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BOOK OVERVIEW
PREFACE
About the year 2000 we, a sociologist and an engineer, met to discuss our thinking about social behavior and social change. Our interesting interaction led us through many discussions, and then to the organization of a seminar group of people from many different faculties, followed by research, writing and publishing several papers, and, in the end, writing this book.
In this book we outline a line of reasoning or a theory, if you will, that describes social change and the major factors causing that change. The essentials of this approach include the study of social systems and the idea that since social systems are made up of discrete individuals, the study of virtual discrete systems on computers is relevant to describing the behavior of such social systems. Further, we discovered that two parameters developed over many years in sociology, namely differentiation and centrality, caused changes in virtual discrete systems and are also the primary factors causing social change. We describe the basis for this approach in detail.
We provide a few detailed examples of the application of this approach to real social systems including small groups, business organization and changes in art styles.
Over the years, a number of people have assisted us in developing these ideas. They include the individuals from many academic disciplines who participated in the seminars over about three years. They are Joel Adams, Tima Bansal, Niels Billou, Charlene Nicholls-Nixon (Business), Shahzad Barghi, Maurice Bergougnou, Gerry Margaritis, Anand Prakash (Chemical Engineering), John Campbell (English), Kevin Clouthier (Social Work), Sauro Camiletti, Matt Davison, David Meredith (Applied Mathematics), Kevin Flynn (Business Management), Jennifer Jette, Lorrie Lefebvre, Barrie Evans, Lawrence Levy, Jim Neufeld (Psychology), Al Koop (Economics).
Early versions of some of the ideas in this book were presented at various meetings, including the Gzowski Lecture, Faculty of Engineering Science, University of Western Ontario (UWO); Research Committee 51 (RC51) of the International Sociological Association in Brisbane, Australia in 2002 and in Durban, South Africa in 2006; as well as to the Faculty Seminar Group at King’s University College at UWO in 2002, to the Society for Learning in Retirement in 2005 and 2006, and a conference on complexity sponsored by the Hispanic Baroque project at UWO in 2008.
We wish to thank the following for their direct contributions to this book.
We would particularly like to thank John Campbell whose work with small groups lies at the heart of this book. As well, we wish to thank Madeline Lennon, Visual Arts, UWO who contributed her expertise in art and spent much time reviewing the general arguments presented in this book. Cor van Dijkum, the chair of the RC51 session in Brisbane, has encouraged us to pursue our ideas and even published some of them in the journal he edits, The International Scientific Journal of Methodology and Models of Complexity.
Our thanks to Frank Popoff, former CEO of The Dow Chemical Company, for his insights into the history of that company and to William Cockshutt for his knowledge of the history of that company.
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