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SCIENCE, CIVILIZATION AND DEMOCRACY

Values, systems, structures and affinities

Ilya Prigogine

It is argued here that mankind is in an age of transition. Professor Prigogine presents a penetrating perspective on the nature of science and technology, observing that science is complex and probabilistic where the notions of irreversibility randomness and bifurcation are profoundly altering hitherto unchallenged concepts. This new reconceptualization of science has implications for the human sciences and for planning-it is leading to new dialogues of man with man, and of man with nature. The Zeitmotiv of this article is that the future is not given: time is a cofistruction, and this implies ethical responsibilities.

MANKIND IS IN AN AGE OF TRANSITION. Interestingly enough, science is also in an age of transition. We are not only witnessing a ‘scientification’ of technology, to use the term mentioned by Umberto Colombo. Something deeper is happening: the dimensions of the scientific endeavour are changing, and this alters the meaning of scientific rationality, and therefore the relations between science, civilization and democracy.

Professor Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Laureate (1977), is Professor at the Free University of Brussels, Service de Chimie Physique II, Code Postal 231, Campus Plaine ULB, Boulevard du Triomphe, 1050 Brussels, Belgium; Director, Centre of Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics, University of Texas; and Special Adviser to the Commission of the European Communities. Professor Prigogine expresses his appreciation to Sir Hermann Bondi and Mr John Hartland for suggestions and discussions. Thanks are also due to Peter Allen, Gregoire Nicolis, Serge Perhaut and Mich& Sanglier for their active help in elaboration of the text. This article is an edited version of a paper given at the VIth Parliamentary and Scientific Conference of the Council of Europe, Tokyo, June 1985, and the editor of Futures wishes to thank the Council of Europe for permission to publish the article here. For discussion of this text and others, including a synthesis of a number of the themes discussed in this article, see, EuropeJapan: Futures in Science, Technoloo and Democracy

(Butterworths, Guildford, UK, 1986).

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494 Science, civilization and democracy

As a European, I am especially proud of two breakthroughs for which Europe is responsible, and which seem to be of decisive importance for the future-the formulation of the project of modern science in the 17th century, and the promulgation of the ideal of democracy. Europeans live at the intersection of at least two different systems of values-scientific rationality on one side, and collective behaviour rationality on the other. This polarity imposed by historical evolution could not but lead to some stress which was to be felt in much European thought. It is of great importance, particularly at present, that we reach a better harmony between the different rationalities involved in science, democracy and civilization.

I believe that the clash between these two forms of rationality was real in the classical perspective; however, the main message of this communication is that we were victims of a distorted representation of science. It is true that, for classical science, the intelligible was identified with the immutable. A famous saying by Albert Einstein is that time is an ‘illusion’: the ultimate aims of classical science were to describe a fundamental level from which time would be eliminated.

On the one hand, this attempt to reach eternity through reason appears as grandiose; on the other, it leads to a description of nature viewed as a passive tool, dominated by the rationality of the human mind, and therefore radically alien to it. In this perspective, living systems become, as lucidly observed by Jacques Monod, ‘strange objects’. If life as a whole is alien to the basic laws of nature, this will be even more so for man. Monod’s conclusion is well known:

Now does (Man) at last realise that, like a gypsy, he lives on the boundary of an alien world. A world that is deaf to his music, just as indifferent to his hopes as to his sufferings or his crimes. l

This image of ‘science’ continues to be propagated with considerable authority. It permeates many aspects of human sciences, in which rationality is often identified with timelessness and equilibrium. To quote a conclusion of the distinguished economist Walter A. Weisskopf:

The Newtonian paradigm underlying classical and neo-classical economics interpreted the economy according to the pattern developed in classical physics and mechanics, in analogy to the planetary system, to a machine and to clockwork: a closed autonomous system ruled by endogenous factors of a highly selective nature, self-regulating and moving to a determined, predictable point of equilibrium.2

The importance of this distortion imposed by the classical vision on our cultural perception of nature cannot be overestimated.

Let us mention the introduction to a UNESCO colloquium:

For more than a century the sector of scientific activity has been growing to such an extent within the surrounding cultural space that it seems to be replacing the totality of culture itself. Some believe that this is merely an illusion, due to its high growth rate . Others consider that the recent triumph of science entitles it at least to rule over the whole of culture . Others again, appalled by the danger of man and society being manipulated if they come under the sway of science, perceive the spectre of cultural disaster looming in the distance.3

In this text, science appears as a threat to civilization. Much of the most

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significant recent intellectual history of Europe is tainted by this cultural pessimism, clearly present in the works of Heidegger, Sartre, Freud or L&i- Strauss, to quote only some well-known names.

In the USA, we can also find a somewhat diffident attitude to science, but it is more often expressed in terms of ecological activism, of fear of technological involvements; but generally, both in Japan and the USA we often meet a straightforward positivist attitude, in which science is considered as a simple recipe for success.

Whatever this may be, we are witnessing today the birth of a new scientific rationality, which brings closer the ‘two cultures’. Therefore this seems the right moment to relaunch the ‘science-culture’ debate, in the light of the realities and new perspectives of contemporary science.

Laws of nature

Science and civilization have interacted through technology. They have also interacted on intellectual and moral planes, via the ‘conception of the universe’. As beautifully expressed by Sir Karl Popper:

There is at least one philosophic problem in which all thinking men are interested. It is the problem of cosmology: the problem of understanding the world-including ourselves, and our knowledge, as part of the world.4

The role of internal and external factors in the history of science remains at the centre of a heated debate. There is, however, a fact which cannot be dismissed: the ideology of science is strongly influenced by its historical and cultural context.

The formulation of modern science by Isaac Newton occurred in a period of absolute monarchy, under the sign of an Almighty God, ‘supreme garant’ of rationality. The Western concept of ‘law of nature’ simply cannot be separated from its judicial and religious resonances: the ideal of knowledge is patterned according to the omniscience we may ascribe to a ruler. For Him, there would be no distinction between past and future. Therefore, in this perspective, in which the scientist represents the human embodiment of a transcendental vision, time could indeed only be an illusion .5

The atemporal world of classical physics was shaken by the industrial revolution. One of the greatest intellectual novelties of that new period was probably the formulation of the laws of thermodynamics by Rudolf Clausius in 1865:

Die Energie der Welt ist konstant.

Die Entropic der Welt strebt einern Maximum tu.

In this view the world has a history. But beware: as entropy leads to disorder, to the forgetting of initial conditions, this history is a history of decay, of degradation; a history expressed by the increase of entropy. It expresses the anxiety of losing the resources which have made the industrial revolution possible; it expresses a deep pessimism, which is also present in the relativism of Darwin’s theory of biological evolution. As is well known, in Darwin’s theory random fluctuations are selected through interaction with the environment . This gives the appearance of complexification. But globally everything is

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496 Science, &iltzatm and democrq

running down. This fundamental pessimism is still present in most of the scientific literature.

Classical science is associated with the negation of time in the name of eternity. Nineteenth century science is associated with a concept of time as decay. But the history of our world cannot be a succession of historical catas- trophes only, such as Gibbon’s description of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. After all, if there was decay, there must also have been some moments of creation. The history of the world presented as a progressive decay clashes with the vision of progress, so essential for our adherence to the ideals of democracy. Curiously enough, this simple truth seems to have been first perceived by artists: some of the most important creators of our century (such as Mondrian or Kandinsky) were deeply aware of the duality between destruction and creation. It is this duality which inspired their creative effort. At present, physics is in search of a third time, reducible neither to repetition nor to decay.

Reconceptualization of science

We now move to the 20th century, to our century. It is a turning point in human history, whatever perspective we consider. This century started in science with two major breakthroughs-relativity and quantum mechanics, which opened the way to new frontiers, the first one to large-scale cosmic processes, the other to a new microscopic world.

The novelty inherent in these two revolutions is the role of universal constants, such as the velocity of light in a vacuum, c, and Planck’s constant, h. This heralded the end of universality in physics; for there was no empirical constant in Newton’s theory: it could be applied in the same way whatever the scale of the objects-but this was no more the case in the universe described by modern physics.

The importance of quantum mechanics cannot be overestimated if we consider the two scientific revolutions which we experience today-the information revolution and the biotechnological revolution. It is amazing to notice that these revolutions started through the work of a few scientists (no more than a few hundred) 1 iving in small university towns such as Gottingen, Leydon or Cambridge. At present, it is one of our basic aims to discover some comparable small disturbances (the hopeful fluctuations) which could have a comparable effect on human life.

Still, quantum mechanics and relativity shared some of the basic aspects of classical science. In classical science, the basic laws were deterministic (at the level of the wave function for quantum mechanics) and time-reversible. Future and past play the same role.

In contrast, wherever we look today, we find evolution, diversification and instabilities. A fundamental reconceptualization of science is going on in the second half of the 20th century. We have long known that we are living in a pluralistic world in which we find deterministic as well as stochastic phenomena, reversible as well as irreversible. We observe deterministic phenomena such as the frictionless pendulum or the trajectory of the moon around the Earth; we know that the frictionless pendulum is also reversible. But other pro-

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cesses are irreversible, as diffusion, or chemical reactions; and we are obliged to acknowledge the existence of stochastic processes if we want to avoid the paradox of referring the variety of natural phenomena to a program printed at the moment of the Big Bang. What has changed since the beginning of this century is our evaluation of the relative importance of these four types of phenomena.

The artificial may be deterministic and reversible. The natural contains essential elements of randomness and irreversibility. This leads to a new vision of matter-no longer passive, as in the mechanical worldview, but endowed with spontaneous activity. This change is so deep that I believe we can really speak about a new dialogue of man with nature.

At the start of this century, continuing the tradition of the classical research programme, physicists were almost unanimous in admitting that the fundamental laws of the universe were deterministic and reversible. Processes which did not fit this scheme were supposed to be exceptions, even artefacts due to some complexity, which had itself to be accounted for by invoking our ignorance, or lack of control on the variables involved. Now, at the end of this century, we are more and more numerous in believing that the fundamental laws of nature are irreversible and stochastic; that deterministic and reversible laws are applicable only in very limited circumstances.

It is interesting to inquire how such a change could occur over a relatively short time. It is the outcome of unexpected results, obtained in quite different fields of physics and chemistry such as elementary particles, cosmology or the study of self-organization in far from equilibrium systems. Who would have believed, 50 years ago, that most and perhaps all elementary particles are unstable?; that we could speak about the evolution of the universe as a whole?; that far from equilibrium, molecules may communicate, to use anthropo- morphic terms, as witnessed in the ‘chemical clocks’?

These unexpected discoveries have had a drastic effect on our outlook on the relation between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences. According to the classical view, there was a sharp distinction between simple systems, such as studied by physics or chemistry, and complex systems, such as studied in biology and human science. Indeed, one could not imagine a greater contrast than that which exists between the simple models of classical dynamics, or the simple behaviour of a gas or a liquid, and the complex processes we discover in the evolution of life or in the history of the human societies. This gap is now being filled. Over the past decade, we have learned that, in non-equilibrium conditions, simple materials such as a gas or a liquid, or simple chemical reactions, can acquire complex behaviour.

We have already mentioned the second law of thermodynamics, which expresses the increase of entropy for isolated systems. For a long time, the interest of thermodynamics concentrated on isolated systems at equilibrium. Today, interest shifts to non-equilibrium systems interacting with their surroundings through an entropy flow. Let us emphasize an essential difference with the description of classical mechanics. In thermodynamics, we are dealing with ‘embedded’ systems: interaction with the outside world through entropy flow plays an essential role. This immediately brings us closer to objects like towns or living systems, which can only survive because of their embedding in their environment.

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There is another basic difference with mechanics. Suppose we have some foreign celestial body approaching the earth: this would lead to a deformation of the earth’s trajectory, which would remain forever-dynamic systems have no way to forget perturbations.

This is no longer the case when we include dissipation. A damped pendulum will reach a position of equilibrium, whatever the initial perturbation. We can now also understand in quite general terms what happens when we drive a system far from equilibrium. The ‘attractor’ which dominated the behaviour of the system near equilibrium may become unstable, as a result of the flow of matter and energy which we direct at the system. Non-equilibrium becomes a source of order; new types of attractors, more complicated ones, may appear, and give to the system remarkable new space-time properties. Consider two examples which are widely studied today.

The so-called BCnard instability is a striking example of instability in a stationary state giving rise to a phenomenon of spontaneous self-organization; the instability is due to a vertical temperature gradient set up in a horizontal liquid layer. The lower face is maintained to a given temperature, higher than that of the upper. As a result of these boundary conditions, a permanent heat flux is set up, moving from bottom to top. For a small difference in temperature, heat can be conveyed by conduction, without any convection; but when the imposed temperature gradient reaches a threshold value, the stationary state (the fluid’s state of ‘rest’) becomes unstable: convection arises, corres- ponding to the coherent motion of a huge number of molecules, increasing the rate of heat transfer. In appropriate conditions, the convection produces a complex spatial organization in the system. There is another way of looking at this phenomenon. Two elements are involved-heat flow and gravitation. Under equilibrium conditions, the force of gravitation has hardly any effect on a thin layer of the order of 10 mm. In contrast, far from equilibrium, gravitation gives rise to macroscopic structures. Non-equilibrium matter becomes much more sensitive to the outer world conditions than matter at equilibrium. I like to say that at equilibrium, matter is blind; far from equilibrium it may begin to ‘see’.

Consider secondly the example of chemical oscillations. Ideally speaking, we have a chemical reaction whose state we control through the appropriate injection of chemical products and the elimination of waste products. Suppose that two of the components are formed respectively by red and blue molecules in comparable quantities. We would expect to observe some kind of blurred colour with perhaps occasionally some flash of red or blue spots. This is, however, not what actually happens. For a whole class of such chemical reactions, we see in sequence the whole vessel become red, then blue, then red again: we have a ‘chemical clock’. In a sense, this violates all our intuitions about chemical reactions.

We used to speak of chemical reactions as being produced by molecules moving in a disordered fashion and colliding at random. But, in order to synchronize their periodic change, the molecules must be able to ‘communicate’ in a sense. In other words, we are dealing here with new supermolecular scales-both in time and space-produced by chemical activity.

The basic conditions to be satisfied for such chemical oscillations to occur is

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auto- or cross-catalytic relations, leading to ‘non-linear’ behaviour, such as described in numerous studies of modern biochemistry. Remember that nucleic acids produce proteins, which in turn lead to the formation of nucleic acids. There is an autocatalytic loop involving proteins and nucleic acids.

Non-linearity and far-from equilibrium situations are closely related; their effect is that they lead to a multiplicity of stable states (in contrast to near-from- equilibrium situations, where we find only one stable state). This multiplicity is to be seen on a ‘bifurcation diagram’ (Figure 1). In Figure 1 we have plotted the solution of the problem, X, against some bifurcation parameter A (X would be for example the concentration in some chemical component, and A could be related to the duration that the molecules are left in the chemical reactor). For some critical value of control parameter, say AC, new solutions emerge. Moreover, near the bifurcation point, the system has a ‘choice’ between two branches-we could therefore expect a stochastic behaviour: near a bifurcation point, fluctuations play an important role.

We have said that dissipative systems may forget perturbations: these systems are characterized by attractors. The most elementary attractors are points or lines such as one may see on Figures 2(a) and 2(b). On Figure 2(a), we have a point attractor P in a two-dimensional space (Xl and X2 may be concentrations of some species): whatever the initial conditions, the system will evolve necessarily towards P. On Figure 2(b), we have a line-attractor: whatever the initial conditions, the system will eventually evolve on this line, called a limit-cycle. But attractors may present a more complex structure; they may be composed of a set of points such as on Figure 2(c). Their distribution may be dense enough to permit us to ascribe them an effective (non-zero) dimensionality. For example, the dimension of the attractor on Figure 2(c) may be any real number between 2 and 3. Following the terminology of Benoit Mandelbrot, one may say that this is a ‘fractal’ attractor.

Such systems have unique properties, reminiscent of, for example, turbulence which we encounter in everyday experience. They combine both fluctuations and stability. The system is driven to the attractor; still, as this one is formed by so ‘many’ points, we may expect large fluctuations. One speaks

b- Multiple Jolutions

Figure 1. Bifurcation of stationary states for variable X, plotted against control

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x 2

P EL c

5 Dimemion:2cdc3

a b C

Figure 2. Three types of attractors for dynamic systems. Point attractor (2a); line (limit-cycle) fractal (non-integer dimension) attractor (2~).

often of ‘attracting chaos’. These large fluctuations are connected to a great sensitivity in respect of initial conditions. The distance between neighbouring trajectories grows exponentially in time (this growth is characterized by the so- called Lyapounoff exponents). Attracting chaos has now been observed in a series of situations including chemical systems or hydrodynamics; but the importance of these new concepts goes far beyond physics and chemistry properly. Let us indicate some recently studied examples.

We know that climate has fluctuated violently in the past. Climatic conditions that prevailed during the past 200-300 million years were extremely different to what they are at present. During these periods, with the exception of the quaternary era (which began about 2 million years ago) there was practically no ice on the continents, and the sea level was higher than its present value by about 80 metres. A striking feature of the quaternary era is the appearance of a series of glaciations, with an average periodicity of 100 thousand years, on which is superposed an important amount of ‘noise’. What is the source of these violent fluctuations (Figure 3), which have obviously played an important role in our history. -3 There is no indication that the intensity of solar energy may be responsible.

A recent analysis by C. and G. Nicolis6 has shown that these fluctuations can be modelled in terms of four independent variables, which form a non-linear dynamic system leading to a chaotic attractor of dimension 3.1 embedded in a phase space of dimension 4. The variability of climate could have been thought of as resulting from the interplay of a large number of variables, acting in a deterministic fashion; it would then be a situation very similar to the outcome of the law of large numbers. The new insight is that it is not so. The temporal complexity is only due to four independent variables. We may therefore speak of an intrinsic complexity or unpredictability of climate.

In a quite different field, recent work’ has shown that the electrical activity of the brain in deep sleep as monitored by electro-encephalogram (EEG) may be modelled by a fractal attractor. Deep sleep EEG may be described by a dynamic involving five variables; again, this is remarkable as it shows that the brain acts as a system possessing intrinsic complexity and unpredictability.

It is this instability which permits the amplification of inputs related to

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Science, ciuilization and democracy 501

-2

I

200

I I I

400 600 600

Time (IO’ yews BP)

Figure 3. Series of temperatures characteristic of the earth’s global climate for the past million years.

sensory impression in the awake state. Obviously, the dynamic complexity of the human brain cannot be an accident. It must have been selected for its very instability. Is biological evolution the history of dynamic instability, which would be the basic ingredient of creativity characteristic of human existence?

A new rationality

Let us summarize our main findings. The universe has a history. This history includes the creation of complexity through mechanisms of bifurcation. These mechanisms act in far from equilibrium conditions as realized in the earth’s biosphere. Obviously, to understand the origin of irreversibility on a cosmic scale, we would have to turn to the origin of the universe, but we do not attempt this here.

Peter Allen likes to compare the evolutionary pattern represented by a tree of bifurcations through the example of origami (Figure 4). A piece of paper can be folded into many striking forms according to a ‘tree’ of evolution. Characteristic traits emerge over time, and critical moments exist after which the evolution is definitely towards one particular form and not another. The emergent properties of a ‘horse’, a ‘vase’, a ‘flapping bird’ and a ‘cap’ are qualitatively different.

In our discussion of irreversibility, we considered only the macroscopic level.

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Figure 4. Origami bifurcation tree, which should be read as showing that, for example, the shape ‘Box’ is built after nine foldings.

But, today, irreversibility can no longer be seen as the outcome of ignorance. It has therefore to be present at all levels of physical existence. The world is definitely no longer a kind of museum (as was the classical world, and this applies also to the quantum world when the measurement process is neg- lected), in which each bit of information is supposed to be conserved: it is a world of processes, destroying and generating information and structure. In the classical world, the action of time was compared to that of a tornado, which throws into pieces objects whose scattered pieces still remain; and with enough ingenuity we could put these pieces back together. In the vision which includes irreversibility, the flow of time could be compared to the damping and vanishing of the waves which arise when we throw a stone into the pond. Instead of a museum, the world appears as a succession of destructive and creative processes.

In this new approach, rationality is no longer to be identified with ‘cer- tainty’ , nor probability with ignorance. At all levels, probability plays an essential role in the evolutionary mechanism. Our visions of the world as we see it around us and in us, converge. Sigmund Freud told us that the history of science is a history of alienation: after Copernicus we no longer lived at the centre of the universe; after Darwin, man was no longer different from the animals; and since Freud himself conscience is just the emerged part of a complex reality hidden from us. Curiously, we now reach an opposite view. With the role of duration and freedom so prevalent in human life, human existence appears as the most striking realization of the basic laws of nature, as expressed by irreversibility and randomness.

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Science, hilization and democracy 503

This new rationality of science leads us to reconsider the relations between man and man as well as the relations between man and nature. We have already mentioned that we live at the intersection of at least two systems of values. Clearly, a social system is by definition a non-linear one, as inter- actions between the members of the society may have a catalystic effect. At each moment fluctuations are generated, which may be damped or amplified by society. An excellent example of a huge amplification (which we have already mentioned) is the acquisition of knowledge which in a few decades led from the work of a few pioneers in solid state physics to the information revolution that we are witnessing today.

Scientific and technological progress ‘probes’ the stability of the social system. In this view, there can be no question of the ‘axiological neutrality’ of science. Problems that may arise at the science/society interface can only be solved by understanding the actual complexity of societal processes. If these are not understood, the response of the system may ultimately be a negative one.

Impact on the human sciences

From the period of the enlightenment, human conduct was supposed to be governed by ‘natural laws’ rather than by metaphysical ones. By basing the methods of social and economic sciences on those of classical physics, it was thought that a ‘scientific’, supposedly ‘value-free’ analysis, could be achieved. These ‘objective methods’ would give results imbued with the authority of science, which was considered as being above human values and beliefs.

Such ideas still flourish today. Markets are supposed to be made up of small buyers and sellers, each of which has ‘perfect’ information, which enables them to compare all the alternative products or investments. This, together with the perfect mobility of production factors such as labour, leads to a ‘general equilibrium’, which corresponds, according to this paradigm, not only to what is observed in the real world, but also to the ideal state of the economy.

Neoclassical economics is based on the concept of marginal utility, which assumes that consumers and producers express choices by calculating precisely their ‘utility’. Furthermore, they are assumed to know how this ‘utility’ would change with their expenditure in a given domain. Such assumptions take for granted quite unrealistic ‘computing’ and ‘informational’ powers on the part of actors, as Herbert Simon’ has pointed out. They also imply that different factors are separable and additive, and more importantly, they exclude cultural attachments and motivations other than those of ‘utility maximization’.

But what are the alternatives? We have already mentioned the conclusions of Weisskopf. If we turn to Marx’s view of the market system, he saw it evolving to its inevitable destruction, in accordance with the pessimism prevalent in the natural sciences of the first industrial age.

We have seen, however, that complex systems evolve in an evolutionary process of creative discovery, where both stochastic and deterministic processes play essential roles. Instead of seeing human systems in terms of ‘equilibrium’ or as a ‘mechanism’, we see a creative world of imperfect information and shifting values, in which many different futures can be envisaged. The value problem of society can be associated largely with non-linearity. Values are the

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code we adopt to maintain the social system on a branch which has been chosen by history. Value systems are always facing the destabilizing effect of fluctuations generated by the social system itself, which give the whole process its characteristics of irreversibility and non-predictability.

Instead of leading to a feeling of frustration or alienation, this new vision of the world suggests an active attitude -seeking a better understanding of this value system. One of the expressions of this active attitude may be to make explicit the dialogue between modelling and planning. This dialogue through model building has in fact already started. In particular, models have been developed which can generate the spatial evolution of socioeconomic structure in a city or a region. Econometric modelling has already dealt with dynamic models. However, it generally uses a simple descriptive dynamics simply based on observed trends of past series. The introduction and development of system dynamics must be hailed as a considerable advance on equilibrium methods. However, the models we are advocating go one step further.

The interest of this class of models is that they enable us to make the interplay between the actors and the constraints of the environment more transparent. Anticipation here plays an essential role. We may mention the example of traffic flow: the desired speed of each driver is hindered because of the existence of other drivers; the gap between desired and actual behaviour of the system leads to the adoption of strategies. To model this kind of process, we have to take into account the multiplicity of actors and of points of view.

The fact that each actor influences the behaviour of each other leads to coupled, non-linear processes involving different populations (white collars, blue collars, consumers etc) and different economic functions (services, industry etc). This in turn gives the system access to divergent evolutionary paths leading to structures and organizations. The existence of these multiple states implies that fluctuations play an important role near bifurcation points. Last but not least, this active role of fluctuations and innovations corresponds to a ‘non-functional’ behaviour in the classical sense of the term.

In these models, the interaction mechanisms lead to the exclusion or concentration of certain variables in particular zones. For example, Brussaville generates a central business district and suburban shopping centres itself- since potentially all variables can exist at every point. In this way, structure emerges during a simulation, and when the future is explored, the possibility of structural change and of the appearance of new centres and behaviour can be taken into account.g

Let us emphasize the importance of such models for social sciences in order to make the decision mechanisms more transparent in a democratic society: we have here an example of a process of evolution in which science and collective rationality may interact in a constructive way. Perhaps this will be a way of de- mythologizing the process of collective decision making, without negating its complexity. Models alone will of course not be a substitute for political decision making, but they may help to make their implications more explicit.

Another example is some recent work on fishing strategies, in which anticipation is considered explicitly in the description of the global system, which includes the marine ecosystem itself, as well as different groups of fishermen, the processing industry, and the retail and export markets. Thus,

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the choice of which zone and which species of fish is a complicated behavioural problem involving prices, expected catches and risk.” The demand for specific types of fish is a culturally determined phenomenon. A very homogeneous population may have highly specific and narrow demands, while a hetero- geneous one may permit much more varied fishing. Also, it can be shown that stochastic behaviour is an important part of the system, and that successful exploitation of a marine resource requires actors who are ‘stochastic’ and others which are ‘rational’ (non risk-takers), who act only on information.

The fishery project forms a part of a more integrated project, which the United Nations University is sponsoring, where this intrinsic randomness and complexity play an essential role. We may also quote the studies initiated by the Risk Institute of Geneva, which is launching a project which emphasizes the positive contribution of risk in any creative process. We may also quote the projects sponsored by the International Federation of Institute for Advanced Studies (IFIAS).

Erwin Laszlo speaks of the crucial epochs in the history of mankind: these are the moments at which non-linear systems such as societies are approaching bifurcation points. I1 In biological evolution, bifurcation may be for the better or for the worse. We expect a bifurcation to arise in societies when they are destabilized by changing socioeconomic conditions. It is perhaps not exaggerating to say that our present planetary system is approaching such a bifurcation. The difference with biological evolution is that human societies can behave in a purposeful way: we can to some extent choose our evolutionary pace. The leitmotiu of my communication is that the future is not given: time is a construction, and this implies ethical responsibilities.

A new dialogue with nature

The reconceptualization of science that we have described leads to a new dialogue of man with man, whose ultimate aim must be to make more transparent the complex decision mechanisms which ensure the survival mechanism of society. It leads also to a new dialogue of man with nature, in the direction opened by the important book by Jonas Salk, The Survival of the

Wisest. ’ 2 I illustrate this second aspect by coming back to the problem of climate. We

have seen that the history of climate is that of an unstable dynamic system. Curiously, the climate of the first half of this century constituted an anomaly rather than a typical sample of climate’s long and tumultuous history. During this period, mankind experienced relatively predictable weather and a retreat of the northern hemisphere’s ice cap. Agriculture and food production benefited considerably, and this contributed to the increase in world population. On the other hand, this apparent permanence has given a false idea as to what is or is not ‘normal’ in climatology.

Since the mid-1970’s the return of climatic variability has been observed. One example is the abnormally harsh winter of 1976-77 that struck the eastern part of North America and the prolonged drought in the western part of Europe. It seems that this phenomenon was related to a weakening, or even to a real ‘blocking’ of atmospheric circulation as reflected, for instance, by large

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displacements of parts of the jet stream to the south (in the eastern part of the American continent) and to the north in the western part of Europe. A recent result13 indicates that there are essentially two possibilities-blocking or non- blocking, whose outcome may be considered as random as the outcome of the tossing of a coin. This is a really extraordinary example of the randomness of the environment in which we are embedded.

This presses upon us the need to adopt a new way of communicating with nature. In the classical vision complexity was associated with incomplete knowledge of the number of variables involved but the existence of simple laws linking these variables on some basic level was not in doubt. We now discover an intrinsic complexity in nature around us. We have thus to explore the limits of predictability both on long and short timescales.

The progress of non-equilibrium physics and non-linear mathematics makes it possible to study many new problems-the history of the earth’s climate, the blocking phenomenon we just spoke about, the generation of instabilities such as those induced by the ‘heated island effect’ in areas such as lakes, cities, tropical islands or large irrigation-cultivated surfaces. We are now in pos- session of adequate tools to approach these problems.

Recognition of the intrinsic complexity and unpredictability of our natural environment must not lead to an attitude of resignation. The last climatic optimum is generally situated 7000 years ago, since when the combined biological and meteorological situation of the earth has continuously deteriorated. This deterioration is largely independent of man, as the density of human population was too low to influence the formation of great deserts such as the Gobi or the Sahara. We can now conceive of a strategy to be elaborated in the future, which would permit us to leave the unfavourable bifurcation of which the earth is captive. We should quote in this context the important programme designed by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), ‘ ‘Global change: an international geosphere biosphere programme”.‘* Obviously, this type of programme should have both important experimental and theoretical components. The implementation of such programmes could lead to a reinforcement of the relation between science, democracy and civilization, as it would show that science can and must go beyond a purely conservative approach to global problems, as is usually the case in the ‘ecological’ point of view.

The kind of topics which we have enumerated could be the nucleus of such a global research programme. Why not name it &meter, from the name of the Greek goddess of spring and fertility. ?I5 The present reconceptualization of physics goes far beyond academic discussions. It may inspire new plans for action to a new dialogue between man and man, as well as between man and nature. The questions which Kant asked, “What may I know, what must I do, what may I hope for?“, are still with us. To these perennial questions each period has to spell out its specific answers. It is my conviction that the reconceptualization of physics, the discovery of a new world of irreversib~ity, of intrinsic randomness and complexity, may help us to make more precise the answers which our time may conceive.

FUTURES August 1996


Notes and references

1. J. Monod, Le hasard et la n&ssiti (Paris, Seuil, 1970), translated as Chance and Necessity (New York, Vintage Books, 1972), pages 172-173.

2. W. A. Weisskopf, “Reflections on uncertainty in economics”, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance, 9 (33), 1984, pages 335-360.

3. La Science et la diver& des cultures (Paris, PUF and UNESCO, 1974). 4. Karl Popper, preface to the 1959 edition of The Logic of Scien~ifi Discovery (London,

Hutchinson). 5. For these and other (more technical) considerations see I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, La

nouvelle alliance (Paris, Gallimard, 1979), translated as Order out of Chaos (New York, Bantam, London, Heinemann, 1984); I. Prigogine, From Being to Becoming (San Francisco, Freeman, 1979); G. Nicolis and I. Prigogine, Exploring Complexily (Piper Verlag, 1986).

6. C. and G. Nicolis, “Is there a climatic attractor?“, Nature, 311, 1984, pages 529-532. 7. A. Babloyantz, J. M. Salazar and C. Nicolis, “Evidence of chaotic dynamics of brain

activity during the sleep cycle”, Working Paper, Dpt Chimie Physique II, Universitt Libre de Bruxelles, 1985.

8. Herbert Simon, Models ofMan (New York, J. Wiley, 1957), page 198. 9. P. M. Allen, G. Engelen and M. Sanglier, “New methods for policy exploration in complex

systems”, comm to a UNU conference at Montpelier, France, 1984, under the theme “Praxis and Management of Complexity”. See also special issue of Environment and Planning, series B 12, 1985, 1, pages 1-138.

10. P. M. Allen and J. M. McGlade, “The dynamics of discovery and exploitation: the case of the Scotian Shelf fisheries”, Working Paper, Dpt Chimie Physique II, Universitt Libre de Bruxelles, 1985.

11. E. Laszlo, “The crucial epoch”, Futures, 17 (l), 1985, pages 2-23. 12. J. Salk, The Survival of the Wisest (New York, Harper and Row, 1973). 13. J. Charney and J. Devore, JAtmos SC, 36, page 1205; A. Sutera, Adv in Geophys, in press. 14. See. T. F. Malone and J. G. Roederer, eds, Global Change, Proceedings of a Symposium held

in Ottawa (September 1984), sponsored by ICSU (C ambridge University Press, 1985). 15. This name was suggested by the author in an address to an EEC meeting: “Science et

Socie’tt dans I’Europe en Mutation”, La Recherche-DtGeloppement dans la Communauti konomique europinne: uer~ une nouvelle phare de la politique commune, Strasbourg, 20-22 October 1980.

FUTURES August 1999

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