Exploring Interdisciplinarity

Believe me! Never in my life have I had to turn so much to my muse– my ever faithful dog, Sparky. The reason for seeking his inspiration on this occasion was my decision to teach a new course on Networks and the Creative Process.

As in all creative efforts (Austin 2003), this decision was, to a large degree, a matter of chance.  Initially, I had planned to teach a course on networks and cooperation–a topic that, with hindsight, seems relatively bland. However, flying home from a trip to Utah, I began reading Keith Sawyers insightful book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Deflating prevailing myths that circumscribe present-day thinking about creativity, Sawyer lays out the case for viewing creativity as an emergent, collaborative process, in which the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts.

My heart raced, as thoughts of complexity, networks, and emergent processes came to mind.

Reading Sawyer’s book, I was enthralled. My heart raced, as thoughts of complexity, networks, and emergent processes came to mind. I intuitively knew that a course on creativity would bring all my interests together in the context of complexity science. However, gut feelings aside, I knew very little about the subject of creativity. Nonetheless, I eagerly signed up to teach the course.

Operating in the dark, I delved into whatever literature I could find, contributing significantly–I think–to Amazon’s profit margin. There I sat, in my office chair, piles of books strewn all around me, in the vain hope that I might absorb some of the content through osmosis. To no avail! So I began to read, and read and read–books about neuroscience, personality disorders, flow, improvisation, serendipity, audience reactions, the new, creative economy, Florence and the Di Medici, and more.

Digesting all of this reading, I learned that creativity required passion and hard work in mastering a field; an open mind able to tolerate ambiguity; a willingness to take on risk, and to persist, even as an outsider; curiosity when confronted with anomalies; as well as flexibility to capture the opportunities afforded by chance and serendipity. And so, inspired by this charge, I moved on. . .

When the time came for me to put together the syllabus, I had a skeleton of an idea. Building on the work of Sawyer and his mentor Mihaly Csikszentmihali, I looked at creativity as an ongoing, iterative process in which the creator is but a single element within a larger system, which includes the creator, a field, and an authoritative domain. My hope, however, is to go beyond Csikszentmihali’s characterization of a system, and to flesh out each element–beginning with the brain and extending outward to the cultural arena–showing how each element is itself a complex system, nested and linked within a larger complex system.

My syllabus is, however, a working document at best. It serves, merely, as a starting point and set of guidelines for a classroom improvisation. My students are highly creative, each in their own ways. They not only bring their own diverse experiences to class; they also actively participate in developing the evolving narrative. Truly, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Or so says my dog Sparky!

On Technorati: complexity, creativity, Csikzentmihali, James A. Austin, Keith R. Sawyer, the muse

Having made our New Year’s resolutions, my husband and I sat down to our New Year’s breakfast–eggs benedict–which Brock had specially prepared for the occasion.We held up our glasses, filled with champagne, and toasted the New Year: “Welcome Yule.”

While this is an annual event for us, I was struck on this occasion by the passage of time.

I was struck by the passage of time. 

The old song, “
Ring Out the Old, Ring in the New,” came to mind, and hearing the words resound in my brain, I was taken aback. The tune goes like this:

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Perhaps my surprise reflected my feelings about aging and the totality of life. For unlike Father Time, I am not prepared at my ripening age to take my leave as yet .  In this, I am reminded of my mother who–especially as she got older–would recite Lewis Carroll’s poem from Alice in Wonderland, “You Are Old Father Williams.”, as if to mock her fate and give herself permission to simply be herself.  As each day passes, I come to appreciate the poem’s significance–as well as my mother–more and more.

You are old, Father William’, the young man said,
   ‘And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head –
   Do you think, at your age, it is right?’

‘In my youth’, Father William replied to his son,
   ‘I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
   Why, I do it again and again.

Nonsense poems are no longer in vogue. So I wonder, what might my mother say, were she here today. How would she phrase her pleasure in being alive.? Assuming that she had read all about complex systems, she might have taken great pleasure referencing all the non-linearities that such systems afford. As well, she might have pointed to the works of Brian Arthur and Stuart Kauffman, recalling that life is full of synergies and increasing returns, And, of course, she would have mentioned fat tails–that is to say how the richer get richer, and the elders have more fun!

So before lifting my glass and having another sip of champagne, I will take a brief respite. The first thing I will do is to stand on my head. Then I will ride down the fat tail slide. Want to come along? All Aboard!

On Technorati: aging, Btian Arthur, complexity science, fat tails, increasing returns, Lewis Carroll, network economics, network externalities, New Years, nonlinearity, You Are Old Father Williams

Why do I need to learn theory? I want to be a practitioner. So said one of my students in my class on Networks and International Development. A good question, to be sure, and one which–as I could tell by their nodding faces– many of my other students were pondering as well.

Why do I need to learn theory? I want to be a practitioner. A good question to be sure! 

My first response was to draw upon James Rosenau, and his eloquent justification of theory, provided in the introduction to his book, The Scientific Study of Foreign Policy (1989). As in my case, questioning students had plucked a chord in him, inspiring Rosenau to spell out the benefits and approaches entailed in employing theory as a basis for studying empirical questions. Rosenau makes, what to me are, two really important points. The first aims to help the student think theoretically: practice going up the ladder of abstraction, he says. Ask yourself what your concern is an instance of. As Rosenau notes, rarely do we become interested in isolated events; more often than not, our puzzles are instances of more generalizable, abstract phenomenon–we just haven’t thought about them this way. The second point is just as inspiring. Theory, says Rosenau, is fun.

I couldn’t agree more. Of course, I am the first to acknowledge that theories are essential as a means of organizing ideas, providing coherence to an argument, and allowing comparisons among diverse situations. But theories are also, and -as importantly–capsules of prior knowledge, a shorthand–if you will–of the wisdom of the ages. Nonetheless, theories are not to be accepted at face value; rather they are to be challenged, from every possible perspective, as in a game of skill.

Theories are to be challenged, as in a game of skill

Hence, I like to think of theories not in terms of their truth, but rather in terms of their potentiality. What do they suggest to me, which I might have overlooked. Just as when I go to a clothing store, and see all of the outfits laid out on a rack, I try theories on for size. Does the dress fit? Does it enhance my looks? Is it consistent with the rest of my wardrobe? If not, I leave it on the rack for someone else to fill it out.

I wonder, in fact, what would I do without theory. For example, tomorrow I leave for Beijing to deliver a presentation on Standard Setting: Meeting the Global Challenge, at a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Asian Research. While I started out with a general idea for the presentation, I was struggling with the question of how I might apply my analysis to the specific case of China, and–more specifically– to developing an appropriate standards strategy that China might pursue.

As good fortune would have it, our reading for class was Sidney Tarrow’s New Transnational Activism–the very same book that provoked my student’s question about theory. But, herein was the clue to my puzzle: Tarrow’s theoretical discussion suggested that the architecture of our increasingly international society provides opportunities for newcomers to exercise agency in contexts/interstices that are as yet underdeveloped. Based on my analysis of global standards, and Tarrow’s theory about transnational activism, I could identify–as depicted in the table below– just where the standards opportunities for China might lie.

The pudding, it seems to me, proves the point. Theory can, indeed, serve very practical needs!

On Technorati: China, economic development, global standards, James Rosenau, ladder of abstraction, Tarrow, why theory

On the recommendation of my colleague Garrison Le Masters, I brought the book, Dionysus Reborn: Play and the Aesthetic Dimension in Modern Philosophical and Scientific Discourse, by Mihai I. Spariosu, to read during my vacation at Lake Hawthorne. Garrison and I had spent many hours over the last few years comparing our common interests through different disciplinary perspectives–he from a cultural studies perspective and I through the lens of social science. Often engaged in these endeavors, we decided to collaborate on a project that would build on both our strengths–a paper that explored whether the criteria typically used for evaluating standardization at the lower levels of ICT networks served well for applications at the highest levels such as, in our chosen case, video games and virtual worlds. We plan to present the paper at this year’s Telecommunication Policy Research Conference (TPRC).

Not knowing very much about the subject of play–at least from an academic perspective–I decided to get up to speed by reading Spariosu. Despite all of the playful moments in my childhood–catching turtles, trying to beat the boys at king of the mountain, acting out various fantasy roles such as homemakers, storekeepers, librarians, and even fairy queens transported by eggshells in a magic kingdom–I had never systematically thought about play; at most I viewed play as an adventure, or exploration. Thus, I often associated play with excitement and risk (even if imaginary); for in my experience a playful romp might start out innocently enough, but eventually it could lead to trouble–as, for example, when as children we developed an elaborate plan to track down the rumored ghost in an abandoned house down our street, only–upon entry–to be greeted by the police.

By any measure, reading Dionysus Reborn here on my porch abutting the lake–where once I listlessly day dreamed reading Ivanhoe, Lorna Doon, and Vanity Fair, is anything but play. Rather, it is extraordinarily hard work. I am lucky if I can read fifty pages in a day. Only now do I understand why my cultural studies colleagues assign such a limited number of pages to their students. “Its all about interpreting the text,” they say. I must agree! The problem is not so much the numerous references in German and French–I can manage these. No, it’s the long unfamiliar latin-based English words, which make references to references on top of even more obtuse references.

To proceed I have to follow my father’s advice to me when I was learning to read–substitute the word wheel barrel for every word I can’t understand. No surprise, then, that I am beginning to think the subject of this book is more about gardening than about play. At the end of the day, I ask myself whether Garrison might not be playing with me.

At the end of the day, I ask myself whether Garrison might not be playing with me. 

It is on this basis that I have decided to become more light hearted about this whole affair. I will use my blog to explore this subject further, that is to say, to play with some ideas. As in all games, It’s risky, but it also should be fun. Where do I stand at this point? From my readings to date, I understand there is an on-going historic conflict between a pre-rational, free-wheeling notion of play (as characterized by Schopenhaur, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Deleuze and Derrida) and a more rational conception of play (as understood by Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Schiller). Moreover, these two perspectives parallel what many past ‘thinkers’ believe to be an underlying conflict between the forces of chance vs. those of necessity. I have an inkling that this conflict can be reconciled within the framework of complexity theory and Stuart Kaufman’s concepts of fitness levels and fitness landscapes, which in turn can also be linked to standardization and standards. But, to sort it out will take a lot more playing on my part.

On Technorati: Aristotle, cultural studies, Deluze, Derrida, Dionysus, fitness landscapes, fitness levels, games, Hawthorne Lake, Heidegger, ICTs, Ivanhoe, Kant, Lorna Doone, Mihai I. Spariosu, Nietzche, Plato, play, Schiller, Schopenhaur, social science, standards, Stuart Kaufman, TPRC, Vanity Fair, virtual worlds

Let’s just say I am standing in for my mistress, whose life over the last several weeks has become a little topsy turvy. But please forgive me if this post is not up to snuff: I have never blogged before. It’s not that I am unaccustomed to reflection–to the contrary! But while my mistress reflects, typing away, sitting in her comfy chair, her computer ensconced in her lap, I am comfortably situated on the couch, amidst the pillows, my paws resting over the edge, looking out the window, watching, watching, watching. So what you get here is the perspective of a dog. How is that for interdisciplinarity? 

The truth is that our family has experienced a punctuated disequilibrium. As well, depending on the outcome, one might say a phase transition. At least as I see it–perhaps somewhat narcissistically–everything about my life has been disrupted. Much will have to change.

The truth is we have experienced punctuated disequilibrium. As well, depending on the outcome, one might say a phase transition. 

Shall I tell you what happened? Well, as in the case of all punctuated disequilibria, life in my house had been proceeding nicely, notwithstanding, of course, its occasional ups and downs. Quite contented with our daily routine, we took it somewhat for granted, assuming normalcy would continue apace. Then came the big surprise when, on that fateful day several weeks ago, my master pivoted on his–shall we say–more than adequately-sized feet and landed on his shoulder, breaking his bones and shredding the tissues surrounding them. Hearing him scream, I raced over to where he lay on the floor. l licked his face, hoping to sooth his soul–but to no avail. He turned away. Minutes later, men, arriving in a white truck, absconded with him to whereabouts unbeknownst to me. It was more than 10 long days before he returned, and, when he did, he was unrecognizable, to say the least.

Of course, I couldn’t have been happier to have him home; that said, however, there were a number of adjustments that have had to be made, many at my expense. The first thing to go was the couch, my own special perch, where I typically sit and watch the world go by. Suddenly my master, not being able to go up and down the stairs, took over my roost. To make matters worse, there was the issue of my toys. In the past, I could chew them, shake them, and fling them wherever I was inclined. Everyone clapped and laughed. Now my toys are considered a hazard; the minute I leave them somewhere, they are picked up and herded over to a corner of the room. My daily walks have also suffered; because my mistress is preoccupied in the morning, bathing and dressing my master, our outings have gotten shorter and shorter, even as the weather has improved.

Reflecting on my unfortunate situation, I am reminded of the Spanish saying about the vicissitudes of life, La palma sube, y il coco baja (The palm tree rises, and the coconuts fall). However, I find this saying less than satisfying under the circumstances. So, determined to get to the bottom of all these mysteries, I put my head on my Mistress’s lap; looked at her with my big sad eyes; and implored her to provide a more adequate and analytic interpretation of what was going on. “Ah, Sparky,” she said knowingly (after all, she is the Director of the CCT Program). “Take heart”, she said, as she scratched behind my ears. “No doubt, our equilibrium status has been seriously overturned. But, we are reorganizing to adapt successfully to this phase transition and the new fitness landscape accompanying it. Just think of the benefits of a more simplified household, especially in this increasingly complex world. Even better, look at your Master and witness how well, in the face of a disaster, he has reorganized himself!”

On Technorati: Brock Evans, fitness landscape, man's best friend, phase transition, punctuated disequilibrium, recovery, Sparky

In some circumstances, it really behooves one to have a safety net! That’s why when children take their initial steps, and teenagers first get behind the wheel, mothers and fathers are close at hand. A ritualistic dance ensues–as children develop their skills and talents, parents step back, making room for them to grow. The trick is establishing the right distance, appropriate for the circumstances at hand. 

Even as adults we benefit from safety nets, although they are far more transparent, receding into the background until a need for them arises. For example, I vividly recall a time a few summers ago, when my husband Brock and I came to appreciate the value of a safety net, while vacationing at our home at Hawthorne Lake.

As is our habit, Brock got up early to make coffee, which we planned to drink in bed, while watching the sun come up. Eager to watch the dawn break, he went down to the dock while waiting for the water to boil. Unfortunately he fell asleep. When he awoke the kitchen wall was in flames. Smelling the smoke, I ran downstairs, almost colliding with my husband who was racing up from the dock. Somehow we managed to call the fire deparment all the while throwing buckets of water at the fire. Driving ten miles up the mountain road–the last leg of which is dirt–the firemen finally arrived. They were there just in time to tell us that we had successfully put out the fire.

We were panicked nonetheless. How were we to inform my son Stephen–one of the fifth generation to grow up at the lake–that we had destroyed his patrimony? How were we had to restore the kitchen, much less Crossepatch, our smoke filled house, to it’s historic charm? Although it seemed a hopeless cause, we jumped into the car and raced to town, where we purchased every cleaning apparatus, and cleaning solution, in sight. Scrubbing away over the next few hours, our efforts seemed hopeless. However, not much later, my sister Anne came along, and–sympathetic to our plight, but surprised by our endeavors–reminded us our house was safe: As she pointed out, we had a safety net–our insurance company.

Safety nets are not always institutionalized. Nor do they necessarily require financial investments. Even though we are less cognizant of them, many safety nets inhere in the social structure in which we are embedded. This fact was brought home to me ten day’s ago after my husband’s fall. Within a few hours of the event, the phone began to ring. Neighbors and friends alike emerged from out of nowhere, looking for ways to help. Most touching to me was the call from Rachael, my husband’s ex-wife, who–reassuring me that “she was there for me–” invited me over to share her delicious, Seder left-overs.

Some say that the safety nets that emerge from social interactions are no different from formal institutions–such as insurance companies–in which we consciously invest in order to hedge our bets about the future. Thus, for example, rational actor theorists such as Nan Lin insist that individuals weigh the costs and benefits of investing their time and energy in establishing connections in the hopes of capturing future returns in the form of greater resources. I beg to disagree. Just as Mark Buchanan has argued in his book The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbors Usually Look Like You, humans motivations are far more complex than rational actor theorists might surmise. As Buchanan emphasizes, we are essentially social atoms whose behavior is guided as much by our evolutionary instincts and emotional needs as it is by rational choice.

And thank goodness! Circumstances call for a variety of actions, and a variety of responses. When our formal institutions fail us, we have our social relations to fall back on–just as in the hard times of today, when family and friends are turning inwards to support one another. If scholars such as Robert Putam are correct, these informal groups might generate greater social capital in the course of their interactions, which can be employed, in turn, to help reshape and rebuild much sturdier formal institutions for future generations.

On Technorati: Add new tag, child rearing, evolution, Lake Hawthorne, Mark Buchanan, Molly Moran CCT alum, Nan Lin, rational actor theory, social captial, the social atom

Tomorrow, the Communication Culture and Technology Program at Georgetown University will join together with the Quello Center for Telecommunication Management and Law, Michigan State University, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and University of Konstanz, Germany,
in hosting a conference on Applying Complexity Theory to Improve Communications Policy. The conference is based on the premise that the field of communication constitutes a complex adaptive system, such that we need new regulatory approaches and tools that can take this complexity into account. We plan to cover four topic areas: 1) the value added of complexity theory; 2) tools and methodology for using complexity theory; 3) applying complexity theory to national broadband policy; and 4) building support for, and incorporating, complexity theory into communications policy.

I have been thinking about how one might structure the policy environment so as to foster greater interaction of policy actors and their diverse approaches and ideas

Having been assigned the task of facilitating the final panel, I have been pondering structural approaches to promoting complexity analysis–in particular, I have been thinking about how one might structure the policy environment so as to foster greater interaction of policy actors and their diverse approaches and ideas. My assumption is that to analyze complexity adequately, the policy structure must, itself, reflect it.  Some thoughts come to mind in this regard. 

For example, building on Ron Burt’s characterization of good ideas, it would appear that policy organizations should be structured in such a way that policy actors benefit not only from strong ties among like-minded associates, but also from weak ties across diverse associations. As Burt notes:

Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within than between groups so people connected across groups are more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving, which give them more options to select and synthesize from alternatives (http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ronald.burt/research/SHGI.pdf)

One might conclude, therefore, that–for complexity to be attended to–the  architecture of the policy making arena must provide links across diverse policy domains. 

This conclusion coincides with the conclusions of a paper that my colleagues Ellen Surles, Qi Chen and I wrote for the Social Science Research Council, entitled Fostering a Communication Policy Dialogue: The Need for a Sustainable Communication Interface. In this paper, we adopted  John Kingdon’s description of policy making as a non-linear process, which entails the convergence of three different streams–identifying problems, identifying solutions, and making political decisions. Kingdon argues that when these streams converge there is a window of opportunity when policy outcomes can occur. In our paper, my colleagues and I sought to identify the structural properties that would allow such convergence to take place. Viewing these three policy streams as distinct worlds, each with its own habitus, we identified the need for a policy interface, that would help policy actors to communicate with one another. As we argued:

The policy debate can become inhibited and muted in part because many players lack the resources and skills to communicate across these fields of policy activities. It is especially helpful when a number of diverse actors interact and engage with one another to the extent that they create a space where they can find common ground. We call this space the policy interface. Issues rise on the policy agenda when [policy streams] converge in such a way that ideas are translated and actors come to value each other’s perspectives and therefore perceive policy issues in a congruent way.

Much as in the case of Burt’s notion of good ideas, the architecture of the interface that we described provides for both weak and strong ties.  It allowed policy actors from different activity fields to maintain their individual perspectives, while coming together in a common space where they might have a productive–and far richer–dialogue. 

The US communication policy arena lacks such an interface, and policy making suffers as a result.  Jurisdiction is divided among numerous agencies, whose independent actions often lead to conflicting outcomes.  Issues are not considered to be complex; rather they are typically reduced to approximate the specific mission of the agency in which they are resolved.  

The outstanding question, therefore, is where might we look for such a policy interface?  Not surprisingly, given my own background, I would look to a government agency such as the Office of Technology Assessment, which not only brought diverse actors together, and incorporated their perspectives in the agency’s research results. As importantly, OTA translated complex problems into narratives that both Congress and the public could grapple with.

On Technorati: broadband policy, communications policy, complexity, good ideas, John Kingdon, Office of Technology Assessment, policy interface, policy streams, Ron Burt, telecommunications

The Office of Technology Assessment was deprived of its funding by the 104th Congress.  The Agency, which we as staffers labeled “Congress’ Own Think Tank,” had become official in 1972, and was tasked with taking a long-term look at the implications of technology on all aspects of society.  By most accounts, we did a phenomenal job.  Although Congress has yet to rally enough support to reauthorize the Office of Technology Assessment, the former Agency’s loyal supporters and advocates have written frequently about the role the OTA could be playing in public discourse.  They have also recently launched an on-line archive of all of OTA’s work, which also depicts and details its 20+ year history.

From a posting on an FAS listserv by Nate Hafer, of the Federation of American Scientists:

Today the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) launched the Office of Technology Assessment Archive, http://www.fas.org/ota . The site allows the public to access over 720 reports and documents produced by OTA during its 23 year history, including many that have not been available to the public previously. OTA served as an independent branch of the U.S. Congress that provided nonpartisan science and technology advice from 1972 until it was defunded and forced to close in 1995.

The site also features a new video interview with Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ), who has been spearheading the effort on Capitol Hill to revive OTA. According to Rep. Holt, “if OTA were here, doing this kind of work, we would have better legislation for school safety, chemical exposure, grain dust explosions, the R&D tax credit, on and on.” He goes on to describe some current policy issues that OTA could address and explains why Congress should bring back OTA.

“The OTA was an invaluable resource that informed Congress about an incredibly broad range of science and technology issues,” said Henry Kelly, President of the Federation of American Scientists and a former OTA staff member. “Numerous reports, on subjects such as transportation, energy, health care, and information technology remain relevant, more than 10 years after OTA issued its final report.”

“OTA produced the first report raising the possibility of genetic discrimination in the workplace almost 17 years before the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was passed,” according to Michael Stebbins, Director of Biology Policy at FAS. “That kind of foresight into major policy issues is sorely missed in Washington today.”

The Archive will track efforts to bring back OTA and will also highlight items not previously available to the public in a “Document of the Day” feature. The website also includes a new search engine that allows users to quickly and easily find specific content in OTA reports.

Visit the Office of Technology Assessment Archive at http://www.fas.org/ota

As a former OTA employee, I would like to add a tribute of my own.  From my perspective, the OTA not only provided Congress and the public with outstanding policy foresight on technology-related issues, in so doing, it also greatly advanced interdisciplinary research.  As Einstein once commented, problems cannot be solved within the context in which they were originally created.  The methods and practices at OTA implicitly took this insight into account.  Because many of its reports were problem-centered, OTA analysts reached out across a variety of venues to garner information and engage in cross-disciplinary dialogues.  As a result, those analysts frequently generated a number of creative, and often quite successful, policy solutions.

I owe my interest and devotion to interdisciplinary scholarship in part to the twenty years that I was fortunate enough to have worked at the Congressional Office of Technology.  Today, I try to maintain that legacy by bringing what I learned at OTA to Georgetown University’s interdisciplinary program — the Communication, Culture and Technology Program — where I presently serve as Director.  I like to believe that, in teaching my students to think holistically, and to conceptualize their research in an interdisciplinary framework, I am planting the seed corn for the time when Congress regains its wits and revives the OTA.

On Technorati: blogosphere, Congress, Interdisciplinarity, OTA, policy, research, science

When I was a young girl living in New Jersey, my father would try to console me, whenever my world seemed upside down, by talking about Toynbee’s optimum challenge. He noted that the historian Toynbee had concluded — based on his comparative history — that societies prosper when they have a challenge that stimulates them into action, but one that does not overwhelm them at the same time. Accordingly, my father would interpret my situation — however unfortunate it might have been — as “an opportunity for growth as well as for the development of my character.” As one might imagine, more often than not, I would protest, sotto voce, saying that I was satisfied with the amount of character that I already had. However, with the wisdom of years, as well as the opportunities and challenges of raising a child of my own, I have come to appreciate Toynbee’s perspective and incorporate it into my own way of thinking. Just ask my son!

Perhaps it is time to give Toynbee another look. In today’s increasingly complex world, narrowly focused analyses that are based on rigid, disciplinary methodological standards sometimes miss the point.

In the academic world, Toynbee was generally appreciated for the extent of his knowledge. However, he was typically criticized — and sometime scathingly so — for what others perceived to be his scientific pretensions. His writings were ambitious, to say the least. For example, Toynbee’s A Study in History employs a number of case studies to examine the process of history. It aims to identify plausible generalizations, if not Laws, about the way in which the world works. It was in this regard that Toynbee’s work was not always well received by the scholarly community: His critics felt that he went much too far in making generalizations based on, what they claimed to be, faulty methodology, subjective interpretations, and an inadequate and incomplete empirical body of knowledge.

Perhaps it is time to give Toynbee another look. In today’s increasingly complex world, narrowly focused analyses that are based on rigid, disciplinary methodological standards sometimes miss the point. Looking comparatively, at an ever-unfolding, evolutionary process of history, Toynbee — without the benefit of today’s electronic technologies — brought into relief, even while trying to simplify, the extraordinarily complex nature of the interconnections and interactions that drive human existence forward. A similar case can be made for Fernand Braudel’s historical work, which focuses on the longue durée. One need only consider his three volume masterpiece in which he analyzes the evolution of world capitalism through the lens of all of its varied aspects — social, political, cultural, demographic, as well as economic (1992). It seems to me that Joshua Epstein’s most recent book Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling (2007), is in this tradition. Looking for a way to bring all of the social sciences to bear in accounting for societal evolution (and in particular the disappearance of the Anasazi), he takes advantage of new, computational technologies to model their behavior. Optimally challenging, this book is a major contribution to the furtherance and interaction of all academic disciplines.

While Toynbee’s work may not be scientific in the strictest sense of the word, to be sure it is very insightful and, as importantly, meaningful in providing guidance about the difficult choices that we, as intelligent humans, must make. I imagine what my life might have been like had I been risk-adverse, and not taken Toynbee’s revealing insight about optimal challenges to heart. I might never have taken courses in economics; selected in the early Sixties to have been one of only five women in my graduate class at Columbia; backpacked in the area of Glacier Peak, in the North Cascades; lived on Kibbutz Ketura in Israel’s southern desert; or survived, and even been a good caretaker, as my husband successfully battled the dread disease, multiple myeloma. As well, I might never have accepted my husband’s challenge to undertake this exciting and new blogging adventure. And, who knows, in today’s environment, Toynbee, too, might very well have been a blogger!

On Technorati: comparatism, Epstein, history, scientism, simulation, Toynbee

Last night there were no frogs. It was raining. I lay awake listening to the sounds of rain on the roof, more like the monotone tap, tap, tap of a snare drum rather than the plucking of a cello string. As the rain’s intensity increased, the individual taps appeared to merge together — or should I say emerge, in somewhat of a phase transition — culminating in the thunderous boom of the kettle drum and the clashing clang of the cymbal, just as the lightning struck. Wide awake and idling the early morning hours away, I began wondering: Are the heavens a complex, networked system, and — if so — what constitutes its parts? How do they communicate with one another? What type of signals do they use? How does change in the weather system come about? There was no possibility of falling asleep after that! Too many books, too many theories, too many questions, I thought.

In the morning it was still raining. Based on nature’s signals, many of which I had noted yesterday, I might have anticipated that this would be the case. As I learned from my husband Brock, a seasoned environmentalist, if you want to know how the weather will unfold, pay attention, as other species do, to a number of signals. Specifically, when at our cottage at the Lake, you might look for a shift in the ambience of the air — in particular, sudden changes in the temperature, the direction of the breeze, as well as the level of humidity. For example, a sudden drop in the air temperature, accompanied by a rising breeze from the west, indicates that a cool front, most likely preceded by a storm, is on its way. However, while this information is helpful for planning a daily itinerary, it does not explain how nature and its subsidiary parts — a complex system — know when and how to react. For sure, this is a subject of future inquiry.

On a more personal level, I might also note how we adapt to changes in the weather here in the relatively isolated woods at Lake Hawthorne. For children, this is never a problem. They simply change their venue of play. For example, as children, we took advantage of the rain, especially during the hurricane season in 1954, to create an entire waterway in our back yard, with an elaborate bridge and canal system that extended more than fifty yards. Then, we would build little boats and watch them float from one end of the tributary to the other. Today, as adults, we often “hole up,” and take a “rain sleep,” much like the man “who went to bed with a cold in his head and didn’t get up ’till morning.” There being little chance of sleep this morning, however, my husband and I decided instead to snuggle under our comforter, and spend the day listening to The Learning Company’s tapes on the History of Rome.

Call it serendipity, but I am struck at how, given my growing interest in social structure and complexity, everything that I attend to now appears to be on this subject. Consider, for example, the Learning Company lecture we heard describing the unique nature of the rise of the Roman Republic. The lecturer, Professor Garrett G. Fagan, from Pennsylvania State University, identified the way in which the Roman Republic employed a network strategy to consolidate its confederation. According to Fagan, the Romans sent many of their centurions, together with citizens of varying statuses, to strategic places throughout the peninsula, which served as intelligence nodes in an every growing and, more complex, network of governance structures. As the professor notes, this unique, networked organizational structure constituted a successful innovative strategy that allowed the Romans not only to effectively adapt to their changing environment but also to undergo their own phase transition with the evolution and establishment of an even more complex set of arrangements — the Roman Empire. Equally exciting to me, this strategy was totally in keeping with the advice of Ron Burt, one of today’s leading management experts, and author of Brokerage and Closure (2005). Burt advises businesses to do just as the Romans did: Establish links across major holes in the social structure in order to maximize innovation and control information flows.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, just as the tapes were about to end, the rain stopped. Suddenly there was silence: No frogs plinking, no birds chirping, no dogs barking, no children laughing. A momentary relief from “thinking thoroughly.” I grasped the opportunity, and fell asleep.

On Technorati: Burt, Fagan, Roman Empire, Rome, systems, TLC, weather