Major Transitions in Big History

• Article: Major transitions in ‘big’ history. Robert Aunger. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 2007

URL = https://www.academia.edu/3007922/Major_transitions_in_big_history

Description

1.

"‘Big’ history treats events between the Big Bang and contemporary technological life on Earth as a single narrative, suggesting that cosmological, biological and social processes can be treated similarly. An obvious trend in big history is the development of increasingly complex systems. This implies that the degree to which historical systems have deviated from thermodynamic equilibrium has increased over time. Recent theory suggests that step-wise changes in the work accomplished by a system can be explained using steady-state non-equilibrium thermodynamics. This paper argues that significant macro-historical events can therefore be characterized as transitions to steady states exhibiting persistently higher levels of thermodynamic disequilibrium which result inobservably novel kinds or levels of organisation. Further, non-equilibrium thermodynamics suggests that such transitions should have particular temporal structures, beginning with sustainable energy innovations which result in novelties in organisation and in control mechanisms for maintaining the new organisation against energy fluctuations. We show how events in big history which qualify as historically significant by these criteria exhibit this internal structure. Big history thus obeys law-like processes, resulting in a common pattern of major transitions between steady-state historical regimes. This common process from cosmological to contemporary times makes big history a viable and relevant field of scientific study."

2.

"The primary contention of this paper is that the evolution of complexity in macro-scale history can be characterized in physical terms as a sequence of transitions between non-equilibrium states of a particular kind. Despite being the result of processes ranging from star formation to the diffusion of technological inventions through societies, it will be shown that every major historical transition has a number of features in common which make it legitimate to call these transitions members of the same class. In this way, macro-history is shown to exhibit significant law-like behaviour."

Methodology

Robert Aunger:

"History has traditionally been seen as a discipline allied to the humanities, with little evidence of the empirical regularities that would qualify as laws equivalent to those seen in the sciences. Nevertheless, a number of law-like patterns have been shown in historical events, such as the ‘rise and fall of civilizations' [104–106], or the existence of historical‘ waves’— either roughly timed [101,107–110] or exactly [45,111–116]. Those who define recurrent periods of specific length do not identify particular events by their characteristics but rather iterate an algorithm to identify set periods of history from some arbitrary starting point (e.g., the origin of life [115], or the beginning of the ‘world system’ in the Middle Ages [117]). Those who see only roughly timed patterns do the opposite: they pick events by particular characteristics (e.g., a major upturn or downturn in economic productivity).The present paper follows a third approach, by beginning with a theoretical foundation for finding patterning in history: non-equilibrium steady-state thermodynamics [24,25]. This theory suggests that significant historical transitions should be treated as examples of transitions between non-equilibrium steady-states, or NESSTs. Expectations derived from this theory concern the temporal order of events within NESSTs: an energy innovation first, followed by a new kind or level of organisation, then the emergence of novel mechanisms of control. This foundation provides specific criteria for determining what events qualify as historically significant: they must constitute increasing deviations from energetic equilibrium which result in observable organisational novelties. The selection of significant events canthus be conducted reliably and with validity, rather than arbitrarily and idiosyncratically."

(https://www.academia.edu/3007922/Major_transitions_in_big_history)

Excerpts

Why Complex Systems Change in Steps

Robert Aunger:

"A general phenomenological theory of steady-state non-equilibrium thermodynamics has recently been developed to explain transitions in the degree to which a system exhibits energetic disequilibrium [24,25]. This theory has been formulated because the simplest kind of non-equilibrium condition is a non-equilibrium steady state. This approach is phenomenological because it develops theory in terms of measurable quantities, and thus facilitates empirical testing. In particular, steady states can be characterized by values of temperature, volume, the amount of matter, and energy flux (the free energy that passes through the system within a unit time)[25]. Steady states are thus local, temporally bounded systems. In a non-equilibrium steady-state, a constant flux of energy moves through the system. During periods of stability, historical systems engage in what can be called thermodynamic ‘work cycles’, or consistently repeating dynamic processes that maintain the system at a given degree of disequilibrium through the management of energy flows[26–28]. For example, a proton – proton cycle fuels fusion reactions in the cores of some stars[, while animal metabolisms are fueled by the Krebs cycle. Work cycles maintain anon-equilibrium steady state which shows no macroscopically observable changes, while constantly exchanging energy with the environment. Since work cycles happen within a given organizational framework and do not significantly change the level of disequilibrium, exogenous shocks or accidental perturbations in the operation of a work cycle must arise to initiate a transition between steady-states. However, systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium can be subject to constant fluctuations in energy flow. The steady state may therefore become unstable and be replaced by another (or, perhaps, by a periodic or chaotic state). Small-scale divergences from a steady-state will often be accommodated; structural changes are caused only when some parameter exceeds a threshold value. For this reason, a steady-state will persist for some period before a structural change at the global level becomes necessary. Because they tend to be robustly controlled, complex systems tend to evolve in step-wise fashion[33,34].To move a system further from thermodynamic equilibrium, a perturbation must be due to an increase in energy flow through the system. This could either be the result of a random fluctuation or the input of anew source of energy. However, a random fluctuation will generally not lead to a sustained increase in energy flow. A significant transition is therefore more likely to start with a new kind or level of energy flow in a system, due to a new way of extracting energy from the system's surroundings[28,35,36].

This means that extracting energy will be called an ‘energy novelty’. As with a phase transition, the result of increased energy flow can be a new organisation of matter because, as energy flows through a system, physical structures can form."

(https://www.academia.edu/3007922/Major_transitions_in_big_history)