New book announcement
JÜRGEN KLÜVER
AN ESSAY CONCERNING SOCIO-CULTURAL EVOLUTION. THEORETICAL
PRINCIPLES AND MATHEMATICAL MODELS
DORDRECHT 2002: KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
Table of contents
1. Sociocultural evolution: a concept and its difficulties 1
1.1 A short reflection on the history of social evolutionary thinking 4
1.2 The biological paradigm 10
1.3 A general definition of evolution 19
1.4 Evolutionary social theories and their difficulties 24
2. A theoretical model of sociocultural evolution 39
2.1 Social actors, roles and social systems 39
2.2 Hommage à Marx: a theoretical model 50
2.3 Cultures, attractors and problem solving algorithms 63
2.4 A case study: the emergence of modern science 83
2.5 The hypothesis of sociocultural heterogeneity 92
3. The mathematics of social processes 103
3.1 Social evolution and the geometry of social systems 104
3.2 Mathematical properties of rule sets and
the theorem of inequality 118
3.3 Some metatheoretical considerations about
evolutionary theories 129
4. A mathematical model of sociocultural evolution 137
4.1 The sociocultural algorithm (SCA)
(Together with Jörn Schmidt) 138
4.1.1 The meaning of algorithms 138
4.1.2 The model SCA 139
4.1.3 Discussions and results 148
4.2 Sociocultural matrices and evolutionary principles 161
4.3 A model of creative cognitive ontogenesis
(Together with Christina Stoica) 177
5. Conclusions: The logic of Evolution or
are there something like hisorical laws? 201
5.1 The three orders of systems dynamics 201
5.2 The relative inevitability of the Western way 212
5.3 Some final reflections on the predictability
of modern societies 218
References 227
Index 235
The book deals with the question of regularities in the course of
sociocultural evolution. The evolutionary process of societies is
defined as the generation of social roles and their relations; a role is
understood as a pair of social rules and role specific knowledge.
Accordingly evolution is the growth of cultural knowledge and the
development of a network of social roles. These theoretical assumptions
are clarified and tested via a mathematical model, i.e., a sociocultural
algorithm (SCA). Computer simulations show that the evolutionary course
of societies is determined by an evolutionary parameter, that is the
degree of differentiation or role autonomy respectively. An additional
model of cognitive ontogenesis is provided; it can be shown that
cognitive ontogenesis and sociocultural evolution are interdependent
processes which basically follow the same logic. These considerations
and results offer an explanation for the unique evolutionary path of
Western civilization.
__________________________________________________________________________
Professor Nigel Gilbert, FREng, AcSS, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Professor
of
Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK. +44 (0)1483
689173
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