Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

mathematics, in short chaos and complexity theory to the social realm. It was not long afternonlinear dynamics gained legitimacy in the late 1970s and early 1980s that sometimescautious, sometimes bold forays were made into applications of chaos theory to humanhistory. Already early authors such as Jantsch and Capra made allusions to the relevance ofself-organization, dissipative systems etc for understanding social phenomena. Prigoginemade a few direct comparisons from physics and chemistry to human history, though theywere mostly of a speculative nature. For instance he suggested that:We know now that societies are immensely complex systems involving a potentiallyenormous number of bifurcations exemplified by the variety of cultures that have evolved inthe relatively short span of human history. We know that such systems are highly sensitive tofluctuations 92 .In particular after the publication of James Gleick’s book Chaos: Making a New Science did thefield of chaoplexity emerge as a full-blown pop-culture phenomenon 93 . This book was filledwith illustrations of chaotic behavior in natural and human life. In medicine for instancechaotic behavior was noted in heart failures and the rise, spread and adaptation of viruses, inthe prey-predator relationships and in the human immune system. He noted theparadigmatic character of this new scientific development:Now that science is looking, chaos seems to be everywhere […] chaos appears in thebehavior of the weather, the behavior of an airplane in flight, the behavior of cars on anexpressway, the behavior of oil flowing in underground pipes. No matter what the medium,the behavior obeys the same newly discovered laws. That realization has begun to change theway business executives make decision about insurance, the way astronomers look at thesolar system, the way political theorists talk about the stresses leading to armed conflict.We must recognize the intrinsic complexity of reality and accept a radical reconceptualization,Coveney and Highfield claimed in 1990 94 . Mitchell Waldrop noted in 1992that:Complexity, adaptation, upheavals at the edge of chaos - these common themes are sostriking that a growing number of scientists are convinced that there is more here than just aseries of nice analogies…they all share the vision of an underlying unity, a commontheoretical framework for complexity that would illuminate nature and humankind 95 .The number of studies in various fields suggesting common concepts underlying thedynamics of the phenomena under investigation since the early eighties had becomeoverwhelming in the early nineties 96 . In economics Brian Arthur, one of the founding92 Ibid. p.313.93 Horgan, p.192.94 Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, The Arrow of Time, The Quest to Solve Science's Greatest Mystery(Flamingo, London, 1991). This book appeared in 1990.95 Waldrop (1992), p.12.96 Gell-Mann too jumps from the biological world to the social world in The Quark and the Jaguar.Stuart Kauffman makes the case that complex living systems such as species and human societies ariseby their own laws of assembly and interaction. Indeed, since the mid-eighties, more and more socialphenomena are being brought within the scope of scientific analysis as a result of the methodsdeveloped for the study of complexity, see Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, Frontiers of Complexity,The Search for Order in a Chaotic World (Ballantine Books, New York, 1996), p.337. Coveney andHighfield also observe that animal and human societies are replete with complex organization, from146