No abstract
Science historian Ronald Numbers once remarked that the two most influential historians of science of the 20th century were Thomas Kuhn and Stephen Jay Gould. All historians are deeply familiar with Kuhn's work and influence, and most know of the remarkable impact Gould has had on evolutionary theory through both his professional and popular works. But little attention has been paid to the depth, scope, and importance of Gould's rôle as historian and philosopher of science, and his use of popular science exposition to reinforce old knowledge and generate new. This paper presents the results of an extensive quantitative content analysis of Gould's 22 books, 101 book reviews, 479 scientific papers, and 300 Natural History essays, in terms of their subject matter (Evolutionary Theory, History and Philosophy of Science, Natural History, Paleontology/Geology, Social Science/Commentary), and thematic dichotomies (Theory-Data, Time's Arrow-Time's Cycle, Adaptationism- Nonadaptationalism, Punctuationism-Gradualism, Contingency-Necessity). Special emphasis is placed on the interaction between the subjects and themata, how Gould has used the history of science to reinforce his evolutionary theory (and vice versa), and how his philosophy of science has influenced both his evolutionary theory and his historiography. That philosophy can best be summed up in a quotation from Charles Darwin, frequently cited by Gould: 'All observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service'. Gould followed Darwin's advice throughout his career, including his extensive writings on the history and philosophy of science.
The analysis of physical and biological systems through models and mathematics of chaotic behavior and nonlinear dynamics rose to prominence in the 1980s. Many authors, most notably Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, made glancing references to applications of this new paradigm to the social and historical sciences, but little fruit was harvested until this decade. Physiologists studying irregular heart rhythms, psychologists examining brain activity, biologists graphing population trends, economists tracking stock price movements, military strategists assessing the outbreak of wars, and sociologists modeling the rise of cities, found nonlinear dynamics refreshingly stimulating in reevaluating (and often restructuring) old theories and creating new ones. Modeling the past was an inevitable extension of this trend, and theorizing on the new historiography soon followed, with the terms of the debate outlined from 1990 to 1993 by Alan Beyerchen, Katherine Hayles, Stephen Kellert, Charles Dyke, myself, and, in the pages of History and Theory, by George Reisch and Donald McCloskey. The subject of "the chaos of history" is now enjoying a healthy exchange of ideas from all sides. This essay: (I) reviews the precedents for integrating chaos and history; (II) gives a brief history of this integration including an evaluation of a critique of Reisch and McCloskey by Roth and Ryckman, and presents a metahistory of how chaos theory explains its own development; (III) defends a chaotic model of historical sequences; (IV) gives a specific historical example of nonlinear history; (V) explores the latest trends in the field of self-organization, antichaos, simplexity, and feedback mechanisms, providing data to show that modern and historical social movements change in a parallel fashion; and (VI) exorcises Laplace's demon by showing it was always a chimera. I. HUMAN BEHAVIOR WRIT PAST Historians do not commonly turn to engineers for insight into how and why the past unfolds as it does. But since the process of modeling history in the language of chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics' is a rapidly burgeoning and 1. I recognize the distinction between chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics, and that many scientists in the field do not think chaos is a theory or a science, but more of a tool or model for dealing with certain phenomena. I realize also that while some find the term "chaos" a useful one, others shy away from it because it has become popularized and lost its precision as a description of certain nonlinear actions. Stephen H. Kellert (In the Wake of Chaos [Chicago, 1993], 28), for example, concludes a long discussion of this problem as such: "'Chaos' proves to be a useful term indeed in a wide variety of scientific investigations." Although N. Katherine Hayles (Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science [Chicago, 1991], 2) claims "the word [chaos]
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