Abstract
Another kind of interest suggested by the stress on information might deal with the resourcefulness or creativity of political decisions. In Toynbee’s analysis, referred to above, the failure of populations to imitate their rulers is viewed as a consequence of the failure of these rulers to invent and execute an effective new ‘response’ to some new ‘challenge’ presented to the state or the society by its environment. In this view, Greek valley farmers were challenged by invasions of plundering herdsmen from the hills, and responded to this challenge by the invention of the city-state. Later, the Athenians, when confronted with the “Malthusian challenge” of increasing numbers on insufficient soil, responded with the inventions of the “Solonic Revolution”: oil culture and long-distance trade.
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Notes
- 1.
This text was first published as: Karl W. Deutsch, “Learning Capacity and Creativity in Politics: The Search for Cohesion and Values,” The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control (New York: The Free Press, 1966), chapter 10, pp. 163–181, reprinted courtesy of Simon and Schuster.
- 2.
D. O. Hebb, The Organization of Behavior, New York, Wiley, 1949, pp. 109–134.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
Karl W. Deutsch, “Innovation, Entrepreneurship and the Learning Process,” in A. H. Cole, ed., Change and the Entrepreneur: Postulates and Patterns for Entrepreneurial History, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1949, pp. 24–29; citations are from pp. 25–27.
- 5.
Gregory Bateson, “Social Planning and the Concept of ‘Deutero-Learning,’” in T. M. Newcomb and E. L. Hartley, eds., Readings in Social Psychology, New York, Holt, 1st ed., 1947, pp. 121–128. This article was omitted from later editions of this work because these were limited increasingly to empirical material. Oral communication, T. M. Newcomb, Ann Arbor, Mich., March 20, 1962.
- 6.
A. J. Toynbee, Reconsiderations, A Study of History, Vol. 12, New York, Oxford University Press, 1961, pp. 252, 254, 257, with reference to H. W. B. Joseph, An Introduction to Logic, 2nd ed., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1916, pp. 406–408.
- 7.
In addition to the works by N. Wiener, and D. O. Hebb, cited earlier, see, e.g., Lawrence S. Kubie, “The Fostering of Creative Scientific Productivity,” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 91:2, Spring, 1962, pp. 294–309, esp. 305–306; Gordon S. Brown, “New Horizons in Engineering Education,” ibid., pp. 341–361, esp. 346–348; Gerald Holton, “Scientific Research and Scholarship: Notes Toward the Design of Proper Scales,” ibid., pp. 362–399; K. W. Deutsch, “The Way Our Children Grow,” Child Study, 36:3, Summer, 1959, pp. 20–28; and “Creativity in a Scientific Civilization,” in Associates of Bank Street College of Education, Changing Attitudes in a Changing World, New York, Bank Street College, 1958, pp. 29–36. Cf. also the essays in Harold H. Anderson, ed., Creativity and Its Cultivation, New York, Harper, 1959.
- 8.
E.g., Almond and Coleman, op. cit.; Daniel Lerner, op. cit.; K. W. Deutsch, et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957; K. W. Deutsch, et al., Backgrounds for Political Community (forthcoming); Ernst Haas, The Uniting of Europe, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1958; Raymond Lindgren, Norway-Sweden: Union, Disunion, and Scandinavian Integration, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1959; K. W. Deutsch and Herman Weilenmann, Community for Diversity: The Political Integration of Switzerland (in progress); Bruce M. Russett, Community and Contention: Britain and America in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, M.I.T. Press, 1963; Richard L. Merritt, Symbols of American Community, 1735–1775 (forthcoming).
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Deutsch, K.W. (2020). Learning Capacity and Creativity in Politics: The Search for Cohesion and Values. In: Taylor, C., Russett, B. (eds) Karl W. Deutsch: Pioneer in the Theory of International Relations. Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02910-8_6
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