From JWSR, Vol 12, N1 - Julio 2006
The Interplay between Social and
Environmental Degradation in the Development
of the International Political Economy
By Robert Biel
This article considers capitalism as a dissipative
system, developing at the expense of
exporting disorder into two sorts of ‘environment’:
the physical ecosystem; and a subordinate
area of society which serves to nourish
mainstream order without experiencing its
benefits. Particularly significant is the relationship
between the two forms of dissipation.
The paper begins by assessing the dangers of
translating systems theory into social relations,
concluding that the project is nevertheless
worthwhile, provided that exploitation and
struggle are constantly borne in mind. Exploring
the concepts of ‘core’ and ‘periphery,’ the
paper highlights the contradictory nature of
an attribute of chaos which is both ascribed to
the out-group, and also really exported to it.
|
From Review of International Political Economy 12:3 August 2005: 383–386
Paradigm making while paradigm breaking:
Andre Gunder Frank
By Jan Nederveen Pieterse
As Thomas Kuhn pointed out, most science is puzzle solving and
paradigm breakers and paradigm makers are rare. Gunder was among
them, and besides, such a contrarian that he was a renegade also of many
of his own positions.
His contributions to dependency theory broke with the paradigm of
modernization theory and with orthodox Marxist views according to
which Latin America was steeped in semi-feudalism. In contrast, he argued
that Latin American economies had long been part of capitalist accumulation
networks (‘Sociology of underdevelopment and underdevelopment
of sociology’, Frank, 1971). In the 1970s he moved beyond dependency theory,
(‘Dependence is Dead! Long Live Dependence and the Class Struggle’,
1972) and collaborated with Immanuel Wallerstein and his world-system
theory, along with Samir Amin and Giovanni Arrighi. The grand theme at
the time was crisis and several of Frank’s books on global capital accumulation
developed this perspective. Another keen interest at the time, new
social movements, resulted in a paper written together with Marta Fuentes
(‘Nine Theses on Social Movements’, Frank and Fuentes, 1987) with a sensibility
that predates the World Social Forum, as Samir Amin notes in his
obituary in Monthly Review (Amin, 2005).
See Amin's obituary at www.rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank
|
Elias L. Khalil,
1995
Nonlinear thermodynamics and social science
modelling: fad cycles, cultural development and identicational slips
"...This is not to deny that Prigogine's
feedbacks and Haken's dynamics could also be found as aspects of living and social
phenomena. As shown below, in fact, nonlinear dynamics might be helpful in elucidating
economic and social cycles. The point is rather that Prigogine's and other research
programs concerning dynamics are simply unsuited to capture what defines the constitution
of purposeful organization - even as simple as that of the amoebae. These research
programs are exclusively suited to the study of non-purposeful structures, as epitomized
in storms and as they appear as non-essential aspects of purposeful organization..."
------------------------ |
The second law of thermodynamics
and
Entropy
and the second law of thermodynamics
--Entropy
and the second law of thermodynamics
--The second law of thermodynamics is a
tendency
--Obstructions
to the secondlaw make life possible
--The second law of thermodynamics and
evolution
-Entropy and
Gibbs free energy, D
G =
D
H -TDS
by F. L. Lambert
---------------------------- |
Principia
Cybernetica Web
Entropy and the laws of thermodynamics
The principal energy laws that govern every
organization are derived from two famous laws of thermodynamics. The second law, known as
Carnot's principle, is controlled by the concept of entropy.
Today the word entropy is as much a part of the language of the physical sciences as it is
of the human sciences. Unfortunately, physicists, engineers, and sociologists use
indiscriminately a number of terms that they take to be synonymous with entropy, such as
disorder, probability, noise, random mixture, heat; or they use terms they consider
synonymous with antientropy, such as information, neguentropy, complexity, organization,
order, improbability.
---------------------- |
Universidad de
Zaragoza, Espańa
Journal of SocioCybernetics
SOCIOCYBERNETICS traces its intellectual roots to the rise of a panoply of new approaches
to scientific inquiry beginning in the 1940's. These included General System Theory,
cybernetics and information theory, game theory and automata, net, set, graph and
compartment theories, and decision and queuing theory conceived as strategies in one way
or another appropriate to the study of organized complexity. Although today the Research
Committee casts a wide net in terms of appropriate subject matters, pertinent theoretical
frameworks and applicable methodologies, the range of approaches deployed by scholars
associated with RC51 reflect the maturation of these developments. Here we find, again,
GST and first- and second-order cybernetics; in addition, there is widespread sensitivity
to the issues raised by "complexity studies," especially in work conceptualizing
systems as self-organizing, autocatalytic or autopoietic. "System theory", in
the form given it by Niklas Luhmann, and world-systems analysis are also prominently
represented within the ranks of RC51.
-------------------- |
From
What-Means.Com: the online encyclopedia
Self-organization
Self-organization refers to a process in which the
internal organization of a system , normally an open system , increases automatically
without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically
(though not always) display emergent properties.
--
Systems theory
Systems theory is an interdisciplinary field with
origins in engineering, physics and applied mathematics but has been extended into many
areas of natural sciences and humanities such as biology , economics and psychology .
Formed in the 1950s it is a precursor the newer field of complex systems which developed
in the 1980s and later.
---------------------------- |
C. Lucas - 1997
Self-Organizing Systems FAQ
The scientific study of self-organising systems is a
relatively recent field, although questions about how organisation arises have of course
been raised since ancient times. The forms we see around us are just a minute sub-set of
those theoretically possible, so why don't we see more variety ? It is to try to answer
such questions that we study self-organisation. Many systems in nature show organisation
e.g. galaxies, planets, compounds, cells, organisms and societies. Traditional scientific
fields attempt to explain these features by reference to the micro properties or laws
applicable to their component parts, for example gravitation or chemical bonds. Yet we can
also approach the subject in a different way, looking instead for system properties that
apply to all such collections of parts, regardless of size or nature. It is here that
modern computers prove essential, by allowing us to investigate dynamic changes occuring
over vast numbers of time steps, for large numbers of options.
---------------------- |
World Systems Research
---
Andre Gunder Frank website
------------------------ |
Jason W. Moore -
2000
Marx and the Historical Ecology of Capital
Accumulation on a World Scale: A Comment on Alf Hornborg's "Ecosystems and World
Systems: Accumulation as an Ecological Process."
------------------- |
Theotonio dos
Santos - 2000
World Economic System: On the Genesis of a Concept
------------------------ |
Ilya Prigogine -
2000
The Networked Society
...I feel that there is some analogy between the
present evolution toward the networked society and the processes of self-organization I
have studied in physics and chemistry. Indeed, nobody has planned the networked society
and the information explosion. It is a remarkable example of spontaneous emergence of new
forms of society. Complexity is moreover the key feature of far-from-equilibrium
structures. The networked society is of course a non-equilibrium structure which emerged
as a result of the recent developments in Information Technology.
----------------- |
From
Scientecmatrix.com - 2002
Getting to know Ilya Prigogine
Note: Professor Prigogine sat down to meet with
SCIENTECMATRIX.com (SCM) shortly after the Third Prigogine Seminar at the University of
Brussels, dedicated to the subject "Penser la Science: Qu'est-ce que
l'information?" ("Thinking about Science.What is information?") in early
February 2002. The interview refers to the seminar on one or two occasions.
---------------------- |
P. Brown (1997): a
review of
Order out of Chaos. Man's New Discourse with Nature
by I. Prigogine and I. Stengers (1984)
Ilya Prigogine and
Isabelle Stengers present a wide ranging and well documented discourse on the
gradual emergence of philosophical and scientific thought in regard to
conceptions of order and chaos.
In the exposition of one of the main thematic threads of their subject
matter, the authors itemise three types of conceptually different systems, only
two of which were academically studied and (generally) understood by the
progressive expansion of scientific research and theory in relation to the study
of natural phenomena exhibited around us - in our terrestrial environment upon
this earth, and in the local cosmic environment within which the terrestrial is
embedded.
Systems which are in equilibrium or systems which are close to equilibrium
are the first two phenomena presented, during which it is noted that such
systems are - almost exclusively - the subject matter of the traditional and
classical sciences. Such systems are relatively stable, exhibiting known and
predictable characteristics which may be represented in parameter driven
mathematical models.
However Prigogine chose to attempt investigation of a third and largely
ignored class of systems - those which were far from equilibrium. His
research earned him the Nobel Prize in 1977, for his work on the thermodynamics
of nonequlibrium systems, and his contribution towards the understanding of
natural processes and their descriptions has earnt him the respect of many
scientists and academics in many fields. The authors have subtitled their
publication Man's New Discourse with Nature, and progressively introduce
and discuss the conceptual differences between the traditional mechanistic
interpretation of the so-called laws of cause and effect and the
inability of this paradigm alone to provide explanation for that class of
phenomenal systems in which equilibrium conditions are not maintained.
|
P. Brown (1997): a
review of
Chaos, Making a New Science
by J. Gleick (1987)
Chaos breaks across the lines that separate scientific
disciplines. Because it is a science of the global nature of systems, it has brought
together thinkers from fields that had been widely separated. "Fifteen years ago,
science was heading for a crisis of increasing specialization. Dramatically, that
specialization has reversed because of chaos." [Page 5]
--------------------- |
Andrew K. Jorgenson, & Edward L.
Kick-2003
Globalization and the Environment
In recent decades, global capitalist economics, technology (including communication),
and global military reach have worked together to remove a major political-military, economic and
ideological challenge to capitalism, that is, Eastern bloc-style socialism (it could be argued that we
now are working on the next challenge, Islam). While these dynamics have stunted any nascent challenges
to market expansion, the latter has created other contradictions. One of these is that “globalization”
now threatens the human race with environmental disasters.
|
Alf Hornborg-2003
Cornucopia or Zero-Sum Game? The Epistemology of
Sustainability
This article contrasts two fundamentally
different understandings of economic growth
and “development” that lead to diametrically
opposed approaches to how to deal with
global ecological deterioration. One is the
currently hegemonic perspective of neoclassi-
cal economic theory, which has been used to
advocate growth as a remedy for environmental problems.
The other is the zero-sum perspective of world-system theory, which instead
suggests that growth involves a displacement of
ecological problems to peripheral sectors of the
world-economy. The article begins by sketching
the history of these two perspectives in recent
decades and reflecting on the ideological and
epistemological contexts of their appearance
and different degrees of success. It then turns to
the main task of critically scrutinizing some of
the foundations of the neoclassical approach to
environmental issues, arguing that its optimistic view of growth is based on faulty logic and
a poor understanding of the global, physical
realities within which money and the capitalist
world-system operate.
|
Stephen G. Bunker-2003
Matter, Space, Energy, and Political Economy: The
Amazon in the World-System
Many authors have attempted to incorporate
the local into the global. World-systems
analysis, though, is rooted in processes of production,
and all production remains profoundly
local. Understanding the expansion and intensification of the social and material relations of
capitalism that have created and sustain the dynamic growth of the world-system from the
local to the global requires analysis of material processes of natural and social production in
space as differentiated by topography, hydrology, climate, and absolute distance between
places. In this article, I consider some of the spatio-material configurations that have structured
local effects on global formations within a single region, the Amazon Basin. I first detail
and criticize the tendency in world system and globalization analysis, and in the modern social
sciences generally, to use spatial metaphors without examining how space affects the material
processes around which social actors organize economy and polity. I next examine the
work of some earlier social scientists who analyzed
specific materio-spatial configurations as these structured human social, economic, and
political activities and organization, searching
for possible theoretical or methodological tools
for building from local to global analysis. I then
review some recent analyses of spatio-material
determinants of social and economic organization
in the Amazon Basin. Finally, I show that
the 400-year-long sequence of extractive economies
in the Amazon reflected the changing
demands of expanded industrial production in
the core, and how such processes can best be
understood by focusing our analysis on spatiomaterial
configurations of local extraction,
transport, and production. The Amazon is but
one of the specific environments that have supplied
raw materials to changing global markets,
but close consideration of how its material and
spatial attributes shaped the global economy
provides insights into the ways other local systems
affect the world-system.
|
Peter Grimes & Jeffrey
Kentor-2003
Exporting the Greenhouse: Foreign Capital Penetration
and CO2 Emissions 1980–1996
Th is research examines the impact of
foreign investment dependence on carbon
dioxide emissions between 1980 and 1996. In
a cross-national panel regression analysis of 66
less developed countries, we fi nd that foreign
capital penetration in 1980 has a signifi cant
positive eff ect on the growth of CO₂ emissions
between 1980 and 1996. Domestic investment,
however, has no systematic effect. We suggest
several reasons for these findings. Foreign
investment is more concentrated in those industries that require more energy. Second,
transnational corporations may relocate highly
polluting industries to countries with fewer
environmental controls. Third, the movement
of inputs and outputs resulting from the global
dispersion of production over the past 30 years
is likely to be more energy-expensive in countries
with poorer infrastructure. Finally, power
generation in the countries receiving foreign
investment is considerably less efficient than
within the countries of the core. |
J. Timmons Roberts Peter E. Grimes
& Jodie L. Manale-2003
Social Roots of Global Environmental Change: A
World-Systems Analysis of Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Carbon dioxide is understood to be
the most important greenhouse gas believed
to be altering the global climate. This article
applies world-system theory to environmental
damage. An analysis of 154 countries examines
the contribution of both position in the world economy
and internal class and political forces
in determining a nation’s CO₂ intensity. CO₂
intensity is defined here as the amount of
carbon dioxide released per unit of economic
output. An inverted U distribution of CO₂
intensity across the range of countries in the
global stratification system is identified and
discussed. Ordinary Least Squares regression
suggests that the least efficient consumers
of fossil fuels are some countries within the
semi-periphery and upper periphery,
specifically those nations which are high exporters, those highly in debt, nations with higher
military spending, and those with a repressive
social structure.
|
R. Scott Frey-2003
The Transfer of Core-Based Hazardous Production
Processes to the Export Processing Zones of the Periphery: The Maquiladora Centers of
Northern Mexico
Transnational corporations appropriate
“carrying capacity” for the core by transferring
the core’s hazardous products, production processes,
and wastes to the peripheral countries
of the world-system. An increasingly important
form of this reproduction process is the
transfer of core-based hazardous industries
to export processing zones (EPZs) located
in a number of peripheral countries in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
A specific case is examined in this paper: the
transfer of hazardous industries to the maquiladora
centers located on the Mexican side of
the Mexico-U.S. border. Maquiladoras provide
an excellent case for examining what is known
about the causes, adverse consequences, and
political responses associated with the transfer
of core-based hazardous production processes
to the EPZs of the periphery.
|
Thomas J. Burns, Edward L. Kick,
Byron L. Davis-2003
Theorizing and Rethinking Linkages Between the
Natural Environment and the Modern World-System: Deforestation in the Late 20th Century
Building on prior work in world-system
analysis and human ecology, we test a macrolevel
theory that social and demographic
causes of deforestation will vary across zones
of the modern world-system. Using multivariate
regression analysis, we examine models of
deforestation over the period 1990-2000.
We test for main effects of world-system
position, two different population variables
(urbanization and proportion under working
age), and economic development within
zone, as well as for the contextual effects of
these variables as they operate differently
across world-system positions. Our findings
indicate that generic models of deforestation
need to be qualified, because the particular
social factors most closely associated with
deforestation tend to vary by position in the
global hierarchy. Deforestation at the macro
level is best explained by considering effects of
socio-demographic processes contextually, in
terms of world-system dynamics. We discuss
the findings in a more general world-systems
and behavioral ecological framework, and
suggest the field will be well served with more
precise theorizing and closer attention to scope
conditions.
|
Andrew K. Jorgenson-2003
Lateral Pressure and Deforestation
A Review Essay of Environmental Impacts of Globalization and
Trade: A Systems Study by Corey L Lofdahl |
Franz J. Broswimmer
Ecocide: A Short History of Mass Extinction of
Species
Reviewed by Florencio R. Riguera-2003 |
Arthur Mol and Frederick Buttel (eds)
The Environmental State Under Pressure
Reviewed by Bruce Podobnik-2003 |
| |
Elementary
Tutorials on
Maximum entropy and exponential models
by A. Berger - Carnegie Mellon University
---
Maximum entropy modelling
by Zhang Le - University of Edinburg
------------------------- |
Scientific
resources:
Statistics
- Econometrics - Forecasting
by E. Borghes, P. Wessa and Resa Corporation
------------------------ |
|
About sociodynamics and political economy
"The study of Political Economy integrates anthropology, economics, history,
law, political science, philosophy and sociology by offering ways of
understanding the ... world and providing tools for analyzing contemporary problems.Political Economy seeks to study how such
problems interweave and overlap, how they evolved, how they are understood, how
and why certain decisions are made about them, and how these issues impact the
quality of human life. At its best, Political Economy provides the
interdisciplinary tools needed to analyze strategies for social change,
historically and in the present, and explore alternatives to the current global
system. Major social problems are deeply grounded in theories and history of
cultural, philosophical, social, economic and political practice. Their
understanding involves exploring basic analytic concepts and values (freedom,
equality, justice and democracy) and their meanings today. Political Economy
looks at societies as dynamic and ever-changing systems, comparing them in
different countries and cultures and evaluating their impacts on the everyday
lives of all affected people." (Dr. Peter Bohmer, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, U.S.A., 1996)
----------------- |
Sociodynamics (1)
Róbinson Rojas (1984) on:
Towards a theory of Latin America's
"underdevelopment".
The collision, dissolution and fusion of two modes of production.
A short digression is necessary at this stage: my concept of "collision of modes
of production" refers to the interaction (military or economic, or both) between
different social formations as an historical event. The outcome of that
collision amounts to the outcome of the interaction of different economic,
social, political and ideological instances, resulting -if one social formation
does not destroy the other -in a new complex structure (the fabric of the new
social formation).
On the one hand, in any mode of production, each
one of the four instances is simultaneously cause and effect within the complex
structure, and in their mutual relation (from here derives the notion of
"relative autonomy" attached to social, political and ideological instances,
because unlike the economic instance, they are not limited by technological
aspects). Thus the complex structure reacts over each one of the instances and
viceversa. On the other hand, the appropriation of nature being the aim of human
beings grouping in societies, the economic instance (as organisation of the
labour process) appears as the first cause, but it is not an isolated instance
above the entire process (clearly so because all four instances and the complex
structure exist only as relations between human beings grouped in societies).
Therefore, this economic instance is limited by both the others and the complex
structure, and simultaneously the former (economic instance) poses a limit to
all of them.
|
Sociodynamics (2)
Róbinson Rojas (1984) on:
Towards a theory of Latin America's "underdevelopment".
Some fundamentals: the concept of classes. The concept of limits.
The period analyzed in this section roughly covers from the XIX century onwards.
During that period Latin America became politically independent from the
colonial powers Spain and Portugal, fragmented in a score of nation states,
economically underdeveloped as compared with the industrialized countries of
Western Europe and North America, and tied to an international economic system
which apparently maintains Latin American nations in a state of economic
backwardness, political instability, and, most important, striking social
inequalities.
I will argue that the structure of class relations existing
in the region at the beginning of the period in question determined (1) the
manner and degree in which external political and economic pressures did effect
already existing patterns in the distribution of income and economic growth (2).
Therefore I will argue that the present state of socio-economic underdevelopment
(3) in Latin America is the outcome determined by the particular social
structure that took shape in colonial times. A social structure created by the
Ibero-American colonial system: a specific social formation with a specific mode
of production as its basis, which I called the Latin American mode of production
(LAMP).
|
Sociodynamics (3)
Róbinson Rojas (1984) on:
Towards a theory of Latin America's "underdevelopment".
Latin America: blockages to development
A case study on articulation of modes of
production, sociodynamics, self-organizing social systems, and particularly on historical
processes as an outcome of collision, dissolution and fusion of two modes of
production
It is argued that, so far, all theories of the Latin American process
have been biased by an external approach. Examining the theoretical
foundations of these theories, it is concluded that these cannot
explain the class and production structures existing in the region,
neither can predict the emergence of qualitatively new phenomena.
Having criticised the discourses of underdevelopment, dependency,
development ( modernization ), and world system theories, the
analysis then proceeds with the argument that a theory of the Latin
American process must conceptualize the social organization of the
continent as an entity in itself, and not as an appendage to the
development of capitalism in the industrialized countries. Such a
theory must be centered on the internal dynamics of the Latin
American social structure, and then assess the actual role played
by capitalism and imperialism in its policy.
It is argued that Latin American development, as based on a restricted,
limited, and upper-class oriented type of market, and a fragmented
society, is possible because it corresponds to a particular
organization of the labour process, which, in turn, is the product of
a particular mode of production. This particular mode of production
is the outcome of the fusion of different modes of production in
the region. In this context, the international capitalist system
-at its imperialist stage- is not a cause, but a profiteer and
supporter of the contemporary social structure in Latin America.
This particular organization of the labour process sets the
boundaries ( limits ) within which Latin America's social structure,
political organization and organization of labour can vary. At an
abstract level, it is argued, unlike some modern Marxian scholars,
that even when the relations of production are the genesis of the
social structure, the latter can, in some historical situations,
persist after the former subside, and adapt themselves to new forms
of relations of production.
It is concluded that...
|
Sociodynamics (4)
Andre Gunder Frank (2000) on:
Urban
location and dissipation of entropy
Globalization is age old and has long been constructed through an ever changing
network, especially within and among cities, which constitute the nodal knots in
regional, inter-regional, and global networks of communication and other
relations. The whole system of networks is greater than the sum of its urban,
hinterland, and inter-urban parts, which are shaped and re-shaped by the
structure and dynamic of the global system as a whole, to whose transformation
the changing parts themselves also contribute. For instance, a change in global
or regional trade routes can promote one or more cities at the expense of
marginalizing other cities and exert direct effects on imperial or other
political relations among these cities or between them and their respective
hinterlands. Periods of global or regional...
|
Sociodynamics (5)
Andre Gunder Frank (2004) on:
ReOrient World History, Social Theory, and
the 19th Century
Dissipative structures...this term, coined by Ilya
Priogine, refers to the ability of complex systems to transfer their entropic costs to
other parts [of the system].... [We] lose sight of the fact that every system in the
social order must be paid for by someone, somewhere, sometime. This essential reality is
hidden from our view because human beings are very skillful at exporting the costs of
their own behavior to others via Dissipative structures...[through which] dissipation of
entropy occurs when one system has the will and the ability to force others to absorb the
costs of its own growth and prosperity...[which] is one of the defining characteristics of
colonial systems, which suggests that the absorption of entropic costs is one of the
functions a colony performs for its metropole... [but also] through impersonal market
mechanisms so the victims on the periphery are not aware of what is being done to them.
---------------------- |
Economics and
physical reality
Thermodynamics
and Economics
Dietmar Lindenberger (Institute of Energy
Economics, University of Cologne, Germany)
Reiner Kümmel (Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of
Würrzburg, Germany)
Since Georgescu-Roegen´s statement on entropy, there has grown a vast literature on the
implications of the laws of thermodynamics for economics. Most of this literature is
related to the environmental consequences of the 2nd law, i.e. that any economic activity
unavoidably causes pollution1. This important insight could, at least to some extent, be
integrated into (environmental) economic theory.
------------------------ |
Assessing economic potential:
What the physical sciences have to offer
Jane King (Resource Use Institute, UK)
Perhaps one of the gaps in traditional economics teaching has been the failure to
incorporate physical science into economic analysis. Economists have traditionally been
wary of intervention by outsiders. Scientists, for their part, have tended to leave
analysis of the economy to those trained in economic techniques. Economics and Science
rest on different paradigms. However co-ordination between the two can offer new insights
in a situation where economic development is increasingly coming up against physical
constraints whether in terms of limited resources, such as oil, water or fish, or of the
amounts and nature of pollutants we exude.1 I am one of a growing number of people
who believe that economics urgently needs to find a way of dealing with these physical
realities. But to do so, it will have to innovate in a fundamental way: it will have to
use, in addition to monetary evaluation, a system of physical evaluation.
----------------------- |
B. Cimbleris
(1980s)
Economy and Thermodynamics
An elementary definition of energy is "capacity of producing
work". A rough definition of money is "the ability to make other people work".
Money and its equivalents are the motive power of human action. This is
admittedly cheap philosophy, but it works.
I believe in the usefulness of intuitive ideas in entering the tracks of
precise concepts. In this paper I try to associate the ideas of classical,
bona fide economists of the last two centuries, with the concepts of
Thermodynamics...
|
J. Stepanic jr, H.
Stefancic, M. S. Zebec, and K. Perackovic - 2000
Approach to a Quantitative Description of Social Systems Based on
Thermodynamic Formalism
Certain statistical aspects of social systems are described by appropriately defined
quantities named social potentials. Relations between social potentials are postulated by
drawing an analogy with thermodynamics relations between thermodynamic potentials, thus
obtaining a toy model of some of the statistical properties of social systems. Within this
model, an interpretation of a socially relevant acting (acting as opposed to action)
that does not invoke structural changes in social systems, is given in terms of social potentials.
Study of social systems requires the application of statistical methods to their description and gives
results of social system research in terms of statistical data. The existence of rich statistics usually, but
not necessarily, implies some underlying structure or even dynamics. Bearing in mind the very concept
of social systems, it is reasonable to assume the existence of some sort of dynamics describing social
systems that leads to the observed statistics. The present level of knowledge of a quantitative description
of social systems implies that the formulation of complete and consistent theory is a formidable
task...
|
T. Jackson - 1999
Sustainability and the "struggle for existence". The
critical role of metaphor in society's metabolism
This paper presents a historical examination of the influence of the Darwinian metaphor “the struggle for existence”
on a variety of scientific theories which inform our current understanding of the world. It attempts
in particular to relate this metaphor to the modern search for sustainable development.
Starting from a remark made by Boltzmann to the effect that the struggle for existence
is the struggle for available energy, the paper follows two specific avenues of intellectual
thought which proceeded from that insight. The first avenue leads to the biophysical critique
of conventional development popularised by “ecological economists” such as Georgescu-Roegen and Daly.
This critique suggests that modern economic systems have gone astray by failing to respect
the biological and physical limits to development and that they should be adapted to make them
more like ecological systems. The second avenue leads to the modern insights of genetics and
evolutionary psychology. It suggests that in fact the economic system is already behaving
more or less like an ecological system, driven as it is by evolutionary imperatives.
This uncomfortable conclusion suggests far bleaker prospects for sustainable development
than is currently recognised. Before bowing to the inevitability of this outlook, however,
the paper re-examines the roots of the Darwinian metaphor on which our modern understanding
of the world is based, and asks whether or not it may be time to question its legitimacy.
|
M. Boisot - 2003
Data, Information and Knowledge: have we got it right?
Economists make the unarticulated assumption that information is something that stands apart
from and is independent of processors of information and their inherent characteristics. We
argue that they need to revisit the distinctions they have drawn between data, information and
knowledge. While some associate information with data, others associate it with knowledge. But
since few readily associate data with knowledge, this suggests too loose a conceptualisation of
the term 'information'. We argue that the difference between data, information and knowledge is
in fact crucial. Information theory and the physics of information provide us with useful insights
with which to build an economics of information appropriate to the needs of the emerging
information economy.
|
J. Mimkes - 2003
Concepts of Thermodynamics in Economic Systems
Thermodynamics is a statistical theory for large atomic systems under constraints of energy.
An economy is a large system of economic agents and goods under the constraints of capital.
Both systems may be handled by the Lagrange principle, the law of statistics for large
systems under constraints. Thermodynamics and economics are expected to follow the same concept:
1. First law of economics: profit is a non total differential form that depends on the path of acquisition.
2. Second law of economics: The mean capital or standard of living is the integrating factor of profit and leads to the entropy of capital distribution.
3. Third law of economics: work increases capital and reduces capital distribution. (work is related to collecting capital by distributing goods).
Periodic work is always connected to two different economic levels.
Periodic production of industry and households leads to the Carnot process of monetary cycles,
which determine economic growth. Supply and demand lead to Boltzmann distributions of capital
(wealth in Germany 1993), of income (Germany, USA and Japan), and of goods (automobiles in Germany 1998).
Social bonds are equivalent to atomic bonds, they are attractive, repulsive or indifferent.
Hierarchy, democracy and the global state correspond to solids, liquids and the gas state.
Social interactions correspond to chemical reactions: intermarriage of Blacks and Whites in USA,
Catholics and Protestants in Germany show the same phase diagrams as the gold – platinum system.
In binary systems the Lagrange principle leads to the laws of six different interactions in
socio-economic systems: partnership, hierarchy, equality, integration, segregation and aggression.
|
J. Ramos-Martin, M.
Ortega-Cerda - 2003
Non-linear relationship between energy intensity and economic
growth
From a thermodynamic point of view economies are open systems far from
equilibrium, and neo-classical environmental economics is not the best way to describe the
behaviour of such systems. Standard economic analysis takes a continuous, deterministic and
predictive approach, which encourages the search for predictive policy to 'correct'
environmental problems. This is actually what happens with the relationship between economic
growth and energy consumption under the dematerialisation hypothesis, so-called environmental
Kuznets curve or the inverted-U shaped curve. Rather, it seems to us that, because of the
characteristics of economic systems that may follow complex behaviour, an ex-post analysis
under the framework of ecological economics is more appropriate, which describes economies as
non continuous and non predictive systems and which sees policy as a social steering
mechanism.
With this background, we present some empirical data on energy intensity evolution
for both developing and developed countries. In order to test the hypothesis of a de-linking
between economic growth and energy use, we apply here phase-diagrams in which the intensity
of use of the year t and that of the year t-1 are represented. This will allow us to check the
validity of the continuous relationship, or to check the possibility of the existence of a step-wise
behaviour, which can be seen at a lower time-scale, as something similar to the idea of
“punctuated equilibrium” for the evolution of systems at larger time-scales.
|
J. van den Bergh -
2000
Themes, Approaches, and Differences with Environmental Economics
----------------------- |
A. Alcouffe, S.
Ferrari, H. Manusch - 2004
Marx, Schumpeter and Georgescu-Roegen: three conceptions of the
evolution of economic systems?
----------------------- |
S. Morley, S.
Robinson, R. Harris - 1998
Estimating income mobility in Colombia using maximum entropy
econometrics
----------------------- |
A. Gohin - 2000
Positive Mathematical Programming and Maximum Entropy: economic
tools for applied production analysis
----------------------- |
V. Chalidze - 2000
Entropy demystified: potential order, life and money
------- |
NASA: Earth Observatory
Atmosphere - Oceans - Land - Energy - Life
Global Warming Fact Sheet
------------------ |
| MODIS: rapid fire response
system |
From the
School of Mathematics and Statistics - University of St Andrews, Scotland
History Topics:
Mathematical Physics Index
General
relativity
History
of Quantum mechanics
Orbits
and gravitation
Special
relativity
Topology
and Scottish mathematical physics
Light:
Ancient Greece to Maxwell
Light
in the relativistic and quantum era
History
of Time: Classic time
History
of Time: 20th Century time
Gravitation
Newton's
bucket
Wave
versus matrix mechanics
Kepler's
planetary laws
Mathematics in various cultures
Ancient
Babylonian mathematics
Ancient
Egyptian mathematics
Ancient
Greek mathematics
Arabic
mathematics
Chinese
mathematics
Indian
mathematics
Mayan
mathematics
American
mathematics
Mathematics
in Scotland
Mathematical topics
Overview
of the history of mathematics
Algebra
Analysis
Numbers
and number theory
Geometry
and topology
Mathematical
physics
Mathematical
astronomy
Mathematical
education
Other Topics:
Ledermann's
St Andrews interview
English
attack on the Longitude Problem
Longitude
and the Académie Royale
Mathematical
games and recreations
Memory,
mental arithmetic and mathematics
Thomas
Harriot's manuscripts
Thomas
Hirst's diary comments
Architecture
and Mathematics
Christianity
and Mathematics
The
brachistochrone problem
Cartography
Voting
The
Scottish Book
Measurement
Forgery
and Chasles
Forgery
and the Berlin Academy
Mathematics
and the physical world
Debating
topics on mathematics
Art
and mathematics - perspective
The
Weil family
Poincaré
- Inspector of mines
Bernard
Bolzano's manuscripts
Bourbaki:
the pre-war years
Bourbaki:
the post-war years
London
Coffee houses and mathematics
Statistical
material
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