Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [80]
A Chaotic Model of Historical Sequences
Historians have been cognizant for millennia of the basic principles of chaos and nonlinearity. The principles, though, are coded in a different language and grouped into two fundamental “forces” that guide historical sequences—contingency and necessity. In this analysis contingency will be taken to mean a conjuncture of events occurring without perceptible design, and necessity to be constraining circumstances compelling a certain course of action. Contingencies are the sometimes small, apparently insignificant, and usually unexpected events of life—the kingdom hangs in the balance awaiting the horseshoe nail. Necessities are the large and powerful laws of nature and trends of history—once the kingdom has collapsed 100,000 horseshoe nails will not help a bit. Leaving either contingency or necessity out of the historical formula, however, is to ignore an important component in the development of historical sequences. The past is constructed by a dynamic interaction of both, and therefore it might be useful to combine the two into one term that expresses this interrelationship—contingent-necessity—taken to mean a conjuncture of events compelling a certain course of action by constraining prior conditions.
Randomness and predictability—contingency and necessity—long seen to be opposites on a quantitative continuum, are not mutually exclusive models of nature from which we must choose. Rather, they are qualitative characteristics that vary in the amount of their respective influence and at what time their influence is greatest in the chronological sequence. No one denies that such historical necessities as economic systems, demographic trends, geographical locals, scientific paradigms, and ideological worldviews exert a governing force upon individuals falling within their purview. Contingencies, however, exercise power sometimes in spite of the necessities influencing them. At the same time they reshape new and future necessities. There is a rich matrix of interactions between early pervasive contingencies and later local necessities, varying over time, in what is here called the model of contingent-necessity, which states: In the development of any historical sequence the role of contingencies in the construction of necessities is accentuated in the early stages and attenuated in the later.
There are corollaries that encompass five aspects of the model, including:
Corollary 1: The earlier in the development of any historical sequence, the more chaotic the actions of the individual elements of that sequence and the less predictable are future actions and necessities.
Corollary 2: The later in the development of any historical sequence, the more ordered the actions of the individual elements of that sequence and the more predictable are future actions and necessities.
Corollary 3: The actions of the individual elements of any historical sequence are generally postdictable but not specifically predictable, as regulated by corollaries 1 and 2.
Corollary 4: Change in historical sequences from chaotic to ordered is common, gradual, followed by relative stasis, and tends to occur at points where poorly established necessities give way to dominant ones so that a contingency will have little effect in altering the direction of the sequence.
Corollary 5: Change in historical sequences from ordered to chaotic is rare, sudden, followed by relative nonstasis, and tends to occur at points where previously well-established necessities have been challenged by others so that a contingency may push the sequence in one direction or the other.
At the beginning of any historical sequence, actions of the individual elements are chaotic, unpredictable, and have a powerful influence in the future