1 November 2016 reflection paper for Svetlana Jacquesson's course foundation of knowledge

1. Reflection paper
On the article by Immanuel Wallerstein
The Challenge of Maturity: Whither Social Science?
By Leontyev Ruslan
The article addresses the issues of epistemology. Its main claim is that social science
mirrors the paradigms from Natural Science; meanwhile, being capable to produce its own. The
author uses the shift in paradigms from classical mechanics of Newton (the world is presented as
a clock mechanism) to Lorenz’s theory of complex systems (small changes cause butterfly
effects) and eventually to Chaos theory (nothing is predictable in a longer term) to back up his
claim that science of physics became sort of social science of sociology. The author somewhat
optimistically believes that social science is at the threshold of maturity and imprudently claims
that there is a certain connection between social science and theories of chaos and complex
systems. I personally believe that author is not competent enough to write about paradigms from
Natural Science as he relies on second-hand knowledge; moreover, he sometimes
misunderstands or misuses terms and the essence of scientific revolution.
There is a paucity of competence in Immanuel’s writing. The article investigates the
links between social science and Natural Science. Ideally, I would expect the author to maser his
knowledge in both social and Natural Science and give a more credible expertise on true
connections between those fields. Instead, when reading the biography of the author, who is
Immanuel Wallerstein by the way, I find out that he got his academic training only in social
science. He got all his three degrees BA, MA, and PhD in sociology at Columbia University.
Such narrow experience in a single major in the walls of a single University casts a reasonable
doubt about his capacity to interpret correctly the paradigms pertaining to Natural Science , upon
which he builds his reflections and in which he seems to be diffident rather than expert.

2. The author of the article might not have done enough research on the issue that he is
writing about. What first catches my eye is a short references list. The author refers to only 6
sources, which also hints on his limited knowledge of the matter discussed. Unfortunately, only
two books in his reference list belong to the Natural Science . They are Mathematics And The
Unexpected by Ivar Ekeland and The Fractal Geometry of Nature by Mandelbrot. The other four
sources in the reference list came from social science. This again hints to the fact that the author
is trained more in social science rather than in Natural Science .
Most importantly, Immanuel Wallerstein relies on second hand interpretation of
paradigms from Natural sciences rather than quoting original sources. Wallerstein refers to
theory of complex system, established by Edward Norton Lorenz and the theory of chaos
introduced by the same author, as well as Rene Thoms’ Catastrophe theory meanwhile doesn’t
source their original work in his reference list. Instead, he refers to somebody’s reflection of the
original works. Perhaps, he learned about all those theories from second hand interpretation
because the original works for him were too difficult to understand.
Even worse, Immanuel seems to welter the ideas from physics. The most ambiguous and
somewhat misinterpreted or not fully digested idea of Immanuel was to claim that Natural
Science got rid of the concept of time.
…Finally, classical science made time irrelevant, since all universal processes
were "reversible." The "new science" restores "historicity" to the center of the
stage. The "arrow of time" is uneliminable - not merely for social phenomena, but
for subatomic particles as well
Immanuel claims that the Time was irrelevant to classical science because all processes were
reversible. One good example of Classical science is the Newton’s determinism. However, the
question is when was time irrelevant for Newton? It is nonsense. Immanuel does not tell from
what theory he made such an implication. The author does not refer to anybody when writing

3. that. Thus, he leaves me with impression that he either misunderstood something or made it up
there.
Author unsuccessfully draws parallels between the theory of complex systems and
sociological theories. However, none of the sociological theory I know incorporates so much
mathematics as the theory of complex systems has. Therefore, comparing them might not be
possible.
Author’s main idea is that from moving from simplicity to complexity Natural Science
resembles more of sociology now. It is worth to notice that the Lorenz’s (1995) original theory
of complex systems does not emphasizes so much the complex causality of the observable.
Rather Lorenz deals with thresholds, butterfly effects, loops, topology, and sensitivity to initial
conditions, as well as robustness of complex systems. None of sociological theories I know
incorporates this kind of logic and terminology.
Lorenz’s main claim is that complex systems are still deterministic and are predictable
only in a short run (Lorenz 1995). In a longer term, they demonstrate such a wide scope of
possible outcomes that there is no value in prediction. This is not quite what Immanuel argues
for. Immanuel rather talks how social science initially believed that human behavior is strictly
deterministic and how then it came to understand that “…absolutely anything must be taken into
account and that being a case for complex theory (Wallerstein 1992)”. Still the Lorenz theory
deals not so much with complexity of causes but with thresholds in particular with when the
complex system is predictable and at what point it is not. It does not want to take everything into
account. It takes into consideration a restricted number of independent variables but their
intervene and complex interaction is what produces unpredictable complexity. Where Mr.
Wallerstain talks about the complexity of causes, Lorenz talks about complexity of interactions
(Wallerstein 1992). This trend of shifting from simple approach to complexity in Natural Science
is basically to think of and predict the thresholds when the rules of the game change even though
if there are only two variables. No random elements are involved and the system is still

4. deterministic. However, Immanuel’s understanding of complexity is that many factors influence
single behavior to the point it is less predictable and more divergent.
“Thirdly, classical science gave pride of place to the simple. Einstein spent his
whole life looking for the unified field theory, the single equation that could
comprehend all of physical reality. The "new science" is the science of the
complex. Instead of searching for the underlying simple level in complex systems,
the "new science" is discovering that what was once thought to be simple (e.g., the
domain of physics) is more complex than had been realized, and that there may
indeed be no such thing as simple phenomena (Wallerstein 1992)”.
Overall, the article misses the real understanding of paradigms in physics.
I personally believe that social science will never be mature and independent from
Natural Science and will continue to simply resemble the paradigms set by physics. According
to Kuhn (1970) what gives the rise to new paradigms in Natural science is either unsolvable
problems that is an unexplainable phenomenon or the mistakes that occur in data measurements.
I think it simply takes somebody’s enthusiasm to set up a new paradigms in social science. For
instance Foucault run into Nietzsche’s quote that inspired him to create his theory of discourse
analysis. I believe so because for me Natural Science does not discover the reality but discovers
the logical ways to understand reality, which are then taken by social scientists. Physics discover
new logic. Sociologists use it.

5. Reference:
Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lorenz, E. N. (1995). The Essence of Chaos. Boca Raton: C R C Press LLC.
LORENZ, E. N. (May 01, 1990). Can chaos and intransitivity lead to interannual
variability?. Tellus A, 42, 3, 378-389.
Wallerstein, I. (January 01, 1992). The Challenge of Maturity: Whither Social Science?. Review
(fernand Braudel Center), 15, 1, 1-7.

6. Reference:
Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lorenz, E. N. (1995). The Essence of Chaos. Boca Raton: C R C Press LLC.
LORENZ, E. N. (May 01, 1990). Can chaos and intransitivity lead to interannual
variability?. Tellus A, 42, 3, 378-389.
Wallerstein, I. (January 01, 1992). The Challenge of Maturity: Whither Social Science?. Review
(fernand Braudel Center), 15, 1, 1-7.