Systems theories, that is, the mathematical models that account for various behaviours of interacting elements are noticeably absent from any discussion, particularly within the social sciences here at UofT.
Thomas Homer-Dixon was an innovator in introducing the concept of complex-adaptive systems to the discourse of young undergrads doing Peace and Conflict Studies. Anatol Rapaport before him bestowed upon his students the mixed-blessing of a comparatively rigorous examination of game theoretic models of strategic agency.
What these men recognized is that there must be tools to understand abstract commonalities between seemingly disparate eventualities. The ultimate goal of history, after all, is to let us learn about the future by examining the past. It astounds me then, that historians steep themselves in factual accountancy rather than examing constructs for identifying patterns.
Just recently I wrote a paper on how dynamical systems theory can account for Jack Goldstone’s framework of analysis of revolutions. Goldstone gestures at the possibility for revolution as an emergent property but he fails to account in the readings we were given for what kind of system this emergence is coming from.
Dynamical systems theory appears nowhere in my Peace and Conflict literature, or any of my political science courses. It was introduced to me in my Cognitive Science class - a class no more connected with the mathematical particulars of dynamical systems theory than peace and conflict studies.
This may seem ironic, or even hypocritical given my previous entry decrying the inadequacy of abstract models at offering solutions to the most pressing problems of development - alluding to Hiediggerian functional fixation and framing issues.
The cognitive framing problem abounds in the social sciences - what start out as heuristics in undergrad become immutable laws of reality in the professional world, with no account as to hardening.
Competitive processes must be at play when examining issues of political or social import. On the one hand, we must be increasing the efficiency and applicability of our solutions - seeking the best solution for particular problems. The kind of hyper-contextualized thinking I said needed to be explored in my previous entry.
Conversely, generalizability and pattern coagulation and integration are also important processes. How can we identify relevantly similar characteristics and frame our problem-space, let alone our potential solution space if we have no basis for connecting two contexts. This is where innovation happens.
Thusly, a professional endeavour of any social scientist is to engender an appropriate governing mechanism for emphasizing one cognitive style over another. It is only in this way that sagacity in situations of apparently iredeemable conflict can emerge.
The only problems we face are ill-defined problems - insight is required and thus a disciplined process of cognitive annealing is needed to avoid functional fixation of the disasterous sort seen in the United Nations.
Systems theories, like any other theory allow us a currency of discourse that is otherwise unavailable. This compression of information accelerates and expands thinking - which can do nothing but help foster more and better solutions to the pressing problems of our time.