The Union of the “Two Cultures”
*
Andrea Lo Bianco
1. Inception. Responsibility within challenge
Nowadays, the astonishingly vast constellation of variables and their quickness of variance
and inter-action within the modern world system forces us towards new intellectual frontiers,
beyond particularism and scientific technicality of the self-contained disciplinary sciences.
We have, even more because of this unruly global disorder, the urgency to devise a new
widespread scientific program structured on the assumption that “phenomena are complex and
explanations are complex” (Wallerstein, 2000, 29). In this regard, using Eric Wolf’s words,
the “central assertion of this [essay] is that the world of humankind constitutes a manifold, a
totality of interconnected processes, and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and
then fail to reassemble it falsify reality” (Wolf, 2010, 3). As Lee puts it: “a science of
complexity holds out the possibility of representing change – that is, describing our collective
reality as a process” (Lee, 2011, 169). But I am to argue that
our reality is a
historically
constructed layered complexity and it is about the entire structure of its own, and not only
about one dimension or another. A great historian better explains my point: reality is
shaped by a complex mixture of economic and political factors as well as some social and cultural
factors which are not properly either 'economic' or 'political'. Human thought and activity is a single
continuum in which economics, politics, culture, religion, and social life are always involved and
always inextricably interacting.
The question which had primacy, the economic or the political, […] is,
to my mind, entirely meaningless since what matters is precisely the complex interaction between the
spheres. (Israel, 1991, 478).
An enhanced inquiry into our thick historical fabric of worldwide networks could lead
us to unveil how our world really rotates and will
probably evolve. On the other hand, a
newly inspected view of “total society” (Mills, 1959, 211) – a system – is necessary in order
to see the parts properly. Hence, renovated interests in this sort of analyses – a brand new
scientific thrust – could be the updated wherewithal for the comprehension of Man and
History. I am truly upbeat this could really help us handle the present and head the future. In
other words, and more importantly for all of us, it could mean constraining this astoundingly
perilous chaos and governing it. It could be the first tiny step towards the structural change.
From the will to reach this purpose a call for a newly-inspired historical social research
program arises – or at least, to pose its first brick.
Thus, I shall briefly discuss the rift among the human sciences – the problematic of the
so called “Two Cultures” – concisely focusing on its origin, trying to give it an inchoate
explanation, and the problem of relationship between history and sociology, the two sciences
upon which we should construct a new organic social science. But, first of all, I shall sketch
the frame of an inchoate method for analyzing our historical complexity.
We can navigate the pitfalls and cross the great divide.
2. Brief considerations upon a method. An integrated holism: towards a theory of
historical change
A new social science searches “for a resolution of the dilemmas by looking for a truly
efficacious utopia – […] a social science that is truly efficacious in its ability to enable us to
‘adjust’ the world. It is a social science engaged in ‘a search of method’. […]The unit of
8
Andrea Lo Bianco
analysis becomes itself an object of reflection” (Wallerstein, 1991, 182). But differently from
Wallerstein, I want to consider “total society” and its parts simultaneously, and themselves
equally crucial.
What is a system? My organic insight regards a system as an organism wherein its
constituents, at several levels – organs and cells – are in perpetual relation of interdependence
and interaction, action and reaction among themselves and with the entire whole. Within a
system, there is not a unilateral or one-sided construction of individual conditions by the
whole. Parts are not passive actors and neither the “totality”, but an inter-action and inter-
dependence between the whole and its own components, and vice versa, exists. Continual and
overall interaction
breeds evolution, movement, change.
A system is not a totality of discrete unities operating within an inert phenomenal
context, neither a non-elastic whole unilaterally generating path-dependent unities, but a
dynamic structure constructed and defined by a temporally integrated process of development
determined by a set of distinct but combined moments or results generated by means of the
interaction of its own socially relevant unities among themselves
and with the system and vice
versa. Relations and interactions among unities, as unities themselves, change, complying
with the overall tendencies of the system as a whole. System mutates by means of the change
produced by the constant interaction of changed or changing unities, affecting the trajectory
of the tendencies that regulate the operation of the system, and thus, the entire trajectory of
development of the system as a whole. In other words: the parabola of life and change is
determined by the quality and quantity of interactions and transactions among unities and
between the system as a whole and its own unities, temporally connected and mutually
conditioning.
But what is at the stake here is, notably, the analysis of historical social systems. On the
base of that idea of system, how can an historical system be defined? An historical system is a
specific integrated, segmented and stratified organization of human space, not firmly
structured, but historically and dynamically constructed by the action and interaction of the
socially relevant agents in a single long-run historical process of change that they themselves
constitute and modify. What emerges from the inquiry into a system of this sort is an
historical process of
dynamic evolution but oriented by the driving logic of the entire systemic
structure. Furthermore, historical systems are
open systems in twofold ways: they are, at the
same time, “dissipative structures” (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984) and fluidly bordered, even
though both characters could be blurred and cloaked by the temporality of historical systems
dynamics and interaction in world space. Hence, they are evolutive and (mostly) spatially
open-ended, that is, related to the world as a whole by means of the scale and scope of the
action of their agents, always according to
the systems nature
1
.
Why would we need to scientifically analyze an historical system? Specific general
mechanisms govern the functioning of a system and its historical movement, orienting the
action, interaction and evolution of the agents that constitute and modify its own existence
and the systemic interaction with the world as a whole. Once taken them in, we can make
accurate retrodictive explanations, inferring the mutation of the system and the historical
trajectory of the agents that operate within it, in time and space of their systemic action and
interaction. Thus, an historical social science allows us to explore causes and to causally
relate, explaining and interpreting the overall movement of
a world. The reconstruction of an
historical phenomenon in its own complete spatio-temporal development consents to reveal
the causes of its unfolding, the process(es) and the cause(s) of the underlying historical
change – the hidden trends , in Braudel’s thought – and to pose questions about its
probable
future, leading us to formulate an explanatory paradigm. The analytic methodology of this
historical social science focuses on the cause-effect relations in the mechanism of structural
change of a reality.