Civilizations and time 14 ( Social science and various forces )

History, or social science, has long developed through causal relationships, descriptions, and the diversification of viewpoints. seems to have come And while the natural sciences began to develop based on mechanics, the social sciences tended to be more medical and biological. Academic development has been made in the sense of treating social problems, but just as medicine and biology have greatly benefited from the achievements of physics, social sciences have learned much from mechanics and physics. maybe we should start. The starting point will be the analysis of various forces in civilization and history. In the social sciences, economics may have some similarities to physics. Economics can be said to be a science that believes in certain powers. A kind of force is based on the idea that "price or something equivalent to a price" serves as a signal and influences the behavior of the demand side and the supply side, that is, the price can be a force that motivates human behavior. That's why. Various factors have caused the price function to stop working, which has led to differences of opinion. Has economics oversimplified human society? The position of economics has been the position of the United States and the viewpoint of economic news, but it does not seem that the various civilizations of the world will accept it as it is.

 

Why did the achievements of physics have had an impact on other disciplines, and why have they provided a universal foundation? It may be hinted at by thinking about the difference between economics and physics. The difference between economics and physics seems to lie in the belief in a single force or the existence of forces. While economics believes in the power of price, physics focuses on the individuality of various forces (gravity, light, electric power, magnetic force, nuclear power) and attempts to explain them in a unified manner.

 

Applying this to the theory of civilization, Europe, America, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, India, and China are all different ``fields,'' and each ``field'' has its own unique characteristics. ” and are working. Is it difficult, or even impossible, to explain this in terms of a single force, the "price" in economics ? Therefore, the way of thinking that provides hints for the diversification and integration of the world should not be based on current economics, but rather on physics.

 

What are the unique powers of each “place” or “civilization”, and what are the concepts and theories that make it easier to explain them? As I have said so far, "values" that change over time and based on them, people want "richer lives", or "community development" based on "values", and trying to return to what is inherent in human society. Isn't it taking into consideration .

 

By applying such things to each civilization, it will be possible to understand how different civilizations think and act in that way. Although the power game-like power factor also accompanies history.

 

With that out of the way, let's wrap up. What I have been thinking about in this article is what is the "motive force that changes history." And I confirmed the existence of various forces in this kind of scholarship and social science. Toynbee and Spengler had already intuitively grasped things like "trends" in the history of civilization, but the position of this paper is neither an energetic theory like Spengler, nor a fatalism like Spengler, nor a function theory like Toynbee. I didn't. Nor was he in the position of reading characteristics and functions common to one civilization (e.g., European civilization) and extending them to other civilizations. On the other hand, it was also different from the position of historical science that pursues causal relationships.

 

The concept of "the driving force to change civilization and history" is similar to the position Newton took in "Principia", and in the social sciences, it is necessary to start with definitions of various forces and analyze the characteristics of each force to establish a more solid foundation. I take the position that it is possible to obtain In the social sciences, the value of the subject is inevitably large, but that would be like discussing the characteristics of the earth or the moon individually when explaining gravitational force in physics.

 

The concepts of minimum force are ``technical efficiency force'', ``social structure force'', ``reaction force'', and ``value''.  and  environment give direction to these.

 

In order to prove the existence of various forces such as "technical efficiency force", "social structure force", "reaction force", "value", and "environment", we have no choice but to investigate the history of each civilization, draw up historical facts, and make inferences. . However, if we make a hypothesis to gain some perspective on the work of induction, the following five principles may be mentioned.

 

1 Values change over time.

2 Technical efficiency force is a function of value.

3 Social structural force is a function of value.

4 Reaction force is a function of value.

5 Environmental Principles (Field Principles*)

 

These five principles are the principles of various forces in social science that are important in inferring what kind of problems each civilization is currently facing and how they are trying to solve them. These ideas were born from the synthesis of the considerations of past historians, but they are also considered to be important concepts of force as tools for predicting the future. In addition to this, the issue of the emergence of creative rulers and the ability of the masses to imitate, a theme discovered by Toynbee, may become important.

 

Also, in this paper, time is initially regarded as a resource, and on the left-hand side, the production volume of creation, which is the output produced by time (the sum of the production volume of mental creation and the production volume of material creation) is shown, On the right-hand side, we place technological efficiency, social structure, and counteracting forces as factors that affect the production of creations, and assume that these forces are influenced by the direction of value that changes over time.

 

In this formula with time as one axis, time itself exists as a resource, but it is neutral and does not form anything unless the players in each history invest it.  But historical players weren't aware that the value they held was a function of time and that they existed above it.

 

When thinking about formulas with time as one axis, it is easy to understand that what forms the basis of their development is how we perceive "value." Because in the time axis, by specifying a certain point in time and specifying values, the technological efficiency, social structural force, and reaction force of that society are selected and specified, and the spiritual creation, material one . This is because the amount of production of the creative creation is determined. Therefore, it is necessary to think about the structure of value. Value is the premise of various forces, but even at one point in time, it can be diverse ( various genres), and in a sense, it is like a "group in the image space". It may take shape. On another occasion, I would like to consider the theme of "civilization and value."

 

A formula with time as one axis is a 'relational formula' that expresses the path through which time, a resource that has no meaning by itself, leads to the production of creations. Values (groups in image space) as a function of time influence technological efficiency forces, social structure forces, and reaction forces, and these factors produce mental and physical creations (substantial space). and This is based on the idea of the production function in economics, but I also touched on the problem that there is no common element that connects the right-hand side and the left-hand side. The problem with this formula is that each concept is not quantified, and neither the technical efficiency force, social structure force, and reaction force on the right side nor the mental creation on the left side is quantified, nor is the value. It has not been quantified, and how much force or value will be converted into data and digitized, or whether something like "currency" that converts value or power will be invented. I guess it depends.

 

From a different point of view, this "relational formula" can be said to be a formula that systematically expresses the structure of mental energy. Value changes over time. However, it is also possible to think that it will change through the "cross-cutting" contact of economy, politics, and culture. On the other hand, this paper recognizes that there is something like "mental energy that fluctuates only in relation to time", and that it is stronger than "cross-cutting relationships". This perception is inspired by Toynbee's idea of civilization, that civilization commits suicide, that the collapse of civilization does not come from outside enemies, but from within. In other words, the powers move in a fused manner during the period of development, but move separately during the period of decline.

 

The model we are trying to build is naive. However, there are some obvious differences from traditional historical analyses. It analyzes the various forces of civilization change and stands on the viewpoint of whether they can be utilized in the future. And this is precisely what Spengler and Toynbee were trying to do intuitively and boldly in the early days of civilization studies. And then Braudel and Wallerstein appeared, and something may be forming. Just as feudalism gave rise to sovereign nations, it would correspond to the emergence of "civilized economies" from sovereign nations.

 

From a policy perspective, for example, countries like Japan are good at learning models from other countries and developing, but are not good at creating their own models. For example, to avoid unnecessary conflicts between countries with different nationalities, there are a number of situations in which the idea of this model can be applied.

 

Understanding and manipulating value. Understanding and manipulating forces. This model is oriented to adjusting the driving force through manipulation in this way, and proposes one of the hypotheses.

 

In addition, as the battle against the environment is now entering the stage of the battle against time, it seems that this model has the potential to respond as one of the worldviews seen from the resource of time.  After the era of the world system, it will be the era of various civilizations, and what is necessary for them to coexist and co-prosper will become important.

 

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Civilizations and time 1３ ( Social science and various forces )

I have thought about what the forces mean, and I have thought about the five principles and what they mean. Now let's go back to the expression Cs+Cp=F(E,S,R)=F{g(f(t)),h(f(t)),R}. This formula is inspired by the concept of the production function* in economics. The formula states that the amount of production is determined by the amount of investment, labor force, and technology input. The formulas in this paper express the 'relationships' in which creations are determined by the input of values, technological efficiencies, social structural forces, and counteracting forces. No attempt has been made to express the function numerically.

 

*Production function

Thinking about the production function in economics, it is possible to calculate the amount of production, and it may be possible to calculate the amount of input capital and labor. This is because these concepts can be expressed by the ruler of "money." It expresses what kind of production can be achieved by inputting the ratio of capital and labor. It is unclear at this stage whether it will be possible to do so, and whether it will be possible to express technological efficiency, social structure, and reaction force like  terms of money. It is here that one realizes that economics is a discipline built on concepts based on "quantity" such as money, commodities, and services. On the other hand, it also makes me wonder if civilization studies can be constructed with concepts and worldviews that are different from those of economics. And in the era of big data and AI, the foundation would be established.

 

It may be said that the 19th century was the age of physics and the 20th century was the age of economics. As a result, we have entered an era in which many people act with "economic ideas." The pattern of behavior is based on profit motives, and the value is placed primarily on ``economic reasons''. The number of “rational individuals” may have increased, but bubbles and recessions have continued to occur. Recently, I have come to feel that economic value is not everything for human beings. What, then, are the concepts necessary for civilization studies that are different from economics? Is it really possible for civilization studies to have a concept that serves as a standard unit like "money" in economics?

 

Since money expresses the amount of production, investment, and the amount of labor, it is established as a mathematical formula. On the other hand, the above formula for the driving force is not a mathematical formula but a formula that simply expresses the relationship. Creations are just creations, and can be products, philosophies, or cultures. In contrast, technical efficiency, social structural strength, and counteracting force, rather than quantitatively, are factors that improve people's lives, such as technological innovation and the economy. If it's a factor that causes it, or if it's a counteracting force, it may be the factor that tries to return to the original.

 

In the social sciences as well, there are two grounds for establishing these various concepts of forces. This is probably because the ``problem of quality and quantity'' is a peculiar factor as the ``problem of the structure of various forces''.

In order to make analysis possible in the social sciences, social sciences should no longer focus on the characteristics of various forces like gravity, electric power, and magnetic force, and build a systematic worldview, like in physics textbooks.  Technological efficiency (the force to improve life), social structure force (the force to develop the collective strength of the community), and counteracting force (the force to return to the original) are the discoveries of various forces in social science. It seems that clarifying the characteristics and structures is necessary as a method for analyzing the individuality of each civilization.

 

In a sense, as I briefly touched on in Ranke, world history is still limited to metaphysics by historians.

Another thing is that the concept of various forces in social science is the combined force of the qualitative force of some creative human beings and the quantitative force of many people who imitate it. Isn't it different from the concept of force in Toynbee called this force "Mimesis".

With that in mind, when we think about forces in the social sciences, we have technical efficiency force, qualitative force, and quantitative force. Social structural force, qualitative force, and quantitative force. A combination of reaction force, qualitative force, and quantitative force may arise. There will also be combinations of technical efficiency and social structure, social structure and reaction, and reaction and technical efficiency. Other combinations like this, that is, syntheses of forces, will appear, but the premise for this is the analysis of the various forces. In the first stage, we extract the “force to improve life” in history, and consider under what circumstances the creative rulers who caused it appear, and under what conditions the people who imitate them. It is necessary to work to verify whether it appeared below and how fast it proliferated. In the same way, under what circumstances did the creative ruler who extracted the ``force to develop the community'' emerge, and under what conditions did the people who imitate it emerge? It is verified whether it appeared and at what speed it proliferated, and the reaction force is also verified in the same way.

 

However, this is not the end of the story, and the issue of "synthesis" of these various factors is a problem, but it will take a long time to reach that point. Series", Hari Seldon's psychohistory* is expected to be a long way off.

 

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Civilizations and time 12 ( the environmental principle, and the external principle )

Next, regarding the 5th principle, the environmental principle, and the external principle, these 1st to 4th principles are constrained by the 5th principle. Think about it. Or you might want to think about Japan's isolation from the rest of the world. Considering the former, Europe was shut out from the Mediterranean Sea because of Islam, and its character as an agricultural civilization was strengthened. Markets and cities were established. It can be said that other environmental principles were also at work. Germanic, Magyar and Norman invasions would have had a great influence on the shaping of medieval Europe. Hicks touched on the market and trade based on the royal economy, but in the case of Europe, the establishment of the market along with the development of agriculture was dominant, and the development of the market and trade due to the royal economy was seen along with the development of the Roman church. (Venice, Genoa), ``The impetus for capitalism was in northern Europe,''* it seems that the impetus for its development was the development of a market based on agriculture.

* When did capitalism emerge?

The buds of capitalism are said to have originated in the Italian city-states and spread to northern Europe. However, the Italian cities were commercial capitalist, which seems to have been close to Islamic civilization (think of the relationship between Venice and the Byzantines and Levant). There was a relationship between Atlantic trade and Genoa (Spain's source of funds), but the establishment of capitalism was largely influenced by the rise of the "Netherland" as the center of a group of cities that developed based on agriculture. Beginning with Gentry (emerging agricultural entrepreneurs), the rise of the Netherlands against the background of the Baltic Sea trade (Hanseatic League) that handles daily commodities, the soil for the rise of Protestantism was in northern Europe, and the capital (for the masses) It can be said that a civilization in which accumulation itself was the goal, a civilization of capitalism, was decisively established here (consumption was also popular during the Italian Renaissance).

 

Japan's national isolation is an example of the constraints imposed by the environment on principles 1 through 4. This can be cited as a rare example where there was no outside influence. If medieval Europe is a closed model with a certain degree of openness, Japan during the period of national isolation can be said to be a closed model of  closed models.

The open-type closed model was a civilization that was constantly influenced by the outside but built up forces by defending it. Although it has been influenced, closed models are fortunately less affected by external influences, so we study unique values, technological efficiency, social structural forces, generation of counteracting forces, and the flow of change. It can be said that it is a material that can In the case of Japan's national isolation, it can be said that the geographical conditions are the constraints imposed by the environment. Medieval Europe is a very interesting period from the point of view of accumulating power, but from the point of view of how the mentality changes in a so-called "vacuum", the state of isolation in Japan is a more interesting period. Maybe.

 

It is necessary to look at examples of environmental principles and external principles, but it is also necessary to select cases in which the external influence is strong and weak, and to consider the nature of that strength. right. Japan's policy of national isolation can serve as a reference as an example of how history progressed only through internal principles, excluding influence from the outside, as an environmental principle. On the other hand, when thinking about the external principle, Macneil's conception of "world history" may serve as a reference as a broad framework.

In Macneil's "World History", the movement of world history up to now is largely captured in four periods.

 

The first is the age of Orient dominance.

The second is the era of multicultural coexistence and prosperity.

The third is the era of European dominance.

Then comes the era of unification and parallelization of multiple civilizations.

 

These four forms were established by some kind of forces, and during the period when the Orient was dominant, the Orient civilization influenced other civilizations. The principle was working.

On the other hand, in the era of multi-civilization coexistence and prosperity, Chinese civilization, Indian civilization, and European civilization coexisted with Islamic civilization at the center, and external principles worked on each other, but their influence was still small. However, a small shift in balance can change the situation, such as the Mongol Empire. The example of the Mongol Empire, on the other hand, suggested that the world was getting smaller.

 

The movement in Eurasia came about as a reaction to the increased seafaring activity in European civilization (the Age of Discovery). European civilization emerged from this. European civilization expanded its world through seafaring, fighting or avoiding Islamic civilization, and as a result, the industrial revolution blossomed in Britain, and competition with the forces within European civilization chasing it began. Among them, the era of European civilization's predominance came, but it had an influence on civilizations other than Europe, and it can be said that external principles worked from European civilization to Islamic civilization, Indian civilization, and Chinese civilization. 

 

And it seems that the present age is clearly heading toward an era of multicultural coexistence and prosperity. Looking at it in this way, it seems that there is a cycle from multiple civilizations to unipolar civilizations and from unipolar civilizations to multiple civilizations as an external principle. And perhaps the background behind this phenomenon is the transition of power relations between civilizations. The power of civilization itself is internal, and is the combined force of value, technological efficiency, social structural force, and reaction force. While each civilization has a relatively equal overall strength, the unipolar era can be seen as an era in which civilizations stood out in terms of their combined strength of value, technological efficiency, social structure, and reaction force.  Environmental and external forces are the forces that arise from the relative relations of forces between civilizations, and they influence the interior of civilizations and exert pressure on values, technological efficiency, social structure forces, and counteracting forces. It can be said that it has come.

 

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Civilizations and time 11 ( 5 principles )

Having considered the forces, let us consider what kind of world these forces constitute. First, we defined the forces. There are three fundamental forces. This definition and identification of types of forces is in keeping with Newton's attitude in Principia. It is an attitude of trying to explain with as few tools as possible. For example, whether it's rain in New York or London, you could say that the essence of making it rain doesn't change. This attitude is also found in Toynbee's historical studies.

 

There is value as the essential force that moves history, there is technological efficiency that is the force (technology, economy) that constantly tries to improve people's lives, and there is the force that tries to improve the organizational strength of society and it is the social structural force. I thought there were. All forces have a reaction, and this force is called the reaction force. And let us hypothesize that the forces defined in this way follow the following principles when organized.

 

1  Value changes with time and is the premise of all forces. (principle of value)

 

2  There are always forces at work in all human societies to improve life, and these are influenced by values. (Principle of life improvement →         technological efficiency)

 

3  There are always forces at work in all human societies that seek to increase the organizational strength of the community, and these are     influenced by values. (Principle of community development → social organizational strength)

 

4  New values and their forces are repelled by old values and their powers. (Principle of reaction force)

 

5  Human society is influenced by its environment, and principles 1 to 4 are influenced. (environmental principle and external principle)

 

These principles of forces can be regarded as the "elements" of forces that make up Toynbee's framework of civilizational dynamics. Each of these principles may need to be tested. I plan to examine the first principle, the principle of value, in more depth on another occasion. Regarding the second principle, the principle of life improvement, it is necessary to collect and enumerate the factors that have improved life in each civilization. I'm planning to try it civilization by civilization. It will be a material to verify E=g(f(t)), which expresses technical efficiency. We will analyze what caused the technological efficiency, that is, the factors that improved our lives. We analyze that this formula of technological efficiency force is composed of the value related to time (V = f(t)) and the growth force included in the force itself (which is included in the function g). . Implicitly, "life-enhancing things" refer to things that are relevant to the times and utility .

 

Regarding the third principle, the principle of community development, as a methodology, it seems necessary to collect and enumerate the factors that contributed to the development of the community for each civilization, as with the second principle. This will serve as a material for verifying the formula S=h(f(t)) that expresses the social structure force. It investigates what caused the social structural strength, that is, the factors that improved the organizational strength of the community. It is composed of values related to time (V=f(t)) as well as technological efficiency, and of developmental forces contained in the forces themselves. Things that develop society are things that are in line with the times, and they seem to point to things that have their own development. This is the same for technical efficiency, but it implies that social structural power can be changed by changes in time-related values, by changes in the power itself that develops organizational power.

 

Let's think about how to examine the fourth principle, the principle of counteracting force. It is also necessary to collect and enumerate examples for each civilization, but what to see is important. The principle of reaction is the principle that there is a force that opposes the second principle (the principle of living improvement) and the third principle (the principle of community development), and it is necessary to search for such a phenomenon. I mentioned the Reformation and imperialism as examples of such phenomena before, but I believe that these phenomena are not composed of simple forces, but of complex systemic forces. Why is the Reformation a reaction? Why is imperialism a reaction? The "Reformation" is a reaction from the perspective of the European medieval world as a perfection type, and the "imperialism" is an industrial revolution or Pax Britannica as a perfection type. In this case, it is a counteraction, but it may also be understood as a manifestation of conservative power in which technological efficiency and social organizational forcse collide with and fuse with reaction. As the times change, technological efficiency and social structural strength will develop, but the meaning of technological efficiency (improvement of life) and social structural strength (community development) will also change due to changes in their respective values or reaction. It would be better to think of it as solidified and conservative. This is called "maintenance ability".

 

Conservatism, in Toynbee's sense, can be said to be the force to resist "the forces acting from within and outside the system" during the period of civilization's decline. How the system adapts to these internal and external forces, and adapting with mature technological efficiency and social structural strength is the position of "conservative power", that is, conservatism. It may be said. The counteracting force and the conservative force were different forces, but at some point they will join forces. Against the creative ruler or the minority ruler who arises from the deterioration of this creative ruler in Toynbee, what used to be a counteracting force turns into a conservative force.

 

It is important to analyze each force, but it may have been difficult to clarify the concept of conservative force. But there are some good writings. For example, Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution" and Bagehot's "British Constitutional History" probably analyzed the structure of conservative force.

 

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Civilizations and time 10 ( Value - formula )

The fact that time has no meaning without human intervention, that is, all created things must be some kind of human labor W (abbreviation for work; (included in labor W) and time t (abbreviation of time). Therefore, it is assumed that the output of a creation of a certain civilization, nation, etc. is simply expressed by Wt.

However, as we thought about time, t itself has no meaning. W's incentivizing values are more meaningful, and value is the direction and efficiency of the production of what is produced, be it a mental or physical creation.  The contents of creations differ greatly depending on what kind of values each civilization or nation has. For example, China and Taiwan, South Korea and North Korea, would have naturally produced different creations.

In addition, with the development of the means of production (the object of production activity here is not limited to commodities, the spiritual and material products produced by religion and culture are also included in the object of production activity, and commodities, culture, etc. are all included in this article. The rate of production of creations (which we call “creations”) will also vary. Changes in the social structure will also affect the speed of production. There will also be counteracts to such efficiency gains and changes in the social structure. And those powers are combined and transformed into conservative power.

Values influence and are exerted on (1) the efficiency of the production of creations, (2) the social structure, and (3) the content of reactions. Technical efficiency and social structural force has a certain value and try to develop it mentally and materially , but compared to that, the counteraction and the conservatism that is the combined force of them ,grasping the structure may be more difficult. In the first place, the value of a certain era itself is complex and diverse, and the strongest value and impulse among them ultimately pulls us in the direction. Based on that, technical efficiency and social structural power are determined, but even if reaction forces are assumed in an easy-to-understand manner (because they are likely to be opposed by vested interests), what kind of compromise will settle them as "conservative force"? By the selection of values, it seems to be a difficult process.

 

Now, using the ancillary concepts we have considered earlier, let us come up with a formula for the relationship between the structure of mental energy and the output of its creations.

V=f(t)...1 The value V is related to the time t.

E=g(f(t))..2 Efficiency E is related to value V, and value affects efficient technical ability E.

S=h(f(t))·····3 Social structural force S is related to value V, and value affects social structural force S.

R...4 Reaction force R is a force that arises as a repulsion against the actions of E and S.

 

In addition, it is thought that there is a synthetic force that combines E, S and R, that is, there is a conservative force, but we ignore it here and do not consider V, E, S, and R to be concepts with quantities. Taken only as a relational expression, and with the above in mind, if we consider the production of creation,

A simple formula is W×t=F(E, S, R) . . . 5.

 

This formula means that "the production of creation is the output resulting from the input of E technical efficiency force, S social structure force, and R reaction force."

Furthermore, W t = Cs + Cp ... 6

shows that creation output can be divided into Cs (mental creation output) and Cp (material creation output),

Cs+Cp=F(E, S, R) 7

Substituting 2, 3, and 4 into 7 gives Cs+Cp=F(g(f(t)), h(f(t)), R)...8.

Equation 8 means: That the output of creation is a function of value.

t: The breakdown of the amount of production of creation changes depending on how V=f(t) changes with the passage of time.

What is meant by formula 8 is that the state of production of mental and material creations is determined by the combination of value, technical efficiency, social structure and reaction forces.

The expression on the right side expresses that the value fluctuates with time, and the amount of production of creation fluctuates according to that value, but the left side simply expresses the amount of production of spiritual creation and that of material creation. This formula does not express how the breakdown is determined.

 

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