I would just like to second what Sanderson said about evolutionary
paradigms in the social sciences, particularly the embrace of
contingency and open-endedness. I think that a great deal of
creative work is going on -- particularly in terms of the type of
large-scale "big history" that Sanderson favours -- that employs
such a perspective. Theorists in the social sciences who now
make use of evolutionary paradigms seem to draw not on the old
discredited Spencerian uses of the concept, but draw from people
like Gould, Dawkins, and Dennett -- even Richard Rorty -- in returning
to a view of history as a "decent with modification." I believe
that part of this is driven by attempts to get away from
mono-causal "master narratives" -- either in the guise of
successive modes of production or technologies of destruction.
Ron
Ronald J. Deibert
Institute of International Relations
University of British Columbia
(604) 822-5480