In an effort to achieve precise understanding, many contemporary historians
and scientists have either abandoned or put to the side for later consideration
older concepts related to the causal efficacy of the behavior of individual
human beings that used to be regarded as important, including "contingency",
"purpose", and "agency". This trend, associated
with the successes of classical physics and resulting efforts to transplant
associated positivist and deterministic approaches in other disciplines,
seems to many to be further supported by the newly emerging interdisciplinary
perspective of "emergent systems", with its focus on computer
models and the resulting ability to account for a wide range of previously
unaccounted for phenomena in terms of relatively simple interactions of
relatively simple things.
Similar and related problems along these lines arise in both historical
studies and biology/neurobiology. If human behavior is to be understood
as the resultant of interactions among neurons, and history and social
behavior are to be understood as the resultant of interactions among groups
of neurons (further constrained by economic, political, and cultural considerations),
are the concepts of "contingency", "purpose" and "agency"
still relevant? If so, how can they be usefully reconceived within the
context of the "emergent systems" perspective? What new questions
would this raise within the "emergent systems" perspective itself,
and within the fields of history and of biology/neurobiology?
The proposed project, a collaboration between an historian and a neurobiologist,
is aimed at developing an approach to the latter two questions. Working
within their own disciplines, the collaborators have independently come
to feel that the emergent systems perspective is useful, but at the moment
lacks the capacity to provide a meaningful account of at least some of
the kinds of observations that led to the concepts of "contingency",
"purpose", and "agency". If these intuitions are
valid, there is a clear need for conceptual extension of the emergent
systems perspective and for the application of such extension in both
history and biology/neurobiology.
During the proposed project, the collaborators will help each other become
familiar with the approaches and perspectives of their own disciplines,
including the reasons for their own intuitions about the usefulness and
limitations of the emergent systems perspective. They will also undertake
several collaborative pilot projects comparing the behavior of emergent
systems models and the behavior of interacting humans. The latter will
involve iterative comparisons of human behavior with evolving models aimed
at accounting for observed behaviors.
The objective of the proposed project is, at a minimum, to provide each
collaborator with background needed to pursue new directions in their
own scholarly activity (for Burke a greater familiarity with biology and
the brain relevant to thinking about human interactions and their resultants;
for Grobstein a greater familiarity with human interactions and their
resultants relevant to thinking about biology and the brain). The collaborators
confidently expect as well that both will acquire new and productive understandings
of the tools and significance of the emergent systems perspective. Beyond
this, the project seeks to contribute new directions to the evolving emergent
systems perspective itself and to return from this activity useful perspectives
and perhaps new tools to both historical studies and studies of biology/neurobiology.
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Submitted as a Mellon New Directions Fellowship Program Application, 9/2003
Tim
Burke, Department of History, Swarthmore College,
and
Paul Grobstein, Department of Biology,
Bryn Mawr College
Summary
Project and Significance
Outcomes and Timetable
Personal Statements
Materials Cited
Book List
Pilot Observational Projects
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