Abstract
The aim of this communication is to consider morphological processes in sociology, mainly through the study of the stability of forms of sociality. At the same time, it aims to study the regulation of constraints, related to an increasingly conflictual environment, through political organization. We use a specific theoretical framework: the catastrophe theory developed by René Thom in topology, further developed by Claude Bruter from a physics point of view, and reworked by Jacques Viret in biology. The idea is to show the existence of archetypal processes organizing social forms.
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Notes
The original French version of this communication is available, please contact the author.
Reporting the meaning of the action, not its cause.
In this study, we will attempt to identify the presence of an evolution process which transforms the successive historical stabilizations of forms of sociality. These will then be part of a metamorphosis of stable functioning regime of societies if we add the definition of politie from Pr. Baechler, as a regulation of conflicts which arise between groups in society. Thus, we will be able to examine the progressive birth of this political level as a canalisation of a societal dynamical system analysed with geometrical tools, providing a qualitative explanation of this process.
Different kinds of substrates at each level of organization or new stratum: the cell, the molecule at the local level, but also at the semi-global level of the body, of the psyche (Viret), and of the society (Bruter), as we assume here. On the topic of organization levels, refer to René Thom (1990).
Let us repeat that the figures that follow in this study could not exist without the consulting of Thom’s precious texts, for sure, but also of those written by Bruter and Viret. We believe that what we learned from the latter is at the very root of the most pertinent proposals developed in the present study. However, if certain errors persist, they are entirely ours. See also another presentation possible by Petitot (2011).
Derivatives can be interpreted as velocity vectors, which, considered in their totality, form a field in terms of physics. On these difficult points, see the work based on Claude P. Bruter’s thesis.
The manifolds that Thom takes into consideration are readily polarized, in our example by the presence of a gravitational force field, but more generally through pervasiveness. Thus, rain materializes this pervasiveness and provides kinetic energy while streaming down on the polarized variety: that kinetic energy will become the real functional potential of the dynamical system. In a more literary language, the dynamical system appears when the variety is crossed or reached, invested so to speak, by a field of privileged orientation—the field of velocity vectors—and when rain will start running off its surface. The morphologies of Thom’s CT will be archetypal forms of the dynamical system, not in the sense of static images but of an evolving process of development. “Catastrophes” allow the canalization of this functional potential via flow bifurcation.
Oriented manifold allows the presence of a potential energy difference between the top and the bottom.
For Baechler, principles of morphological cohesion are subjective dimensions of social solidarity, divided into three classes which are not sealed one to another: passions, interests, representations. These concepts are the subject of increasing accuracy throughout the progression of his work.
It was Jacques Demongeot’s original idea to use fingers to facilitate visualization.
The profile of this potential function of the fold is a single bowl of stable potential opening on irreversible instability. The swallowtail catastrophe, however, consists of two. In his study, Viret underlines that the fold and the swallowtail belong to the same family of bio-logical evolving processes that Thom calls “conflict catastrophes”.
“Gregariousness: nature of certain living beings, including human beings, who express the need to base their survival on the forming of structured groups of people; the human modes of gregariousness are: - sociability, which connects individual and collective actors and allows them to exchange, share and explore; - sociality, which ensures the coherence and cohesion of human societies, by printing morphologies on them; - sodality, which organizes and turns individual actors into collective actors, called groups, able to act, to know and to behave collectively at various levels.” (Glossary, excerpt from Baechler 2005) We translate freely all the passages quoted.
See References.
Initially subsequent to the Durkheimian dichotomy between “mechanical solidarity” and “organic solidarity”, Baechler provides a detailed identification of eight forms of sociality that are: the band, the tribe, the city, the caste, feudalism, the Chinese market-center, the capital city of the Near East, the nation.
The risk of conflicts within the band intensifies according to the increase in population and the decrease in available space.
There is in fact a double polarity of the human mechanism: gregariousness/conflictual tendency. For Baechler, the issue is to create the necessary conditions to survive together without killing each other, in order to avoid the disappearance of this gregarious human species.
“Politie: A human group, developing, internally, a social space tending towards peace for its members and, externally, a social space of virtual war. Inside, the politie is the space of human activities, where actors strive to satisfy the common conditions of their respective humanizations; outside, the politie is a collective actor in a trans-politie.” (See Glossary, Baechler 2005).
Much later, thanks to “neolithization” and to the gradual replacement of predation by the agricultural production of surplus thus available, it is only with the emergence and proliferation of repeated wars at a specific level of the segmentation that the latter will be crystallized into a politie, i.e. into chiefdom. The latter can evolve into a super-chiefdom, and later into a kingdom and an empire, according to the progressive coalescence of other political units, or it experiences the possibility of a radical change into a city, emerging from a tribal environment. Distinctions mainly lie in the nature of the politie regime. Similarly, if we change the scale for the so-called “international” stratum, more precisely called trans-political, we will meet again the empirical realization of an abstract swallowtail, in a particular configuration of a trans-political game system described by Baechler following the pioneering work of Aron (1962). For more details on this level, we suggest that the reader refers to our work. (Morier 2011).
“To be able to evolve, a stable object needs to experience a “local regression” phase, during which it is partially de-structured, before it reaches a new state. […] The object regains its youth and plastic qualities, which make it suitable for new evolutions.” (Bruter 1982) See also the famous pioneer work of Waddington in several studies. (Waddington 1968–72).
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Acknowledgments
We thank Jacques Viret for his assistance in this study.
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Morier, C. Taking a geometric look at the socio-political functioning schemes of the living. Catastrophe theory and theoretical sociology. Acta Biotheor 61, 353–365 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-013-9196-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-013-9196-2