| NECROPOLITANA | home |
 |
| MODELS, PAST, COMPLEX SYSTEMS AND WORLD SYSTEM |
(PUBLICADO en español en las Actas del II Congreso Peninsular de Arqueología, Zamora, del 24/9 al 27/9 de 1996, Vol. III. págs. 537 a 550. Universidad de Alcalá, 1999)
KEY WORDS:
*Epistemology *Processualism *Postprocessualism *Complexity *World System
SUMMARY:
Although we believe that our object of study depends, in a non-evaluative way, upon the subject which analyses it, it is possible to establish likely and useful models about what we study, which will allow us to understand and structure data -accepted as such by those models- coming from our environment. From the explicit rules of the pattern itself, we will be able to study particular histories, as well as state laws about man in society, in a given natural environment, and all this from a perspective that welcomes criticism, as well as refutal and contrasting processes among researchers, within a common range of beliefs. Starting from a development stage of social complexity, our pattern of social formation, based on the theory of Complex Systems, leads us to believe in a unique World System, which can be placed in the appearance of unequal exchange among social systems.
[NOTA PREVIA INÉDITA: Ante las lógicas críticas emitidas en la segunda mitad de la década de los noventa del siglo XX por una serie de autores como Sokal y Bricmont, acerca del uso abusivo, injustificado y desde una cierta ignorancia de muchos términos -con sentidos muy específicos y propios- procedentes del mundo de la física y de las matemáticas, por algunos autores que tratamos acerca de la temática de la complejidad social, permítaseme argumentar en mi defensa que no creo en el uso de comparaciones entre las formaciones sociales y los fenómenos naturales desde la perspectiva de que el uso del lenguaje de los segundos parezcan dar autoridad a lo que escribo mediante comparaciones con situaciones descritas en el mundo de las matemáticas o de las ciencias llamadas empirico-formales, sino que las uso como ejemplos sencillos que me permiten modelizar acerca del funcionamiento de los sistemas ultracomplejos que son las sociedades]
PAPER:
1. - General Laws or Particularism, and Realism or Relativism:
It has always been possible to see how important has been for certain historical and archaeological schools the search for laws that can account for human behavior throughout time and space, in their social relationship and/or with nature, as well as the fight against particularist trends in history. Yet we have never understood those positions as antithetical.
This search for guidelines is tied to the realist tendencies that emerged alongside modernity, and which, especially after the irruption of the New Archaeology, still prevail in the theoretic-archaeological thought.
The most traditional realist position sustains that phenomena which seem to take place in nature in terms of real phenomena can be accounted for. In that case, we should explain why they are the way they are and why they are observed the way they are observed, as well as define the cognitive process that leads the researcher to his research and interpretation. Nature exists independently from the observer.
They support the ontological value of scientific statements, closely connected to the being of things (Martínez Navarrete and Vincent, 1983: 345). This connection between scientific statements and the being of things is based on empirical data. However, these data can be misinterpreted or, simply, incomplete. The neopositivists thought that the method had to be inductive, a belief supported by Martínez Navarrete and Vincent, 1983-, but with criticism coming from Popper and Processual Archaeology, the hypothetic-deductive method has been considered the only method capable of producing general laws, although this is also problematic (Castro, Lull and Micó, ?).
However, this position has been questioned by the emergence of Archaeology's new postprocessual visions (Chapman, 1991 even talks about two tribes). Authors like Hodder (1988), Shanks and Tilley (1987 a and b), talked about both the strong social conditioning of our object of study and its reading (data acquire meaning in the archaeological practice - Tilley, 1990: 29). Thus, they fall into a light but not radical relativism, since they believe -in spite of it all- in the existence of a reality which is independent from the subject studying it (Hodder, 1988: 201-202 and Tilley, 1990: 27-29).
Thus, Hodder (1993) does not believe in the neutral nature of the researcher, for he believes we are always interpreting. Nevertheless, he thinks that we can define, thanks to the real objects found in an excavation, some certainties in some excavations, such as their stages of growth and decline. According to Hodder, although the researcher is far away from either neutrality or the achievement of mechanically interpretative histories (due to the fact that descriptive chronologies are lying behind them), our knowledge of the past can be improved by learning and interpreting such changes, rather than by being mistaken in relativism. For this English archaeologist, narratives (the world of meanings) can express some objective facts of sequences of material culture (signifiers), since changes physically exist. In spite of this, we cannot fall into an alleged neutralism or objectivism, but rather, we should establish from the very first moment the methodological and theoretical bases that lie behind the assertions we make about the past (Hodder, 1988: 204-209).
The growing wish to make explicit the theoretical bases, both shared and recommended by authors like Martínez Navarrete and Vincent, 1983: 345; Vincent, 1990; Lull et all., 1990; Chapman, 1991; Barceló, 1995, etc., should be taken as a sign that things are going fine for archaeology in the last years, despite the agreeable positions that Ruiz, Chapa and Ruiz (1988) denounce in the end.
2. - Archaeological reality, participated entity, paradigm and likeliness (verisimilitude):
As can be seen in the work of traditional authors as well as in the work of others who have nothing to do with them, such as Ruiz, Chapa and Ruiz (1988), Lull (1988: 66-67), Walker (1990), Vincent (1990: 104), Chapman (1991: 10), etc, the realist position is the predominant one in our country (although, in general, we are talking about a more defined realism, without omitting the importance of the subject in the definition of the object). However, and despite the fact that the realist position is the predominant one in our country, we support (López Borgoñoz, 1995) a middle position between the former two (processual realism and light contextual relativism which abound in archaeological thought) and a heavier relativism, which is difficult to find in archaeological theory. As our hypothesis depends excessively on the social structure in which we have been brought up, this theory sustains that the task of knowing what reality "per se" is, as well as if such reality is knowable through these limited biological systems that human beings are, is very difficult and beyond our reach.
In principle, we cannot be realists, due to the social context of each investigation and each investigated object. There is no object without subject. Although all the objects we found out in our excavations are signifiers, their meanings were built (in their due moment) in a different way depending on each social class and, what's more, they are being built now once again by means of our present concepts. Hodder talks about the existence, in the past, as in the present, of a multiplicity of readings of reality, linked (we should add, consciously or unconsciously) with different interest groups of society. Our reading of the past depends on our present. Besides, our capacity to know is not only socially mediated, in a non-measurable way, but it is also mediated by our own physical, biological and psychological specificity. We ignore to what extent there are knowable facts or signifiers in any sense (although we do not deny their possible existence).
However, we cannot be radical relativists, either, for, in spite of it all, we believe that we can try to create models of representation of the past and that we can use them in order to interpret the data coming from the environment. These representational patterns can also be used to formulate useful (from the perspective of the objectives of the pattern) and likely (since we try to keep a coherent and demonstrable relationship with the data accepted as such in our previously defined pattern) theoretical hypothesis.
Although it is true that the interpretation of what we define as facts is not univocal, even within our own models, it is also true that the so-called facts unfold infinite interpretative possibilities (they are constrained by every new fact - Lull et all, 1990: 468). At first, there are many hypotheses about the trade in the roman villae, yet these are constrained by the signifiers we find. Although our knowledge is not real (in an objective way), it can nonetheless be useful, in the same way that the models we have created do not have to be (and in many cases we do not have to consider them as) true and definitive knowledge about nature or our past society.
As we showed in a more detailed way in a former paper (López Borgoñoz, 1995) dealing with the relationship of the archaeologist with his object of study, archaeological reality, the object of knowledge of our science, is what is observed within a previous hypothesis. And, as participated entity, what is observed by the researcher is influenced (not determined) by the power of the prevailing paradigm in the core of the archaeological community, and the researcher is, at the same time, influenced by his own social context. What is important for archaeological theories is not the finding of an objective reality of the past, but rather the establishment of the credibility of such theories in each historical and socio-cultural context, that is to say, the fact that they might seem more explanatory and useful, and that they might support more general hypothesis. According to Barceló (1995: 29 and 394), the difference between his pattern of solving problems and the positivist one lies in the possibility of the hypothesis, rather than in their probability (that is to say, in its capacity to be proved) He is not trying to discover a real connection; he puts forward plausible and likely demonstrations.
Within the scientific community -or at least part of it-, immersed in society, the image of the past will become true by consensus or convention, according to the coherence of the pattern which has been put forward. Such coherence is not as much determined by the fact that it can be proved, as by the fact that the data required by such pattern does not meet any insurmountable contradictions.
We can never know how close each convention is to reality. For this reason, we say that what really matters is not what the presumed real world is like (in the case it exists), but the dialectics between our models and what is observable.
Immersed in a Kuhnian mood (1971, 1983), we could add that change in scientific theories is due to neither rational causes (what matters is the scientific context of the discovery in which certain theories prevail. Another aspect to take into account is the fact that there is no progress after each change, since theory does not necessarily fit into all data, but it only fits into the data which is believed to be relevant) nor purely irrational causes (change can be reasonable in each given scientific environment), but arrational causes (reason is used in the construction of theories and it is related to the observable world, yet change in theories is not produced by progress but by a new consensus within the scientific community -or a part of it- which has nothing to do with reason -but which nonetheless does not exclude it-, thus forging new paradigms).
3. - Putnam, conceptual apparatus and reality:
This way of seeing reality and the relationship of the researcher with it is also influenced by Putnam (1994), for whom the real is always subjected to the conceptual apparatus that we use to communicate or researchers (or normal human beings) use to represent reality in each historical moment. This relative nature of reality (of facts) regarding the conceptual apparatus does not mean that within such apparatus there are no real things. As a matter of fact, within a given conceptual apparatus, there are real things and things which are not real, for in a specific schema, we will be able to distinguish between false and true statements depending on what we define as facts. In any culture, there would even be metaschemes that would allow us to discuss the value of different conceptual schemes in relationship with determined criteria (of methodological, moral nature, etc.), which they all share.
Mathematics is a clear example of what we have previously said. It is the product of human convention (what can be observed is a direct product of its own science) and it has tools to decide, to a certain extent, if something is correct or not. Classical literature would provide us with another example: Don Quixote. Thus, if Don Quixote were introduced to us as a fat man, dressed as a bullfighter, riding a motorbike and consciously wicked, we would probably say that he is false. The behavior imposed by the doctrinal corpus of a certain religion would be another example of rationality within a pattern.
Therefore, if we dare to argue about archaeology, about the texts or the excavation methods, is because there are justified conceptions and non-justified conceptions depending on our conceptual apparatus, which belongs to both author and reader. In a similar way, we can say that according to such shared conceptual frame, there are wrong conceptions and conceptions which are more true.
4. - The Research Process and its Object of Study:
How are the models built in the mind of the researcher? We do not want to step in the terrain of cognitive psychology which has been studied lately by Barceló (1995), but we are only interested in pointing out that maybe there is no differentiated reality for the human being that observes it (López Borgoñoz, 1995), but that, in any case, there are some signifiers or percepts, basic units of observation which are contemplated in a similar way by the most part of human beings, with whom we share a great amount of similarities: physical-chemical similarities, biological similarities, and we could even talk about cultural similarities, especially among the greater part of inhabitants of the planet, and maybe psychological.
The very name "percepts" is a sign that we are talking about something, which we perceive, sensations that reach the human being. That is to say, even though it does not matter in practice, it does not matter whether the perception of falling is "real" in its most classical sense or just a result of our intellect, the truth is that it hurts. This concept tells us about raw sensations, whose external origin, in most of the cases (even though not always, since they can be the result of estimating mistakes, or even psychological mistakes) can be assumed. What can vary is the pattern, even though we can debate whether they are significant or not (the size of the walls, the existence of a prefixed area of objects in certain contexts, minimum distance among objects, etc).
Taking a certain stage as a starting point, we can say that, on the one hand, human variability is not that big and, on the other, human cultures are not that incalculable. There are not hundreds of miles of different forms of human self-organization with a minimum of complexity (as we will see later on). There are only a few which can keep a certain degree of self-sustaining equilibrium throughout time without falling into chaos. Undoubtedly, Geertz (1996: 106) does not go as far as we do, but he nonetheless writes what is important is how we use these indubitable realities (all human beings share certain biological and mental features: men do not fly, the papoos are envious, the aborigines dream) when we explain rituals, analyze eco-systems, interpret fossil or archaeological sequences, or compare languages.
Even though any conceptual frame, no matter how coherent or incoherent might seem in all its explanatory wholeness can be or cannot be enforced beyond empirical experiences, experiences with a clear polysemic tinge. It is true that we can see regularities in the world surrounding us. The control of these regularities (to make them accountable for in mathematics) gives them predictive power and it seems that such power has been improving in the last three hundred years. Such controlling capacity as far as regularities are concerned is one of the characteristics of our system of knowledge.
However, in spite of this, we also believe that we could have reached the same results regarding the control of the environment, or similar ones, with other models or different and alternative conceptual frames. Maybe, these alternative frames could not have been able to explain certain points which are now sustained by reasonable hypothesis, but they would have possibly allowed us to go further in other matters, which nowadays are not completely understood. By modernizing Descartes' example, we can say that a water clock tells the time just as well as an atomic clock, although their mechanisms are different. Different causes can provoke the same effects.
The fact that present theories seem to be endowed with an explanatory efficiency is because they seem to solve specific problems, but we have no idea and it really does not matter, whether they are true or objective. Since nature and reality are human constructions they are both what human beings want them to be depending on how they define them. However, I do not fall into an extreme relativism, for I do believe that there are positions which are more mistaken than others.
5. - Data and Models:
Following the models delineated in the previous paragraph, we can see that due to the limits of the space of our brain, it is necessary to reduce external information, that is to say, the information that comes to us from the environment, in models or schemes which in a more or less satisfactory way allow us to interact with our environment, for among the data flow that comes to us in our daily performance, be this individual or collective, we perceive certain regularities.
A pattern is a conceptual structure that human beings use in order to make sense, in a simplified way, of a group of data which comes to us in a non-orderly way. The task of the historian is to create order from chaos (Tilley, 1990: 22).
If we go on making such assumptions, we will have to admit that in order to establish models or schemes, we are forced to get hold of things like selection processes (conscious or unconscious) of the information that comes to us. For scientists, it will even be recommendable to force the data supply (by carrying out experiments) from a previous hypothesis, so that nature will be more generous when it comes to giving us hints about how to solve some of the puzzles previously set up. We will distinguish different data levels depending on how we perceive these data, and also depending on the causes we believe to be lying behind them.
a) Regular data: They are not caused by random. According to the realists, if we study them, we can know their genesis. Their presentation, given their regular character, can be compressed and accounted for in the field of Mathematics. If the diameter of the huts of a culture A were always the same, it would not be necessary to talk about each one of them separately and their respective sizes, but rather, we would say that the diameter of the huts of culture A is simply X and Z.
b) Accidental/Random data: They are caused by random. They can be known as background noise. They are not regular, they cannot be compressed and they cannot be accounted for in the field of Mathematics. Their description is always a problem. If the diameter of the huts in a certain culture B were always different, we could not compress the explanation and we would have to indicate the size of the huts in each different case.
c) Stochastic data: They are a subclass of b, since they are also caused by random, but it might not seem so, for they are presented (for they appear) in a regular way. Maybe, in a culture C the diameters of all the huts range from X to Z, but this might be simply a product of casualty; there might be no reason for this to happen. In such a case, we could assume that there is a regularity, we could make this regularity be accounted for in Mathematics (this is useful) and thus predict future results, but in the end, we would find a mistake (someone might build a different hut), although this might never happen.
d) Temporary accidental data: They are a subclass of a, since sometimes the researcher thinks he is facing accidental data, when in fact what happens is that knowledge about how to compress the information within a regular scheme, simply escapes him. He does not know the formula. It could be the previous case turned upside down. An example would be the following: we can classify the diameter of a group of huts as accidental, but then we perceive that among them there is in fact a 1.05 relationship from big to small, yet we ignore the causes of such regularities.
For the realists, all data could be in the end regular (types a and d). For the radical relativists, all data would be either accidental or stochastic. As for us, the origin does not matter, what interests us is that which we can measure and control, even though only temporarily, and that which can be useful in our daily life.
Given the difficulty of working with accidental data, in which there are no regularities, we will ground our models of reality only in regular or stochastic data, be they caused by knowable causes or by accidental causes. The greater the regularity, the greater the capacity to foresee and to know. However, we should not forget accidental data. We will condense these data of repetitive nature in models or adaptive schemes subjected to a variation depending on the new external data, which are interacting with them. By trying to put in schemes the data coming to us, our objective will not be the search for cause-effect linear relationships among them, but rather complex interrelationships based on non-linear dynamics.
We can say that a pattern experiences a linear dynamics when the relationships between causes and effects appear in such a way that if a cause A goes with an effect B, then a cause 3 x A goes with an effect 3 x B. On the contrary, we will talk about a non-linear dynamics, when a cause 3 x A does not go with an effect 3 x B, but with an effect X. That means the following: the linear growth (or linear fall), as far as the magnitude of causes are concerned, do not imply a similar growth in the effects, but these can simply be different. A non-linear dynamics means that the same entries can have different consequences in the short or long run, or that other specific entries can have effects beyond imagination, whose consequences are not at all obvious.
Although sometimes the schemes might seem correct, given the superficial similarities among the data in which they are grounded, they can very well be wrong. As regards this, Stephen Jay Gould (1995: 169) poignantly remarks that the human mind enjoys finding underlying schemes to the extent that we very often confuse coincidences or forced analogies with deep meanings. No other mistake of reason does more stubbornly gets in the way of any direct attempt to know some of the essential aspects of the world: the winding roads of history, the unpredictability of complex systems, and the lack of causal connections among superficially similar events. Numerical coincidences constitute a common path of intellectual loss in our search for the truth. We enjoy classifying absolutely different elements whose only link is a number, and we very often feel, in our inner self, that there should be an underlying unity in everything.
As we have said before, facing the impossibility of knowing if our models are correct in a purely realist sense of the word, we should only expect them to be useful. For this reason, whether schemes are perfect or not is not really important. What is important is that they might be useful in a given context, and so it would be better to work with incomplete schemes that allow us to move around the complexity surrounding us, rather than working with very complex schemes that do not allow us to move freely around such complexity.
6. - Data and Complexity.
We could define the complexity of a system as the quantity of information that allows us to describe it. The longer the length of the description, the greater the complexity. It is for this reason that the systems with regular data are less complex than the systems with accidental data. If the data are perfectly regular, they can be easily accounted for by mathematics in a quantitative way, and for that reason the description will be more condensed and simpler.
This happens with most objects of study from the natural sciences, but this is not the case in the so-called social sciences, since the description of a social formation is always very long. In spite of this, we do believe that certain social formations are simpler to describe than others. A certain society in a stable environment, or better, in a stationary environment, and which does not trade with its surplus and which consists of few members who barely interrelate with other social groups, will be simpler to define than the workings of districts of big cities like Barcelona.
Some of the realist scientists, in their search for general laws think that there is no complexity which cannot be compressed into models, but there are only processes or calculation programmes (algorithms) which are not powerful enough. For them, all that is accidental or stochastic is just noise interfering with the information we receive from the systems analyzed. Yet this is not science, this is belief. The truth is that we ignore the origin of the information we receive.
That is the reason why we have stated that what really matters is the formulation of hypothesis coherent with facts. We ignore whether all is stochastic (and accidental) and we are the ones who create and find regularities in nature. This is possible but it is neither probable nor provable. It is only theory. What is probable, according to our present knowledge, is a universe where regular statistical tendencies prevail.
7. - Quantitative Mathematics and Archaeological Science:
For the researcher, there are two aspects to differentiate: on the one hand, the thought and the theorizing about possible things, and on the other, the talking about probable things, that is to say, things that can be proved, which is a subgroup of the previous one, but in this case limited by the observations accepted as correct by the scientific community. As far as we are concerned, we do not long for a perfect science, not even the best of all the possible sciences, but only the meanest of all the probable ones.
It is with this line of thought that the researcher should address his investigations when he talks about how the past might have been. Thus, within the oceans of different possible readings that nature and the remnants that human beings have been leaving behind offers him, he has to pick up those options which are the most probable within the possible ones, and he must also accept the fact that these options are subjected to criticism and that his hypothesis might be overcome by others.
It is for this reason that mathematics of the quantitative type can be a great help. Among its many characteristics there is one which Margalef (1991: 13) points out: it seems to discover in things "something that was there before the beginning of time and which is endowed with a prehuman character". It describes the natural world (from our own perspective), it finds regularities in its behavior, and it even sometimes finds rhythms which are invisible to direct human experience (to common sense). In its methodological sophistication, quantitative mathematics is able to reduce the apparent complexity of the cosmos in a succession of basic numerical theorems.
However, there is a problem in quantitative mathematics: it never interprets. Maybe the results can be interpreted, but quantitative mathematics is no interpretation in itself. What is lying behind those numbers depends on the conceptual frame of the researcher. Numbers in themselves are only numbers, and they do not know anything about nature. They simply detect repetitions and they are able to describe them by means of formulas. Since they are based on facts from the past, lapses, and the mathematical conditions of their own possible future occurrence, these formulas allow us to predict. Thus, we must interpret from Mathematics, trying to understand the origin of the observed regularities.
Given that they can be mere particularly long repetitions due to random alone, Quantitative Mathematics detect regularities, but these regularities cannot be significant. If we toss a coin, it would perfectly be possible that for a certain period of time a specific stochastic scheme of head-head-tail follows, and this scheme is marked only by random. Yet it would be regular and so, at least partly compressible into a pattern or scheme.
And this happens more often than we think, since nowadays all seems to indicate that in nature coins happen to be charged. This means that strange regularities are due to occur. The appearance of such strange regularities makes it difficult for our interpretative task. But these strange regularities are precisely what allows the cosmos to be the way it is, and also the reason why there is life in our planet. As Popper pointed out, we are in a world of propensities, more than in a world of possibilities. Regularities are only significant in subjective contexts, which our own conceptual apparatus records.
In order to go further in our vision of society, maybe we should look at data from all probable perspectives in different models (based on non-linear dynamics), with theories about complex working systems. Thanks to McGlade, we will see this in the next pages.
8. - Complex Systems and Socionatural Systems:
According to McGlade (1995 a and b), models are always incomplete and approximate, and they should not be abstract representations of reality, but rather they should be contextual and discursive. They should the conveyor belt of possible arguments: in a constant dialogue with data and with different study models from the ancient world, which, until now, have been considered mutually exclusive. We could distinguish three types of basic patterns: the descriptive/statistical pattern, which studies complex groups of data, generally by mathematical procedures, the analytical/deductive pattern, which explores the non-linear relationships of groups of complex interactions like the climate, the soil, etc., and the interpretative/interrogative, which evaluates the implications that underlie the qualitative structures that structure the relationships between society and nature, and which are revealed by the use of the former pattern -these are models constructed on the grounds of interaction among very different groups of data.
This kind of patterning crashes with what McGlade calls the reductionist essence of the traditional archaeological science, which attempts to create a unique pattern (linear and unambiguous), in order to facilitate prediction (McGlade, 1995: 115 and 129).
According to McGlade, in order to understand the human eco-dynamics (the relationship within time between the human being and his environment), different representations of reality (according to different groups of data), set in a dialects, are required.
The relationships between data and models, and between models and socionatural systems, which we will later on define, are never linear and their shapes are always blurred (ambiguous). This way of approaching socionatural processes will never provide us with a unique final pattern, but rather with a map of different possibilities within which human settlements and their sustenance can be developed.
McGlade's representation of the past embodies the notion of a future which is not determined by itself. Thus, he theorizes about Archaeology in its relationship with the eco-dynamic processes of the landscapes modified by human beings. In order to do this, he adopts a perspective set in the long run, and which is based on both non-linear phenomena and the emergence of new situations and stages, which are a product of these interactions (McGlade, 1995 a).
He sets up the relationships between natural systems and formal systems. Natural systems (or the objective world of study), which is always known in an incomplete way are two different things: on the one hand, the group of aspects susceptible to observation (or qualities), and on the other hand, the group of relationships among such aspects that have been created by the thinking process. A formal system is the product of our own thinking process, and as such, it lacks properties which lie beyond the ones which constitute its own definition and implications.
His research on nature and society favours the complex interdependence and the non-linear feedback processes -in the historical becoming- between social rhythms and natural rhythms, over the cognitive questions raised by the socially predetermined individual. Thus, he talks about socionatural systems, a term which we have adopted from him, since we believe it is not possible to talk about society or ecosystems separately.
With this concept, McGlade criticizes the positions of those scientists from the past, who, while studying society, have understood its relationship with the landscape as something external; likewise, scholars of paleobiological aspects, of the archaeology of the environment, etc., have shared the same position. For such scholars, the social aspect has always been an appendix to the data they described (McGlade, 1995 a: 115). This relationship between nature and the human being, as is conceived in Archaeology by the vast majority, springs from a constrained interpretation of the natural evolutive dynamics.
Human groups are part of nature, and as such they participate in the evolution of nature. It is a co-evolution process, within a reciprocal dynamic process, and such reciprocity is the fundamental ingredient in the evolutive pattern of the socionatural systems.
The fundamental structuring process of complex systems is its capacity for self-organization and of emergence of order throughout unstable transitions (McGlade, 1995 a: 117). Emergence, understood as the capacity of the system to be more than the simple addition of its parts, lies in the bases of all human social systems, as a basic principle for self-organization.
An important point to take into account in the study of the co-evolutive processes between man and nature, is the question of scale. Given the different rhythms in the same natural and social subsystems, such co-evolutive processes admit different cycles within the same system. Stationary relationships between the two cannot take place. Thus, a fall cycle, in the short term, can be part of a growth cycle in the mid term, and the latter can, at the same time, be part of a stable cycle in the long run.
The fundamental thing in natural systems is the observable qualities, which are generated by the percepts, and which can be susceptible to mathematics, since they do not represent our object of study in itself, but its qualities and differences. They have an interactive nature, since through these observable differentiating qualities, the system is able to start interrelating (interacting) with another.
According to McGlade, we could defend the existence of a world of basic objects surrounding us (which would be the percepts), above them, there would exist the possibility to find regularities (differences or measurable qualities) in themselves, and, as a last resort, a human capacity to develop a formal system that starts relating these data. The percepts would be external nature, the "qualities" could be in nature, but the human being is the one who defines them, and finally, the "formal" systems would be purely and clearly human, a product of his experiences. In his hypothesis, there lies the idea that science discovers an objective world that is not independent from the opinions of scientists.
The evolution of systems does not always require exogenous causes for its variation, but it can occur through the search of new balance points, when the instability of a system outbalances it towards a new state.
An aspect that McGlade discusses and that we will look into more detail later on, is the fact that he thinks that an increase in complexity does not give stability to the systems, since, given the destabilizing nature of its mutual relationships, complexity proves to be tiring and dangerous in the long run. For McGlade, complexity is disturbance.
9. - Socionatural systems and metastability
Although complexity is a continuous non-linear change, we nonetheless believe that McGlade would agree with our notion that it is possible to acknowledge in socionatural systems a certain statistical propension to make them adaptive. This offers metastability to the system. This term, which has also been used by him, refers to a greater capacity of sustenance. On the other hand, this metastability endures despite the coexistence, within the systems, of different co-evolutive cycles (of different duration).
What is this metastability, according to McGlade, really about? In the system that relates the human being in society with his environment, there exists an apparent global stability, but given the existence of mutual socionatural feedback processes among the different variables that integrate it with complex interactions, this relationship system has usually two characteristics of instability:
a) The fact that it a continuous instability (especially as complexity increases) in some of its parts (although not always in the same ones), with different characteristics and importance according to the variables.
b) The fact that this continuous instability, with the passing of time, and as internal contradictions intensify, always ends up with a final split, For us, there is no split (although there are decline processes in the socionatural systems), as they are probably influenced by cultural factors, as well as by the relationships with other systems.
The socionatural system, on the other hand, is not expressed only with respect to a unique point of balance (attractor point which all variables of a part of the system seem to tend to), but rather the regularities that move around a vast number of those attractors, with different kinds of internal relationships among them, which range from their very inexistence to those of the hierarchical type.
An attractor point is a point of physical or mathematical balance (that is, real or fictional) within a system, which orbits, periods, regularities or rhythms of all its components seem to tend to (at least in a statistical way, although the non-linear complex cause of all this is ignored).
In the archaeological or historical models, this point would be of the mathematical type. However, it might in a future be possible to find elements (in the complex system which societies constitute) around which the rest of its variables will experience a statistical tendency to converge.
Among these attractors, there is one kind, which is quite complex to interpret. They are known as strange attractors, and have an orbit of an infinity of periods, regularities or rhythms (besides other characteristics), thus constituting a disconnected group which keeps on reproducing itself even though we might vary the observation scale. Strange attractors have also been dealt with by McGlade (1995 a: 120-121).
According to Perelló (1989), the general characteristics of strange attractors can be summarized in three groups:
1. - Qualitative behavior sensitive to small changes in the initial conditions;
2. - Existence of periodical orbits of an infinity of periods (chaos), and
3. - Apparent accidental changes in the behavior of the orbits tending towards this attractor.
The existence of these strange attractors is generated by several reasons, and it is not always based on non-deterministic essences in their structure. Sometimes, the existence of a hierarchization of attractors might make us think so. The presence of chaos in the explanatory complex models is stated here.
As we can see, many of these characteristics, intuitively, seem to approach this kind of attractors to socionatural dynamics, and its characteristics are close to that which we observe in the evolution of many societies.
As the variables that constitute the system move around several balance points (or attractor points), we can say that this system is metastable. Regarding this, McGlade (1995 a: 120-121) states that " With respect to human-modified landscapes under discussion here, what we are faced with is an empirical situation in which a number of different attractors are co-present. In a sense they inhabit an operational space constrained by non-linear causality on account of the multiple periodicities represented by the wide variety of temporal rhythms which define natural ecological phenomena and their constant modification by human social groups who themselves are defined by alternative periodicities. This co-evolutionary dependency is manifest as a multiplicity of oscillatory frequencies. Moreover, research in a number of fields has shown that non-linear feedbacks can amplify these rhythms causing either catastrophic collapse or the emergence of spontaneous structure, with the system evolving to a new qualitative state".
The greater or lesser existence of these attractors, as well as the relationships among them, will show a greater or lesser complexity in a system. Thus, the complexity of systems whose attractor are totally ranked, all of them interconnected or with no connection among them, will be less than the complexity of those systems in which the attractors are only partially connected or partially ranked. Since this fact will hinder both its description (the description will be longer for the interconnected parts as well as the different relationship between each couple will have to be mentioned) and the creation of a pattern that summarizes it.
In the cases of greater complexity, the loss of one of the points will not be irremediable at first, but this will force us to re-design the balances of the system after some time. Thus, the complex systems, on the whole, are resistant, with a tendency to endure in their internal relationships, and this resistance is a useful measure in order to try to know the capacity of its own socionatural system, so that it will use and absorb the changes which are taking place.
Hence, we see that the more complex socionatural systems are continuously unstable -since they are subjected to thousands of variations due to the interactions of their subsystems-, but, as structure, and before nature and other societies, such variations allow for a greater strength and capacity of permeability (a metastability), which allows them to adapt better to changing circumstances. In the big systems, there will never be either stability or total change. Stability and total change will only be present in specific parts (Tilley, 1990: 25).
In the simpler systems (adapted to their environment, rare, and with no external exchanges) there will be a greater stability (less continuous changes), but their capacity of adaptation will be of a lesser kind, being more vulnerable and collapsing before minimal changes.
The evolution of the ecodynamic processes will be strongly disturbed by human action, just as human action itself will be disturbed by the natural environment in which human beings move around in a continuous process of feedback and in which we will not only see nature "suffering" human action, but whose own evolution will also determine the modification in he habits of human behavior. The attempt to control regularities and present variables in the system can only be carried out by using more or less complex mathematical models.
10. - Socionatural Systems and Convergence Processes:
Due to linear social dynamics, each particular history is different, having its own cultural models. However, underlying these cultural models, there are certain structures which, as the complexity of the system increases, confine each other.
The future states of a system are constrained due to the restricted possible interactions among its subsystems, so that the greater the quantity of subsystems, the lesser the freedom of variation in the global system. Such lesser freedom does not imply a smaller number of changes, but it only implies that these changes will not take place within a narrow range of possibilities. This is possibly what happens in the core of extremely complex systems like the socionatural ones. A social system can very well be less than the summing up of its parts, despite its emerging properties.
According to an ecologist like Ramón Margalef (1991: 80), a system consists of both elements ideally separable and the interactions among such elements. As a result of those interactions, the future states of the system become restricted or constrained within a number of possibilities, which a priori, we could imagine to be vaster than the outcome. That is why the description of the whole system is shorter than the reckoning of all possible states of all the possible parts of the system. When, within a system, an element or a subsystem is combined with others, a certain convergence of behavior (behavioral convergence) manifests itself, in the sense that each element influences the possible state variations of the others, and, consequently, the rate of freedom that these other components could enjoy diminishes. Sometimes, it is said that a system is the summing up of its parts: this depends on how we define the whole system, but it is sensible to think that the possibilities of the components are strongly constrained as soon as the very same components become part of the system: a system can be less that the summing up of its parts. The ecosystems should be considered cybernetic systems, since in them, there is regulation and mutual control of one part over another.
Given that, in theory, the possibilities of interaction among subsystems (and among different systems) are constrained, and given that not all interactions are stable either in the near future or in the long run, we can see that the emerging image of the socionatural systems (as happens with the biological systems), will tend to be convergent and regular in its basic deep structures (beyond historical particularisms). And all this will become more noticeable through the adaptive processes which take place by interaction with other socionatural systems.
Maybe, some basic human associations will be allowed to experiment with social models, but as complexity increases, its possibilities of divergence will be limited.
11. - Complex Systems, World System and History:
As we have seen, depending on the workings of the converging system of the complex systems, we believe that the possibilities of variation in the social structure are limited, especially if, from a certain level of complexity, we want them to be stable in the near future and in the long run. This limiting of possibilities is what allows us to observe measurable regularities -of causal uncertain origin- in the possibilities themselves. This makes us agree with some hypothesis from the new Archaeology (like the ones posed by Flannery, 1972: 62-63) and its search for general laws (although we do not share their realist beliefs).
What's more, we believe that the thesis of authors like André Gunder Frank offer a focus coherent with the theory of complex systems. According to him, from a specific complexity (the Neolithic, according to him), all societies play the same game, are one society, which is determined by the existence of a unique world system, in the old world, with different strategies which converge as the complexity of the global system and the dimension of the interaction with other societies increases.
According to Frank and Gills (1990), the process of accumulating capital has been one of the driving forces of human history which have been repeated throughout, at least, the last five thousand years. However, as Wallerstein points out, this accumulation is not what specifically differentiates our contemporary economy from the ancient economy (for a further discussion on this topic, see López Borgoñoz, in press). This world system is also grounded in the three distinctive characteristics of the present World Systems: (a) structures of center-periphery; (b) stages A and B of expansion and contraction (or reduced growth), and (c) stages of hegemony and rivalry among different groups.
There is one basic social pattern, minimally complex, which, given the different places that social formations occupy and play in the non-egalitarian structure of the world system, generates different effects in different parts (Frank, in press). This pattern has stages of growth and fall, cycles, which, on the other hand, are also aforesaid by theory, but, as we have seen, only in a more complex way.
Maybe, there is only, from a specific complexity, just one socionatural system, with different specializations depending on the internal relationships of power and its unequal position with respect to the center/periphery of this world system. The process of structural convergence, as a result of the interaction among socionatural systems, would reach its climax in the setting of society in a specific place in the world system. Or even better, the ranked and interdependent structure of the world system would originate as a result of the different convergence and adaptation processes among pre-existent socionatural systems.
We do not believe that in the third century (b.C. or A.D.) Roman society played under rules excessively different from ours, or that its performance was determined by a position diametrically different from ours, although its strategies and social practices were historically different through groups, as well as the power correlations among them.
The social processes of intersystematic convergence and adaptation among complex social systems in time, and the growth in their strength as complexity increases allows us to believe in the existence of the world system since the ancient times. The differences in social expression of the different social formations are therefore grounded in its more or less hegemonic position within what constitutes the world system (which ends up gathering them all). These positions lead us to a greater specialization (either forced or not) in the global structure, as the complexity of the system succeeds.
A non-biased study of the history of the world system shows that the vast of majority of societies, from a given moment (probably the Neolithic, since this is when the unequal exchange of surplus started, but it might have started even before that), have settled upon an economic pattern which is grounded in specific principles and similar logical sequences. And this is what allows us to argue about these societies, for we never talk about other worlds or aliens.
There are two archaeologies (the Archaeology of Particular Histories and the Archaeology of Complex Societies) and their method of study ranges from a specific use of inductivism, in the case of specific studies (in spite of the problems that Popper points out as far as the generation of general laws are concerned) to the hypothetic-deductive methodology (in the case of general studies). For a further analysis on methods, see Barceló (1995: 404-407).
12.- Complexity and Society:
The new perspectives in research, as well as the new theories in other scientific fields, allow us to begin to study the complexity of the socionatural interactions as such. It also makes us be more careful with our belief that human history is accumulative or rationally addressed towards the taking of the best decision, in a given social context, for the sake of the perpetuation of the system -or a part of it- after some time or in the long run.
The data to be analyzed for each one of the social systems are complex, and in the data coming to us, all that is accidental is not always discernible from the regularities that allow us to make predictions. Thus, there are no normative sciences (only statistically probabilistic ones), even though some regularities can usually, in some way, be mathematically patterned.
Human sciences (and human beings individually) share in their history the characteristics of the evolution of a non-linear dynamic process, and just like them, they are sensitive to initial conditions (and to their development) and to the changes (no matter how little they are) in the characteristics of the environment in which they live. A small change or irregularity has unpredictable consequences, since it is impossible to know it perfectly well. Chaos (or instability), in the end, always springs from these unpredictable adaptive complex systems.
13. - Conclusion:
The implications of the non-linear dynamics in relation with the interaction between societies and their environment, as well as the studies about the development processes (in the world system), change our ideas about social evolution and its patterning. Models must be complex, open, non-deterministic, and, as Benjamin pointed out, looked at from the present, in order to place present in a critical situation, since even for the historian, politics surpasses history (Fontana, 1992: 143).
With the passing of time, and although, on the one hand, the way of relating with the environment of the human being differs in the material level, and on the other, it is possible for the same human being to go through several (but not many) socionatural forms of organization in which there is neither surplus nor relationships with other groups (political borders coinciding with economical ones), we have to think that the number of possibilities of organization of the socionatural systems is decreasing as the internal and external relationships of the group become more complex, while they are facing changing environments and specializations (more or less enforced and more or less powerful, according to the level of complexity) within the world system, in a process that differentiates economical borders from political ones.
Throughout the history of the last five thousand years, probably only one organizing complex global system has been metastable, with its processes -or internal adjustment cycles among subsystems- of economical growth and decline.
The increase of the complexity in the systems, in constant feedback with the natural environment and with other systems, will have to admit certain flexibility and a certain consistency. Only if the complexity of a system increases, can the possibilities of performance (adaptation to different environments) increase, too.
This is the basis of the world system since antiquity, the fact that societies, complex systems after all, tend to fit in one due to mutual contact and to a non-linear internal development, which is usually converging.
In any case, human diversity shows that any structure welcomes a lot of different structures, and that the possibilities to create alternative stable systems are very limited, but this does not mean that it is impossible.
14.- Bibliography:
Anfruns, J. y Llobet, E. (Eds.) "El canvi cultural a la prehistòria" Edit. Columna. Barcelona, 1990.
Barceló, Juan A. "Arqueología automática. La utilización de técnicas de inteligencia artificial en arqueología teórica". Apuntes UAB, 1995.
Binford, Lewis R. "En busca del pasado. Descifrando el registro arqueológico" Trad. P. Gasull. Ed. Crítica. Barcelona, 1988 [1983].
Castro, P.; Lull, V. y Micó, R. "La fragilidad del método hipotético-deductivo en la arqueología procesual". ?.
Chapman, Robert "La formación de las sociedades complejas. El sureste de la península ibérica en el marco del Mediterráneo occidental" Trad. C. Rihuete. Ed. Crítica. Barcelona, 1991 [1990].
Dueñas, J.A. "Les teories externalistes enfront del culturalisme en el canvi cultural" pp. 45-62, en Anfruns y Llobet, 1990.
Flannery, K. V. "La evolución cultural de las civilizaciones". Trad. de A. Desmonts. Cuadernos Anagrama nº 103. Editorial Anagrama. Barcelona, 1975 [1972].
Frank, A. G. "Bronze Age world system cycles". Current Anthropology, Vol. 34, Nº 4, 1993.
Frank, A. G. "The uses and abuses of world systems theory in archaeology". Washington, in presse.
Fontana, J. "La Historia después del fin de la Historia". Edit. Crítica. Barcelona, 1992.
Geertz, Clifford "Los usos de la diversidad". Pensamiento Contemporáneo 44. Paidós Ibérica. Barcelona,1996 [1986].
Gell-Mann, Murray "El quark y el jaguar. Aventuras en lo simple y en lo complejo" Trad. de A. García y R. Pastor. Metatemas 38. Tusquets Editores. Barcelona, 1995 [1994].
Gills, B. K. y Frank, A.G. "5000 years of world-system history: The cumulation of accumulation", Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 15, nº 1: 19-42, 1990.
Gould, S. J. "La sonrisa del flamenco. Reflexiones sobre historia natural". Trad. por A. Resines. Edit. Crítica. Barcelona, 1995 [1985].
Hawking, Stephen y Penrose, Roger "La naturaleza del espacio y del tiempo" en Investigación y Ciencia, pp. 48-53, Septiembre, 1996 [1995] .
Hodder, Ian "Interpretación en arqueología. Corrientes actuales". Trad. de Mª José Aubet. Editorial Crítica. Barcelona, 1988 [1986].
Hodder, Ian "The narrative and rethoric of material culture sequences" . World Archaeology Vol. 25 no. 2 pp. 268-282, 1993.
Kuhn, T. S. "La estructura de las revoluciones científicas". Trad. de Agustín Contín. Breviario nº 213. Edit. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Mexico, 1971 [1962].
Kuhn, T. S. "La tensión esencial". Trad. R. Helier. Fondo Cultura Económica. Madrid, 1983 [1977].
López Borgoñoz, Alfonso "Sobre el objeto de conocimiento de la arqueología" Actas del XXII Congr. Nacional Arqueología, pp. 333-336. Vigo, 1995.
López Borgoñoz, Alfonso "Mundo antiguo, sistemas mundiales y arqueología: la aportación de A.G. Frank" Actas del XXIII Congr. Nacional Arqueología. Elche, en prensa.
Lull, V. "Hacia una teoría de la representación en arqueología" Revista de Occidente: 63-76, 1988.
Lull, V.; Micó, R.; Montón, S. y Picazo, M. "La arqueología entre la insorportable levedad y la voluntad de poder" Archivo de Prehistoria Levantina, XX: 461-474, 1990.
Margalef, R. "Teoría de los sistemas ecológicos". Publ. Univ. Barcelona. Barcelona, 1991.
Martínez, Mª I. y Vincent, J.M. "La periodización: Un análisis histórico-crítico". En AA.VV, Homenaje al Pr.Almagro Basch. T. IV, pp. 343-352. Madrid, 1983.
McGlade, James "Archaeology and the ecodynamics of human-modified landscapes". Antiquity 69: 113-132, 1995 a .
McGlade, James "Arqueología y human ecodynamics: Hacia una ecología dinámica del espacio social". Apuntes Curso doctorado 1994-1995, traducidos por M. Picazo. UAB. Barcelona, 1995 b .
Perelló, Carles "Caos dins del determinisme". Texto Curso Cosmos i Caos (Cicle "Universitat a l'Abast"). U.A.B.. Bellaterra, 1989.
Popper, Karl "La miseria del Historicismo". Trad. P. Schwartz. El Libro de Bolsillo nº 477. Alianza Editorial. Madrid, 1973 [1944-1945].
Putnam, Hilary "Las mil caras del realismo" Trad. de M. Vázquez y A.M. Liz. Introducción de M.A. Quintanilla. Paidós. Barcelona, 1994 [1987].
Ruiz Rodríguez, A.; Chapa, T. y Ruiz Zapatero, G. "La arqueología contextual: una revisión crítica". Trabajos de Prehistoria, 45: 11-17, 1988.
Shanks, M. y Tilley, Ch. "Re-constructing archaeology. Theory and practice". Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, 1987a.
Shanks, M. y Tilley, Ch. "Social theory and archaeology". Polity Press. Cambridge, 1987b.
Tilley, Ch. "Constituint una arqueologia social: un projecte modernista" pp. 17-44, en Anfruns y Llobet, 1990.
Trigger, B. G. "Historia del pensamiento arqueológico" Trad. I. García. Crítica. Barcelona, 1992 [1989].
Vincent, J. Mª "El debat postprocessual: algunes observacions radicals sobre una arqueologia conservadora" pp. 102-107. Cota Zero nº 6. Vic, 1990.
Walker, M. J. "Analogies oportunes i inoportunes en la investigació prehistòrica: la descomposició del passat" pp. 63-101, en Anfruns y Llobet, 1990.