On Mon, 3 Jul 1995 BAMYEHM@aspen.uml.edu wrote:
> I missed some of the discussion on the use of "evolution" as an
> explanatory sort of meta-concept, but I have not seen any
> reference to Joannes Fabian's important book in this regard, 'Time
> and the Other.' It is written as a critique fro an anthropological
> perspective of the kinds of thinking attendant to presumptions
> of evolution. I myself tend to think that the term is still
> problematic, EVEN when it is stripped of its originally
> teleological, Spencerian package. The fact that a term has a
> great "explanatory power" does not necessarily mean that it is
> intrinsically meaningful. In other words, using a concept to
> show that a logical or rational (both terms presumed to be
> universal) path is followed/averted goes around the more
> fundamental problem, which consists in demonstrating a
> certain kind of systematicity , which would then call for
> the introduction of appropriate concepts.
I believe that I had mentioned that point, but it can be made
clearer with the language used following my post. The concept of
evolution which has proved useful is descent with variation. This
requires that there is a system that is propogated by reproduction, that
the reproduction is variable, and that there is selection among the
various descendents of a system. If the theory of selection is poorly
worked out or left implicit, it is here that you can fall into a trap of
teleology, for which there is a simple solution: theories of selection
must be examined, and teleological theories of selection are discarded.
If the term evolution is used, without establishing explicitly
that there is a system, propogated by variable reproduction with selection
among the various descendents, then it *is* an open question whether the
explanatory power of 'descent with variationism' can be brought to bear on
the case at hand. If not, I would argue that term is being used to borrow
from the status of successful theories of evolution, without undertaking
the work required to actually employ the theory. Thus the following is a
crucial point:
> In much of the literature using the term--although there might be
> exceptions-- the comparability of different things (epochs, regions,
> 'civilzations,' etc.) and their meaningful totality and systematicity
> is more often presumed than established. ...
> This is not to say that we can never do macro- and comparative
> types of analysis. ... There are alternatives to the term in
> macro-level analysis, which I don't think stands and falls
> with evolution. It seems to me that much of the appeal of the
> term has to do with its scientific origins ... which I think
> is part of a larger problem regarding some (influential)
> sociologists' proclivity to model the discipline after
> the natural sciences. ...
To bring the point even more directly to bear on the topic at
hand, it is possible that societies evolve, without evolution of the
world-system in which they are found. Or, in other words, there may be
evolution in the world-system without evolution of the world-system. If a
world-system is generated by interaction of persistent characeristics of
societies (not *all* characteristics need change in social evolution)
then the decline of one world system may be followed by the rise of
another, without an ancester-descendent relationship between the two. If
the later world-system is not a descendent of a former world-system, it
is best to avoid referring to the 'evolution' of the world-systems,
however much evolution proceeds within the world-systems.
I take it that in this forum, the entity of world-systems can be
taken as a given. So the next question is whether they are systems that
reproduce. If so in _The Long 20th C_, the use of the term evolutionary
is well-justified. If not in most world-system theory, the attention
that his use of the term has recieved is also well-justified, as this is
an important difference. So, (1) do the world-systems of TL20C
reproduce? (2) does that agree with or differ from most WS theory and
(3) if this represents an innovation, what are its promises and perils
for WS theory?
Virtually,
Bruce McFarling, Knoxville
brmcf@utkux1.utk.edu