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

probably not since victory was seized in the […]battle to displace the Earth from the centerof the physical solar system has a set of ideas and the new accompanying mathematics beenso likely to change the nature of how we see everything in the cosmos and every individual inthe cosmos 123 .The disciplines of History and International Relations too have been exposed to thenew paradigm. The rise of societies and social structures of ever growing complexity hasbeen examined through the lens of complexity theory. The complexity of human interactionshas been fostered throughout the ages by communications technology, which facilitates theexchange of information on all levels. The more information is exchanged, the morefeedback processes occur and thus the more complexity 124 . William McNeill asserted in 1996thatA grand convergence of the sciences seems to be emerging around an evolutionary vision ofhow new aspects of reality emerge locally from new levels of complexity, like the heavieratoms, forged in stellar furnaces, the living molecules that arose in earth’s primordial seas,and the symbolic systems invented by human societies perhaps as recently as forty thousandyears ago. History might even become something of a model for other disciplines, since itdeals with most complex levels of reality we are aware of, that is, the world of agreed-uponmeanings that guides our interaction with one another and with the biological, chemical, andphysical world around us[…]Surprising new forms of collective behavior arise from whatappears to be spontaneous appearances of increasing levels of complexity, whether as thephysical, chemical, biological, or symbolic levels. This strikes me as the principal unifyingtheme that runs through all we know; or think we know about the world around us 125 .Already in 1990 James Rosenau had noted that the international system was in a state ofturbulence because the fundamental parameters of the system were marked by extensivevariability and complexity. This necessitated a novel conceptualization. He noted it was ‘notenough to sense that deep changes are at work, rather one has to develop an overallperspective on the essential nature of world politics through which to transform theperception of a disorderly world into sensitivities for the sources and consequences of thedynamics of change’. And he found such a perspective in the language of chaos andcomplexity theory as developed by Gleick and Prigogine 126 . This provides a ‘mental set thatdoes not specify particular outcomes or solutions but one that offers guidelines and leverpoints that analysts and policy makers can employ to more clearly assess the specific123 , Eve, p.xxxii. John Casti (another SFI fellow and whose work Boyd had read), explored severaltypes of physical phenomena and their correspondence in the social historical realm including:catastrophic (earthquakes and political revolutions); chaotic (the weather and the stock market); paradoxical(adding more lanes to a freeway increases congestion; irreducible (books and symphonies are more thanthe sum of their parts); and emergent (life, cities, and civilizations). See John Casti, Complexification:Explaining a Paradoxical World through the Science of Surprise (New York, 1994).124 Coveney and Highfield (1995), p.338.125 William McNeil, ‘History and the Scientific Worldview’, History and Theory, Feb. 1998, Vol 37, issue1, pp.1, 10. In 1995 he had already made allusions to this view. He employs concepts of complexitytheory to explain the rise of cultures and civilizations in ‘The Changing Shape of World History’,History and Theory, May 1995, Vo.34, Issue 2.126 James Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics (Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, 1990), pp.47, 58.Chapter 3 deals entirely with chaos and complexity theory. He likens the transformation of theinterstate system to a Prigoginian bifurcation point, for instance.155