White's law

Last updated

White's law, named after Leslie White and published in 1943, states that, other factors remaining constant, "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased". [1]

Contents

Description

Composite image of the Earth at night in 2012, created by NASA and NOAA. The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populous. Even more than 100 years after the invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated and unlit. City Lights 2012 - Flat map crop.jpg
Composite image of the Earth at night in 2012, created by NASA and NOAA. The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populous. Even more than 100 years after the invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated and unlit.

White spoke of culture as a general human phenomenon and claimed not to speak of 'cultures' in the plural. His theory, published in 1959 in The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to the Fall of Rome, rekindled the interest in social evolutionism and is counted prominently among the neoevolutionists. He believed that culture – meaning the sum total of all human cultural activity on the planet – was evolving.

White differentiated between three components of culture:

  1. Technological,
  2. Sociological and
  3. Ideological, and argued that it was the technological component which plays a primary role or is the primary determining factor responsible for the cultural evolution.

Argument synopsis

White's materialist approach is evident in the following quote: "man as an animal species, and consequently culture as a whole, is dependent upon the material, mechanical means of adjustment to the natural environment". [1] This technological component can be described as material, mechanical, physical and chemical instruments, as well as the way people use these techniques. White's argument on the importance of technology goes as follows: [2]

  1. Technology is an attempt to solve the problems of survival.
  2. This attempt ultimately means capturing enough energy and diverting it for human needs.
  3. Societies that capture more energy and use it more efficiently have an advantage over other societies.
  4. Therefore, these different societies are more advanced in an evolutionary sense.

For White "the primary function of culture" and the one that determines its level of advancement is its ability to "harness and control energy". White's law states that the measure by which to judge the relative degree of evolvedness of culture was the amount of energy it could capture (energy consumption). White differentiates between five stages of human development. In the first, people use energy of their own muscles. In the second, they use the energy of domesticated animals. In the third, they use the energy of plants (so White refers to agricultural revolution here). In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In the fifth, they harness nuclear energy.

White's energy formula

White introduced a formula:

...where E is a measure of energy consumed per capita per year, T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilising the energy and C represents the degree of cultural development. In his own words: "the basic law of cultural evolution" was "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased." [3] Therefore "we find that progress and development are affected by the improvement of the mechanical means with which energy is harnessed and put to work as well as by increasing the amounts of energy employed". [1] Although White stops short of promising that technology is the panacea for all the problems that affect mankind, like technological utopians do, his theory treats technological factor as the most important factor in the evolution of society and is similar to the later works of Gerhard Lenski, the theory of Kardashev scale of Russian astronomer, Nikolai Kardashev and to some notions of technological singularity.

Earlier research

In 1915, Geographer James Fairgrieve outlined a similar law of history. In its widest sense on its material side, he wrote, history is the story of man's increasing ability to control energy. By energy he meant the capacity for doing work, for causing—not controlling—movement of men and machines. Man's life is taken up by the one endeavor to harness as much energy as possible and to waste as little as possible. Any means where he can harness more or waste less marks an advance and important event in the world history. Inventions mark stages of progress. The forthcoming League of Nations, he believed in the first year of World War I, would be another stage in progress in saving energy, as it would save the energy wasted in wars. [4]

Later research

In White's formula C = ET, the T (technological efficiency) could hardly be mathematically expressed. Unhappy with the formula, historian Max Ostrovsky worked to find mathematical expression, as well as to reduce the totality of E (energy consumed) to an essential measurable indicator. Having researched several disciplines, including climatology, all civilizations and the Neolithic and Industrial Revolutions, he reduced White's formula to the following:

C = total cereal tonnage produced by one percent of global manpower.

Ostrovsky applied the same formula to measure national power, replacing global manpower with national. The formula mathematically demonstrates the unipolar distribution of power in the post-Cold War era. Ostrovsky claims that his version of White's law works since the Neolithic Revolution and was not altered by the Industrial Revolution. He refers to the same NASA image (above), stressing that its brightest regions are regions fertile for cereals. According to Ostrovsky, there is no any permanent geographic pivot of history because climate is impermanent. Paraphrasing Mackinder, he drew what he claims a pivot relevant for all historical ages:

Who rules the largest temperate zone with the most optimum rainfall, rules the world. [5]

Another formula Ostrovsky derived from White's law explains great social revolutions:

When the percentage of manpower engaged in agriculture declines from 80 to 60, a society undergoes great social revolution whether from above or below.

Revolution from above means reformation. In one stroke, Ostrovsky mathematically explained the Dutch Revolt, the British, German and Japanese reformations, the French, Russian and Chinese great revolutions, the American Civil War and the untouched by sociologists ancient Roman revolution. [6] Liberté, égalité, fraternité and many other slogans were heard over the barricades and frontlines but in all cases, he emphasizes, the longest result and sometimes the only result was transfer of power from land owners (plantation owners in the American case) to industrial entrepreneurs (the order of knights in the Roman case). [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Civilization</span> Complex society

A civilization or civilisation is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economic growth</span> Measure of increase in market value of goods

Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate of increase in the real gross domestic product, or real GDP.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kardashev scale</span> Measure of the evolution of a civilization according to its energy consumption

The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is able to use. The measure was proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964 and came to bear his name.

<i>I = PAT</i> Equates human impact on the environment

I = (PAT) is the mathematical notation of a formula put forward to describe the impact of human activity on the environment.

Extraterrestrial intelligence refers to hypothetical intelligent extraterrestrial life. The question of whether other inhabited worlds might exist has been debated since ancient times. The modern form of the concept emerged when the Copernican Revolution demonstrated that the Earth was a planet revolving around the Sun, and other planets were, conversely, other worlds. The question of whether other inhabited planets or moons exist was a natural consequence of this new understanding. It has become one of the most speculative questions in science and is a central theme of science fiction and popular culture.

Efficiency is the often measurable ability to avoid wasting materials, energy, efforts, money, and time in doing something or in producing a desired result. In a more general sense, it is the ability to do things well, successfully, and without waste.

Nikolai Semyonovich Kardashev was a Soviet and Russian astrophysicist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and the deputy director of the Astro Space Center of PN Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Production function</span> Used to define marginal product and to distinguish allocative efficiency

In economics, a production function gives the technological relation between quantities of physical inputs and quantities of output of goods. The production function is one of the key concepts of mainstream neoclassical theories, used to define marginal product and to distinguish allocative efficiency, a key focus of economics. One important purpose of the production function is to address allocative efficiency in the use of factor inputs in production and the resulting distribution of income to those factors, while abstracting away from the technological problems of achieving technical efficiency, as an engineer or professional manager might understand it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of technology</span> History of the invention of tools and techniques

The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques and is one of the categories of world history. Technology can refer to methods ranging from as simple as stone tools to the complex genetic engineering and information technology that has emerged since the 1980s. The term technology comes from the Greek word techne, meaning art and craft, and the word logos, meaning word and speech. It was first used to describe applied arts, but it is now used to describe advancements and changes which affect the environment around us.

Leslie Alvin White was an American anthropologist known for his advocacy of the theories on cultural evolution, sociocultural evolution, and especially neoevolutionism, and for his role in creating the department of anthropology at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. White was president of the American Anthropological Association (1964).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agrarian society</span> Community whose economy is based on crops and farmland

An agrarian society, or agricultural society, is any community whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland. Another way to define an agrarian society is by seeing how much of a nation's total production is in agriculture. In an agrarian society, cultivating the land is the primary source of wealth. Such a society may acknowledge other means of livelihood and work habits but stresses the importance of agriculture and farming. Agrarian societies have existed in various parts of the world as far back as 10,000 years ago and continue to exist today. They have been the most common form of socio-economic organization for most of recorded human history.

Sociocultural evolution, sociocultural evolutionism or social evolution are theories of sociobiology and cultural evolution that describe how societies and culture change over time. Whereas sociocultural development traces processes that tend to increase the complexity of a society or culture, sociocultural evolution also considers process that can lead to decreases in complexity (degeneration) or that can produce variation or proliferation without any seemingly significant changes in complexity (cladogenesis). Sociocultural evolution is "the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure which is qualitatively different from the ancestral form".

In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is the observed exponential nature of the rate of technological change in recent history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future and may or may not be accompanied by equally profound social and cultural change.

Gerhard Emmanuel "Gerry" Lenski, Jr. was an American sociologist known for contributions to the sociology of religion, social inequality, and introducing the ecological-evolutionary theory. He spent much of his career as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he served as chair of the Department of Sociology, 1969–72, and as chair of the Division of Social Sciences, 1976-78.

The term information revolution describes current economic, social and technological trends beyond the Industrial Revolution.

Neoevolutionism as a social theory attempts to explain the evolution of societies by drawing on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution while discarding some dogmas of the previous theories of social evolutionism. Neoevolutionism is concerned with long-term, directional, evolutionary social change and with the regular patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures.

In agriculture, the yield is a measurement of the amount of a crop grown, or product such as wool, meat or milk produced, per unit area of land. The seed ratio is another way of calculating yields.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to technology: collection of tools, including machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures used by humans. Engineering is the discipline that seeks to study and design new technology. Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species' ability to control and adapt to their natural environments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Planetary civilization</span> Civilization capable of using all of the energy on its planet

A planetary civilization or global civilization is a civilization of Type I on the Kardashev scale. This type of civilization is likely to be reliant on renewable energy sources such as stellar power, as well as powerful non-renewable sources such as nuclear fusion. A Type I civilization's energy consumption level is roughly equivalent to the solar insolation on Earth (between 1016 and 1017 watts) ─ around 3 orders of magnitude higher than that of contemporary humanity (around 2×1013 as of 2020).

Econodynamics is an empirical science that studies emergences, motion and disappearance of value—a specific concept that is used for description of the processes of creation and distribution of wealth. Any economic theory deals with the interpretation of economic processes based on the law of production of value, and various scientific approaches differ in the choice of factors of production that determine, in the end, the creation of wealth. Marxists insist that only labor creates value, neoclassicists believe that, in addition to labor, capital must also be taken into account as the important source of value. Econodynamics demonstrates that the statement about the productive power of capital is a hoax that hides the real role of labor and energy in the production of value. Econodynamics offers a more adequate interpretation of economic growth and other phenomena.Econodynamics is based on the achievements of classical political economy and neo-classical economics and has been using the methods of phenomenological science to investigate evolution of economic system. Econodynamics has been proposing methods of analysis and forecasting of economic processes. The comprehensive review of the problems of econodynamics is given recently by Vladimir Pokrovskii.

References

  1. 1 2 3 American Materialism. College of Arts & Sciences | The University of Alabama
  2. ↑ Leslie White (The United States, 1900-1975). Minnesota State University
  3. ↑ White, Leslie A. (2007). The Evolution of Culture: THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION TO THE FALL OF ROME. Left Coast Press. ISBN   9781598741445.
  4. ↑ Fairgrieve, James, (1915). Geography and World Power, (Kent: University of London Press), pp 4, 346, https://archive.org/details/geographyworldpo0000jame_d5r8/page/4/mode/2up?view=theater PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .
  5. ↑ Max Ostrovsky, The Hyperbola of the World Order, Lanham: University Press of America, 2007, p 111-126, 356, 362.
  6. ↑ Occurred between the Gracchan reforms and Sulla's civil war.
  7. ↑ Ostrovsky, 2007, p 111-126.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.