Cultural Entropy
This entry was originally posted on 31 December 2002 at 12:14 p.m. This is a slightly abridged version of the original.
Last night, while reading Marcel Möring's In Babylon (which is, so far, absolutely brilliant), i came across a passage in which the character Uncle Herman describes something called 'cultural entropy.' I nearly dropped the book when i read it--when i attended BU for graduate school in archaeology (that only lasted for the fall 1998 semester), i thought of the same idea, called it the same thing.
A quick search on Google found that he and i aren't the only ones to have thought of it. Thing is, it doesn't seem as though anyone has clearly defined this phenomenon.
So, for the record, i'd like to state my version of Cultural Entropy Theory:
1. Uniformity. All cultures change over time, although the rate of change may not be uniform across (or even within) cultures. Changes in environment, discoveries of hitherto unknown properties of plants, animals, and chemical compounds, and advances in technology all affect the rate of change for a given culture. Eventually, a culture may appear to have reached equilibrium--but, as with the evolution of species, such stasis does not last forever.
2. Complexity. The direction of such change is always toward greater complexity. At some point--perhaps due to some triggering event--the rate of change (and, hence, the complexity of the culture) will steadily increase.
3. Increase. The complexity of a given culture, combined with the increasing rate of change, will eventually reach a point at which the culture will be unable to sustain itself in a coherent manner. Certain aspects of the culture will then contradict other aspects, leaving the people in a state of ethical, philosophical, and social uncertainty.
4. Entropy. The culture, no longer able to function effectively, disintegrates. In the greater scheme of its relations to other cultures, it is no longer able to interact as a unified state.
5. Absorption. The entropic culture's constituents, being human, require a certain amount of social structure or meaning in their lives. A small number may choose to attempt to retain the pre-entropic cultural practices; some might stay and build a new social order; most will emigrate to nearby cultural groups and assimilate. Those who try to retain the pre-entropic practices will most likely be unsuccessful and will probably not have the social mass needed to cohere. Those who try to create a new social order may fall prey to the same problem--although, given enough social mass, it is possible that they will succeed.
Other Key Concepts:
Cultural uniformitarianism -- Like geological uniformitarinism, cultural entropy assumes that these processes have always been and always will be in effect.
Social mass -- In order for a culture to form, there must be enough people involved in it to ensure that it can continue to exist, ideally by passing it on through offspring. Unless the threshold of social mass is exceeded, the culture will not survive.
Optional reading: Funtowitcz, S.O., & Ravetz, J.R. (1997). The poetry of thermodynamics: energy, entropy/exergy and quality. Futures, 29, pp. 791-810. (I haven't read this article, but it came up under a search of "cultural entropy" in the Social Sciences Abstracts, and the abstract looks quite good.)
Any questions?
Last night, while reading Marcel Möring's In Babylon (which is, so far, absolutely brilliant), i came across a passage in which the character Uncle Herman describes something called 'cultural entropy.' I nearly dropped the book when i read it--when i attended BU for graduate school in archaeology (that only lasted for the fall 1998 semester), i thought of the same idea, called it the same thing.
A quick search on Google found that he and i aren't the only ones to have thought of it. Thing is, it doesn't seem as though anyone has clearly defined this phenomenon.
So, for the record, i'd like to state my version of Cultural Entropy Theory:
1. Uniformity. All cultures change over time, although the rate of change may not be uniform across (or even within) cultures. Changes in environment, discoveries of hitherto unknown properties of plants, animals, and chemical compounds, and advances in technology all affect the rate of change for a given culture. Eventually, a culture may appear to have reached equilibrium--but, as with the evolution of species, such stasis does not last forever.
2. Complexity. The direction of such change is always toward greater complexity. At some point--perhaps due to some triggering event--the rate of change (and, hence, the complexity of the culture) will steadily increase.
3. Increase. The complexity of a given culture, combined with the increasing rate of change, will eventually reach a point at which the culture will be unable to sustain itself in a coherent manner. Certain aspects of the culture will then contradict other aspects, leaving the people in a state of ethical, philosophical, and social uncertainty.
4. Entropy. The culture, no longer able to function effectively, disintegrates. In the greater scheme of its relations to other cultures, it is no longer able to interact as a unified state.
5. Absorption. The entropic culture's constituents, being human, require a certain amount of social structure or meaning in their lives. A small number may choose to attempt to retain the pre-entropic cultural practices; some might stay and build a new social order; most will emigrate to nearby cultural groups and assimilate. Those who try to retain the pre-entropic practices will most likely be unsuccessful and will probably not have the social mass needed to cohere. Those who try to create a new social order may fall prey to the same problem--although, given enough social mass, it is possible that they will succeed.
Other Key Concepts:
Cultural uniformitarianism -- Like geological uniformitarinism, cultural entropy assumes that these processes have always been and always will be in effect.
Social mass -- In order for a culture to form, there must be enough people involved in it to ensure that it can continue to exist, ideally by passing it on through offspring. Unless the threshold of social mass is exceeded, the culture will not survive.
Optional reading: Funtowitcz, S.O., & Ravetz, J.R. (1997). The poetry of thermodynamics: energy, entropy/exergy and quality. Futures, 29, pp. 791-810. (I haven't read this article, but it came up under a search of "cultural entropy" in the Social Sciences Abstracts, and the abstract looks quite good.)
Any questions?
posted by Circus at 2:55 PM
1 Comments:
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She may as well have been. Perhaps the effects of the drug are cumulative.
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