Re: Merging WST and complexity science

In a message dated 6/16/2003 12:10:50 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
bstremli@binghamton.edu writes:
> The nation-state and the realist paradigm> in international relations were 
>far from ideal solutions, but they did go> a long way toward restoring peace 
>in Europe after the debacle of the> 30-years War.  However, if the balance of 
>power system was generally> beneficial for recognized polities, it was 
>disastrous for most> non-European polities, which suddenly became entities > 
>without any rights> whatsoever (as far as Europeans were concerned).
Not only that--the creation of these 'entities without any rights'created a 
space for European men to perform violence and sexuality that was increasingly 
restrained in 'civilized' Europe (thus 'the wild west' was the other half of 
puritanical North America).  Certain forms of behavior were increasingly 
conceptualized   as irrational, unconscious, primitive, etc and pushed out of 
Europe.  Part of the history of the twentieth century is the decline of this 
extra space and the return of these forms of behavior to the core.
Metaphors have long migrated both ways across the natural/social 
science/humanities divide.  For example, the word 'work' was quite an important 
term in understanding political economy before it became a central term in 
physics (force times distance).  The concept of historical change originates 
among historians of people, migrates to geology, then migrates to biology 
(evolution) where it comes back to the social sciences.  
I find evolutionary metaphors, used with some care, quite stimulating.  Social 
forms propogate (obviously through mechanisms different from sexual 
reproduction) and eventually go extinct/mutate into something else.  This is 
one way to conceptualize forms like the nation-state, multinational 
corporations, the modern institution of marriage, etc.  It is worth noting that 
in the history of the evolution of biological life, species have often emerged 
from the margins--we are descendants of rat-like creatures who lived around 
dinasours, not of the giant creatures themselves (who apparently mutate into 
birds).  I tend to believe the present system will be superseded by social 
forms at the margins of the system of states and economic actors, rather than 
by the mutation of the latter into something 'higher'.  Dinosaurs apparently 
went extinct both because they became so pervasive around the world that 
diseases spread rapidly, and because of the catastrophic impact of a meteor.  
This might also be suggestive of the way the central institutions of the modern 
world system eventually collapse--a combination of problems created by their 
very pervasiveness, as well as their fragility in the face of catastrophe.
Steven Sherman