Current Article  Clio and Climatology published: June 2, 2005 The Anthropogene focuses on the long run of human history. From this course is it worth considering whether the lessons of past history can be of any use in predicting the future? Can the forces that shape human history be explained in scientific terms? Can the variables be defined and measured from past events to predict the future? Is such an attempt futile? Futurologists and science fiction writers have made a game attempt at what such a science would be. It would be Isaac Asimov who was the first to imagine such a mathematical science of history in his classic science-fiction work Foundation. Asimov's attempt was called "psychohistory" and was based on the solely on the behavior of populations of people as defined by history, psychology and statistics. Asimov explained his reasoning in an interview: "... I assumed that the time would come when there would be a science in which things could be predicted in a probabilistic or statistical basis." Are the parameters defined by Asimov too limiting in scope? After all, the act of assuming something can be a dangerous conditon. As Tony Braga writes on his webpage: "It allows for all manner of misconception, manipulation, distortion, deceit, and all multifarious means which human ingenuity can devise to secure advantage or control over another person or group." http://www.disasterprepared.net More recently, Michael Flynn's fictional work In the Country of the Blind took Asimov's thoughts a step further with a science Flynn calls Cliology. For those who are classically incline, Clio is one of the Greek goddess who preside over the arts and sciences. Clio was known as the "Proclaimer," the muse of history. Flynn's Cliology is a speculative attempt to predict trends in human behavior based on probabilities derived from statistical research, and then determine the focal point where action can be taken to direct history in a different and predicatable direction. Emil L. Posey in his critque of Cliology as a science has some valid points: "The use of historical turning points...[wherein] the events themselves were small -- few people involved -- but they had disproportionate consequences (30) is fascinating... His comparison of Lenin's Soviet Union with Henry Ford's corporation (29), if not unique, was new at least to me.  He had a fascinating discussion (189-193) of what a "fact" is and isn't, even applying Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal to history (shades of John Lukacs, but used here as an anti-cliology argument.) Flynn counters those who argue that such an attempt can't account for free will (something Asimov noted with the character of the Mule) is that Cliology is used on a target population as a whole and has a convincing array of statistical table to back up the model proposed. The ability to predict the actions of entire populations may be just too complex to model for a variety of reasons. As the following quote from wikipedia elaborates upon, emergence theory would invalidate Cliology: "Emergence is the process of complex pattern formation from simpler rules. This can be a dynamic process (occurring over time), such as the evolution of the human brain over thousands of successive generations; or emergence can happen over disparate size scales, such as the interactions between a macroscopic number of neurons producing a human brain capable of thought (even though the constituent neurons are not themselves conscious). For a phenomenon to be termed emergent it should generally be unexpected and unpredictable from a lower level description. Usually the phenomenon does not exist at all or only in trace amounts at the very lowest level. Thus, a straightforward phenomenon such as the probability of finding a raisin in a slice of cake growing with the portion-size does not generally require a theory of emergence to explain. It may however be profitable to consider the emergence of the texture of the cake as a relatively complex result of the baking process and the mixture of ingredients. "There is no consensus amongst scientists as to how much emergence should be relied upon as an explanation. It does not appear possible to unambiguously decide whether a phenomenon should be classified as emergent, and even in the cases where classification is agreed upon it rarely helps to explain the phenomena in any deep way. In fact, calling a phenomenon emergent is sometimes used in lieu of any better explanation." Regardless of emergence theory, what Asimov and Flynn don't take into account, proving that Cliology  has a long way to go even as speculation) are the effects of climactic changes upon the course of human civilization. (We can give Asimov a pass here as he was dealing with a galactic civilization where such issues could be discounted as anomalies...) For example, Flynn notes the disastrous effects of Eurasian nomadic invasion with delving into why these eruptions happen based on global patterns of warming and cooling. More often than not, the rise and fall of human civilizations is dependent on outside variables that have nothing to do with human behavior. Therefore, does taking into account known patterns of climatological changes validate the concept of Cliology - does it in effect, raise a curtain on the why's of human behavior? Note: For on online elaboration upon Cliology I recomend this site: http://lisp-p.org/www.lisp-p.org/ovk/ Next: Discoveries in Climatology (finally....)  Back

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