I.

Wallerstein, "Uncertainty and Creativity"

Page 1 of 3

"Uncertainty and Creativity" by Immanuel Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein 1997. (Iwaller@binghamton.edu) [You are free to download this paper or send it electronically to others. If you wish to translate it into another language, or to publish it in a printed medium or on another web site, you must obtain formal authorization from the author.] (Talk at Forum 2000: Concerns and Hopes on the Threshold of the New Millennium, Prague, Sept. 3-6, 1997) The first half of the twenty-first century will, I believe, be far more difficult, more unsettling, and yet more open, than anything we have known in the twentieth century. I say this on three premises, none of which I have time to argue here. The first is that historical systems, like all systems, have finite lives. They have beginnings, a long development, and finally, as they move far from equilibrium and reach points of bifurcation, a demise. The second premise is that two things are true at these points of bifurcation: small inputs have large outputs (as opposed to times of the normal development of a system when large inputs have small outputs); and the outcome of such bifurcations is inherently indeterminate. The third premise is that the modern world-system, as an historical system, has entered into a terminal crisis, and is unlikely to exist in fifty years time. However, since its outcome is uncertain, we do not know whether the resulting system (or systems) will be better or worse than the one in which we are living, but we do know that the period of transition will be a terrible time of troubles, since the stakes of the transition are so high, the outcome so uncertain, and the ability of small inputs to affect the outcome so great. It is widely thought that the collapse of the Communisms in 1989 marks a great triumph of liberalism. I see it rather as marking the definitive collapse of liberalism as the defining geoculture of our world-system. Liberalism essentially promised that gradual reform would ameliorate the inequalities of the world-system, and reduce the acute polarization. The illusion that this was possible within the framework of the modern worldsystem has in fact been a great stabilizing element, in that it legitimated the states in the eyes of their populations and promised them a heaven on earth in the foreseeable future. The collapse of the Communisms, along with the collapse of the national liberation movements in the Third World, and the collapse of faith in the Keynesian model in the Western world were all simultaneous reflections of popular disillusionment in the validity and reality of the reformist programs each propagated. But this disillusionment, however merited, knocks the props from under popular legitimation of the states, and effectively undoes any reason why their populations should tolerate the continuing and increasing polarization of our world-system. I therefore expect considerable turmoil of the kind we have already been seeing in the 1990's, spreading from the Bosnias and Rwandas of this world to the wealthier (and assertedly more stable) regions of the world (such as the United States). These, as I say, are premises, and you may not be convinced of them, since I have no time to argue them.[1] I wish therefore simply to draw the moral and political conclusions from my premises. The first conclusion is that progress, unlike what the Enlightenment in all its forms preached, is not at all inevitable. But I do not accept that it is therefore impossible. The world has not morally advanced in the last several thousand years, but it could. We can move in the direction of what Max Weber called "substantive rationality," that is, rational values and rational ends, arrived at collectively and intelligently. [1] These theses have been argued at some length in two recent books: Immanuel Wallerstein, After Liberalism (New York: New Press, 1995), and Terence K. Hopkins & I. Wallerstein, coords., The Age of Transition: Trajectory of the World-System, 1945-2025 (London: Zed Press, 1996) The second conclusion is that the belief in certainties, a fundamental premise of modernity, is blinding and crippling. Modern science, that is, Cartesian-Newtonian science, has been based on the certainty of certainty.

http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/iwuncer.htm

19/4/2008

I. Wallerstein, "Uncertainty and Creativity"

Page 2 of 3

The basic assumption is that there exist objective universal laws governing all natural phenomena, that these laws can be ascertained by scientific enquiry, and that once such laws are known, we can, starting from any set of initial conditions, predict perfectly the future and the past. It is often argued that this concept of science is merely a secularization of Christian thought, representing merely a substitution of "nature" for God, and that the requisite assumption of certainty is derived from and is parallel to the truths of religious profession. I do not wish here to start a theological discussion per se, but it has always struck me that the belief in an omnipotent God, a view common at least to the so-called Western religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), is in fact both logically and morally incompatible with a belief in certainty, or at least in any human certainty. For if God is omnipotent, then humans cannot constrain him by edicting what they believe is eternally true, or God would not then be omnipotent. No doubt, the scientists of early modern times, many of whom were quite pious, may have thought they were arguing theses consonant with the reigning theology, and no doubt many theologians of the time gave them cause to think that, but it is simply not true that a belief in scientific certainty is a necessary complement to religious belief systems. Furthermore, the belief in certainty is now under severe, and I would say very telling, attack within natural science itself. I need only refer you to Ilya Prigogine's latest book, La fin des certitudes[2], in which he argues that, even in the inner sanctum of natural science, dynamic systems in mechanics, the systems are governed by the arrow of time and move inevitably far from equilibrium. These new views are called the science of complexity, partly because they argue that Newtonian certitudes hold true only in very constrained, very simple systems, but also because they argue that the universe manifests the evolutionary development of complexity, and that the overwhelming majority of situations cannot be explained by assumptions of linear equilibria and time-reversibility. [2] Paris: Odile Jacob, 1996. (In English: The End of Certainty (New York: Free Press, 1997.) The third conclusion is that in human social systems, the most complex systems in the universe, therefore the hardest to analyze, the struggle for the good society is a continuing one. Furthermore, it is precisely in periods of transition from one historical system to another one (whose nature we cannot know in advance) that human struggle takes on the most meaning. Or to put it another way, it is only in such times of transition that what we call free will outweighs the pressures of the existing system to return to equilibria. Thus, fundamental change is possible albeit never certain, and this fact makes claims on our moral responsibility to act rationally, in good faith, and with strength to seek a better historical system. We cannot know what this would look like in structural terms, but we can lay out the criteria on the basis of which we would call an historical system substantively rational. It is a system that is largely egalitarian and largely democratic. Far from seeing any conflict between these two objectives, I would argue that they are intrinsically linked to each other. An historical system cannot be egalitarian if it is not democratic, because an undemocratic system is one that distributes power unequally, and this means that it will also distribute all other things unequally. And it cannot be democratic if it is not egalitarian, since an inegalitarian system means that some have more material means than others and therefore inevitably will have more political power. The fourth conclusion I draw is that uncertainty is wondrous, and that certainty, were it to be real, would be moral death. If we were certain of the future, there could be no moral compulsion to do anything. We would be free to indulge every passion and pursue every egoism, since all actions fall within the certainty that has been ordained. If everything is uncertain, then the future is open to creativity, not merely human creativity but the creativity of all nature. It is open to possibility, and therefore to a better world. But we can only get there as we are ready to invest our moral energies in its achievement, and as we are ready to struggle with those who, under whatever guise and for whatever excuse, prefer an inegalitarian, undemocratic world. (Go to top of paper) (Go to top of list of papers)

http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/iwuncer.htm

19/4/2008

I. Wallerstein, "Uncertainty and Creativity" (Go to Fernand Braudel Center Home Page)

Page 3 of 3

http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/iwuncer.htm

19/4/2008