the necessity of tension - cosmos vs. society, economy vs. polity, science
vs. humanities, etc., as the necessary price for the maintenance of order,
and cite the alleviation of such tensions as the cause of social collapse
and chaos.  The question they generally fail to raise is that the cost of
maintaining such tension is very unevenly distributed - and here the
core/periphery model is very useful.  The repressed returns, and in far
more damaging ways in the periphery than in the core.

On the other hand, the abolition of such tension by fiat doesn't strike me
as particularly useful.  The central political importance that
conservatives attach to the above dichotomies is vastly overstated (and
therefore, usually enforced by force, or at least the threat of force),
but so is the insistence on irreducible unity.  What is to be gained by
forcing people to chose between civilization singular and civilizations
plural?  Why not have both?  In fact, the very statement of the problem in
these terms only perpetuates the dichotomies and their enforcement.  Ditto
materialism/idealism.  I'm not sure about "Buddhism as materialist" either
- this contention is meaningful only as a contrast to an equally reified
"idealist Christianity".


On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Andre Gunder Frank wrote:

> I am working on my ReORIENT THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, a sequel to my book
> that ended in 1800. This one goes from 1750 to 1914 -- mabey later.
> It combines several old and new analytical things.
> of course WST and WST as reformulated in ReOrient. But also analysis of
> the MULTILATEAL system in which place in the system is more important
> than what one can do on ones own, eg by technology, production etc.
> And ENTROPY as the disorder, both physical and social, that is generated
> by the growth process but it dissipated from te North to the South,
> especially taking advantage also of the multilateal position and links
> mentioned above. In a crude sense/vesion of the analysis, MULTILATERALUTY
> determines the benefits that can be drawn from LOCATION,LOCATION, LOCATION
> in the system, and ENTROPY is the cost of the process, but some [much?] of
> which can be and is DISSIPATED from those who generate it to those -
> unfavorably located - who are obliged to absorb that cost, and thereby
> ''appear'to be disorganized by war,cconflict, crime, poverty etc.
> This is a materialist analysis of a materialist world. Where the Buddhist
> concenpts mentioned in the questiin come in, I do not know, but would be
> glad to be enlightened. Buddhism is materialist also, however.
>
> gunder frank
>
> Threin it also draws on PirogeneOn Sat, 7 Jun 2003,
--

Boris Stremlin
bstremli@binghamton.edu