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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