Power Politics

Robert Service, professor at Oxford, is recognized as one of today’s leading Russia scholars. He has been widely praised for his objectivity, dispassionate analysis, and balanced insight. In A History of Modern Russia, Service set out to chronicle Russian history from the reign of Nicholas II to the present day.

The result is simply magisterial; Service has written an authoritative, balanced, and highly insightful survey of Russia’s turbulent 20th century. Although the book is not without flaws, it has clearly earned a place as one of the standard references of modern Russian history.

To grasp the strengths and limitations of the work, of course, the reader must first understand exactly what Service is aiming to do. This is not a comprehensive or encyclopedic disquisition on Russia, nor is it an attempt to place Russian history in the context of broader events. Rather, Service has set out to describe Russia’s 20th century evolution thematically and analytically. His book focuses on the dynamics and changes in Russian society and politics in modern times, and excludes much else.

At this endeavor, Service succeeds brilliantly. His version of narrative Russian history, centered around the “Soviet compound,” is penetrating and insightful; it is clear that he’s invested significant effort in developing a nuanced and non-ideological approach to Russian history. From a clearheaded assessment of the early Bolshevik revolutionaries to a complex look at Gorbachev and his political program, Service’s analysis is remarkably cogent and scrupulous.

The book is, however, marred by two visible flaws. First, the author’s coverage of the post-1996 period is disappointingly sparse. Service does a marvelous job at discussing the promises and challenges of Yeltsin’s first term, but gives short shrift to his second. The section on Putin is, similarly, curt and limited. This is perhaps explained by the fact that these sections were added in a second edition of the book, and thus not part of the original narrative.

Second, the author focuses mostly on his own analysis and does not include the views of other scholars. While this is not a fatal omission (the work is, after all, mainly a narrative history), it leaves the book incomplete. There has been so much impressive work done on Russia, and so many uniquely insightful interpretations of Russian history, that the author does readers a disservice by not incorporating them. It would have made the tome even longer, to be sure, but it would have also immeasurably enriched the author’s discussion of Russian society and politics.

Although the book itself focuses on Russian history, Service ends the work with a short essay on Russia today. Like any good historian, Service looks at the present-day with a “historian’s eye,” a broad and measured perspective, and aptly identifies the most pressing successes and also challenges of post-Soviet Russia.

Russia’s achievements after 1991 have been substantial. Parliamentary and presidential elections have been held; they have been rough-and-ready processes, but the fact that they took place at all has set precedents which it will be hard for Yeltin’s successors to repudiate. Competition among political parties has prevailed. Social groups have been permitted to express their aspirations and grievances. A market economy has been established. Already the predominance of the state military-industrial establishment has been weakened. Entrepreneurship has been fostered. The press has enjoyed much freedom, and even television journalism has not been entirely subject to central political authority. The agencies of the police invade the privacy of citizens to a lesser extent than at any time in recent Russian history, and there have been no wars across Russia’s international frontiers. Slowly and frailly, after much trevail, economic recovery has got under way.

Enormous power is concentrated in the Russian presidency and it has not been exercised with discretion. Democratic and legal procedures have been treated with contempt by politicians in Moscow and the provinces. Polemics have become ever more strident in public debates. Administration is conducted on an arbitrary basis. The judiciary has lost much of its short-lived semi-autonomy. Criminality is rife. Ordinary citizens have little opportunity to defend themselves against the threats of the rich and powerful. There is much poverty. Programmes of social and material welfare have been undermined and the economy has yet to surmount the effects of de-industrialization and environmental pollution. There is also much apathy and ignorance about current politics. Rates of participation are low. Russians agree more about what they dislike than about what they like. The price they are paying is that they have little impact on the government and other state agencies except at elections.

In concluding his afterward, Service’s long-view of history is welcomely apparent.

Russia in the twentieth century was full of surprises. A single country produced Lenin, Krushchev and Gorbachev; it also reared Shostakovich, Akhmatova, Kapitsa, Sakharov and Pavlov. Its ordinary people, from the piteous inmates of the Gulag to the proud Red Army conscript-victors over Hitler, became symbols of momentous episodes in the history of our times. Russia has passed through two world wars, civil war, violent economic transformation, dictatorship and terror. She became and then ceased to be a superpower. She was once a largely agrarian and illiterate empire and is now literate, industrial and bereft of her borderland dominions. ‘Russia’ has not stopped changing. It would be idle to assume that her record of astounding herself, her neighbours and the world has come to an end.

A History of Modern Russia is a fantastic narrative chronicle of Russia in the 20th century. The author explores Russian society and politics, the “Soviet compound,” with great balance and perceptiveness. He adds greatly to the modern understanding of the internal dynamics of the Soviet Union. And his book is a wonderful addition to the library of anyone looking to understand a country that will remain critically important well into the 21st century.

In the prologue to Decision at Sea, noted naval historian Professor Craig L. Symonds declares that “as is the case with all nations, the history and culture of the United States have been both defined by and reflected in its several wars. From the earliest days of the Republic, war delineated the stages of American transformation as the country evolved from a frontier society along the Atlantic seaboard to become first a continental power, then a world power, and eventually the greatest power in history. At each stage of this metamorphosis, America’s wars reflected the dominant national focus of its generation.” Thus Symonds establishes the theoretical framework around which he’ll analyze America’s historical transformations. Ultimately, his goal is to demonstrate how the major stages in American military history are accurately represented by five key naval battles.

Alas, the writer’s translation of this sweeping vision into reality is unfortunately inconsistent. In several respects he succeeds brilliantly. His prose is silky smooth and highly accessible, and his skill at narrating battle sequences is quite clearly superlative. One cannot help but be riveted by his gripping account of the intense combat action, and his expert portrayal of the human struggle at sea lends insight into the nature of leadership and command. Yet the author does a very mixed job of weaving this narrative into the overarching theme of historical transformation.

Symonds is a skilled historian, and it shows. The analysis he does provide is clear, sagacious, and very well written. His conclusions, though one may quibble with them, are well grounded and wisely stated. The problem is, indeed, not due to any deficiencies in his thinking; it is instead the lack of development that mars parts of this volume. Symonds includes perhaps four or five pages in each section directly discussing the grand historical implications of the battle he chronicles; more analysis is integrated into the discussion of each battle itself, although the exact amount is variable. For some, particularly the first two, there is precious little. In only two sections of the work (those on operation Praying Mantis and the Battle of Manila Bay) is there a substantial amount of penetrating analysis. For a book-length work, such an inconsistent and in some parts insubstantial level of analysis is unacceptably shallow. The author fails to dig deeply into and analyze fully the rich and dramatic trends exemplified by three of his cited battles, and so Decision at Sea is an ultimately disappointing book. A great work pulled down by an inconsistent and partially mediocre effort.

One part of the book, featuring Symonds in full form, stands out as deserving attention: the overall conclusion. Adopting the judicious disposition of the historian, the Professor carefully examines the future of American security policy in the 21st century. Reflecting on the transformative changes he has chronicled, the author scrutinizes today’s naval currents and their interrelationship with America’s foreign policy posture. Noting that “technology and resources are […] integral elements in national policy planning and execution,” Symonds proceeds to analyze the present epoch, in which “America’s military technology has become globally dominant.”

He begins the analysis with a succinct description of the Westphalian state system, established in 1648, that came to dominate world politics. The Westphalian system was organized around sovereign nation-states, each of which maintained hegemony over its own territory. The nation-state system is remarkably conducive to stability and balance, explaining its robustness, because it promotes centralized governance and standardized political rule-sets. Centralized governance, combined with the pressure of competition from other states, promotes good and effective governance. The standardized rule-sets facilitate international trade, commerce, and industry; harnessing the other properties of the system (such as competitive pressure and centralization), political rule-sets also encourage the development of rational governments that undertake rational policies. As Symonds writes, “it rationalized war to the extent that governments exercised control over national armies and employed them to compete with one another for territory, trade, or some other tangible advantage.” Security concerns and competitive pressures eventually led to a fluid equilibrium in which a balance of power locked the system into place; any time one power tried to gain global hegemony, a coalition of weaker powers aligned together to suppress the aggressor (note, for instance, the wars of Napoleon and the wars of Louis XIV).

Symonds continues by describing the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he believes constituted “a watershed moment not only in the history of the United States but in the history of the world.” Although that goes without question in any quarter, exactly how the dissolution of the USSR changed the history is world is a controversial academic question that has spawned an array of theories and research. To simplify matters slightly, two major schools of thought emerged on the issue. The first, famously embraced by President George H.W. Bush, argues that fall of the Soviet Union produced a “new world order.” The second view, drawing much support from international relations scholars, asserted that, while the collapse of the Soviet Union produced a transitory period of American dominance, the underlying international system remained pretty much the same. This is a vast simplification, of course, and advocates on both sides have put forth complex and nuanced theories embracing a more pragmatic center.

That said, Symonds falls solidly into the first camp. As he argues in the book, “if [the collapse of the Soviet Union] did not immediately supplant the nation-state system established at Westphalia nearly three and a half centuries earlier, it at least produced […] a ‘new world order.’”

In that new order, the United States emerged as the single dominant military power on the globe. Some Americans thought the time had come for the United States to shoulder the responsibility of world management, for it certainly had the military power to do so. The United States stood alone as the one great superpower on earth. The U.S. Navy, too, stood alone: unchallenged, and indeed unchallengeable, as master of the world’s oceans. By the end of the century, a single U.S. Navy carrier battle group and its embarked carried more potential firepower than the rest of the world’s navies combined. An article in the Washington Post in 2003 declared unequivocally that “all other nations have conceded the seas to the United States. . . .The naval arms race–a principal aspect of great power politics for centuries–is over.” [The article actually appeared in the New York Times, and the author’s formal citation inaccurately identifies the title, author, publisher, and date.] More than Rome at its height or Victorian Britain at its peak, the United States had emerged as a power of unprecedented supremacy. It had become arbiter mundi, the power of the world–an astonishing circumstance for a republic that a mere nine score years before had strained its resources to build two twenty-gun brigs on Lake Erie

While it cannot be denied that America is “the single dominant military power on the globe,” Symonds makes quite a few hyperbolical claims there that cannot be supported in reality; in fact, one could accuse him of hubris. The US does not, in fact, have sufficient military strength “to shoulder the responsibility of world management.” All of the major nuclear powers, for example, are essentially invulnerable to American attack. And, as Operation Iraqi Freedom has shown, while most non-nuclear states would offer little resistance to an American invasion, accomplishing large-scale occupations would quickly drain the American economy, industrial base, and labor force dry. The United States can, indeed, play a significant role in world affairs and the international order, but in no way could it ever hope to manage the world. The only geographical areas in which Washington has a legitimate claim to total dominance are the oceans, and even then that control is ephemeral at best in some areas of the world (particularly in Asia). The claim that “a single U.S. Navy carrier battle group and its embarked carried more potential firepower than the rest of the world’s navies combined” is laughably absurd. In terms of “potential firepower,” a single Russian SSBN (nuclear submarine), carrying dozens to hundreds of nuclear warheads, easily outclasses the firepower of a carrier battle group. In terms of effective strength, the hundreds of modern cruisers, destroyers, missile boats, submarines, and assault ships compromising the naval forces of the rest of the world clearly trump a single carrier group.

In reality, the situation is more complex. The United States indeed enjoys an unprecedented level of conventional military strength, especially in the naval arena. The utility of this military strength is greatly restrained, however, by three features of the modern world. The first is the prevalence of nuclear arms, which eliminates direct total war as an effective policy option against a great power. The second can be broadly summarized as the current state of global geography and human development. The sheer scale of the world’s population, the way human society is organized, and the impact of ideologies (such as nationalism) on popular sentiment have made military occupation of large swaths of the world impossible. Finally, the interconnected nature of the global economy means that military aggression against economically large states will induce a worldwide recession and dramatically impair the ability of the aggressor to finance its military campaign. In effect, no matter how powerful the United States is, it cannot entertain any chance of managing the world. The United States can and does act as the guarantor of the system of global capitalism and trade, but that’s the extent of its supernational power.

And yet, in the end, Symonds apparently recognizes that American power does have limits. Cautioning against militaristic hubris, the author wisely encourages Washington to follow the example of the Persian Gulf war, for a continual war on terror in the mold of the invasion of Iraq will only be counterproductive.

One clear lesson of history, however, is that no single nation has ever risen to dominance and stayed there. As George Kennan wrote in 1999, “Purely military power, even in its greatest dimensions of superiority, can produce only short term successes.” One reason is that unilateral global policing is enormously expensive. And another is that the wielding of great power inevitably breeds resentment.

In Napoleon’s Buttons, authors Le Couteur and Burreson set forth to show that “momentous events may depend on something as small as a molecule” (6). They seek to demonstrate that chemistry and chemicals have played an essential role in the course of history, and, in this reviewer’s mind, succeed rather brilliantly. Although the book is hardly without its flaws, it presents a compelling case that chemical compounds rightly deserve a place beside economic, political, and social factors in shaping the history of humankind.

Although written in an informal style for the lay-reader, the authors include a pleasantly rigorous discussion of chemistry. The book does an excellent job of describing the basic components of organic chemistry, and does so without delving too far into the torturous naming conventions that give it a bad name. Each of the molecular groups discussed in the work receives a thorough scientific evaluation, and the authors successfully maintain the unifying theme of how small differences in composition can lead to large differences in properties. Unfortunately, the exercise of dissecting molecular composition becomes tiresome at points, as formal training in chemistry is required to really understand what the differences in structure do. Nevertheless, the chemistry portions of the book were comprehensible and useful as background material.

The book is divided into seventeen chapters, each of which can be considered a standalone essay (although the authors do describe connections between different molecules as the book progresses). The authors freely admit that, although they consider the seventeen molecular families profiled in the book to be among the most important in world history, many people will disagree with their choices. Hydrocarbons (including oil and natural gas) are an obvious omission, especially since the 20th century was so affected by them and their uses. Uranium hexafluroide, representative of the nuclear revolution, is also quite surprisingly left off the list. Yet the real point of the book is not to make the case that these seventeen molecules are the most important, but instead to analyze the impact that chemistry has had on history. In that respect, these seventeen essays are interesting and instructive; reading this book provides an important perspective on history and its determinants.

The book was written by two chemists. On the upside, the scientific foundation established by the book is sturdy and complete. On the downside, the book’s approach to history is–to an extent–lackluster. Without the benefit of a professional historian as a coauthor, the book suffers from an unfortunately sparse analysis of the social, political, and economic impact of chemistry. All too often the authors ascribe chemistry an undue importance in shaping world history, simplify and minimize other factors, and fail to put their analysis in context and perspective. A deeper level of historical scholarship is, alas, not to be found in this work. Although they wisely place their introductory anecdote (about the brittle tin buttons of Napoleon’s army wrecking his Russian campaign) in perspective, they have a habit of getting zealously carried away elsewhere in the book. Nevertheless, the work accurately and compellingly portrays the need to incorporate chemistry into the framework of history. When put into perspective, the effects of chemistry offer valuable insight into history and world affairs.

One of the most fascinating sections comes early in the book, and involves the use of ascorbic acid to treat scurvy. The authors estimate that “for centuries, scurvy was responsible for more death at sea than all other causes; more than the combined total of naval battles, piracy, shipwrecks, and other illnesses” (40). Scurvy was of such a debilitating magnitude that it severely impeded exploration and overseas colonization; European nations were unable to claim and colonize much of the Pacific for centuries because of the scourge of the disease. Yet, as the authors chronicle, cures for scurvy had been fairly well documented and known for centuries. Famed British explorer James Cook was one of the first seafarers to systematically adopt the use of ascorbic acid in warding off scurvy, and was consequently crucial in helping the British to establish a dominant presence in Asia. His sharp, fit, and healthy crew was instrumental in his triumphs. Ironically, it was a false perception of the economics of shipping that slowed the adoption of ascorbic acid; merchants and naval planners across Europe mistakenly believed that the costs of equipping ships with a supply of citrus would outweigh the benefits of a healthier crew. The lessons of their misconceptions remain applicable to this day: the informed application of scientific theory triumphs over the common wisdom of tradition. Suppose, as the chapter’s conclusion does, that Spain, Portugal, or the Dutch had followed this principle centuries before the British finally did so. The Spanish empire would’ve probably been dramatically expanded to include such areas as Indonesia, stunting the rise of the Dutch Republic as the world’s foremost commercial power. Portugal could’ve expanded its colonial empire considerably. The Dutch might have laid formal claim to Australia and New Zealand before the British ever arrived. The histories of China, India, and Japan would no doubt have been irrevocably changed. Without the era of Pax Britannica, there’s no telling how world history would’ve been affected. All because of ascorbic acid.

Several other tidbits were particularly interesting. The book’s analysis of the social effects of oral contraception was spot on.

Norethindrone was more than just a fertility-controlling medication. Its introduction signaled the beginning of an awareness, not only of fertility and contraception, but of openness and opportunity, allowing women to speak out (and do something about) subjects that had been taboo for centuries–breast cancer, family violence, incest. The changes in attitudes in just forty years are astounding. With the option of having babies and raising families, women now govern countries, fly jet fighters, perform heart surgery, run marathons, become astronauts, direct companies, and sail the world. (222)

The book’s discussion of salt is similarly penetrating. The authors insightfully describe how in India (and other colonies), “control of salt supplies meant political and economic control” (305). The British were able to effectively control the salt trade in India, and in so doing cemented their grip on the country. One of the key events leading to the British loss of India was when it lost control of the salt trade following Gandhi’s famous protest. As Napoleon’s Buttons chronicles well, salt has been an integral substance in human history.

But, for this reviewer, the most insightful portion of the book came during the discussion of dyes. In particular, the lessons of how Germany “developed a huge organic chemical empire along with the technology and science on which it was based” (177). Many British and French chemical producers were “forced out of business as a result of an endless series of patent disputes over dyes and dye processes.” The British, apparently failing to see the value in chemistry, failed to invest much entrepreneurial and intellectual capital into the fledgling chemical industry. Instead, England began selling raw materials and chemical precursors to Germany, allowing Berlin to cultivate a high-tech chemical manufacturing base. The German government, on the other hand, did recognize the value of the chemical industry. There tended to be close cooperation between university scientists and industrial producers; that productive synergy was “vital to the success of the German chemical industry” (178). Furthermore, the development of this chemical empire put Germany in an excellent position to launch the pharmaceutical revolution. Significant financial capital could be reinvested in new research projects, such as aspirin. More importantly, along with Germany’s large chemical empire “came a new wealth of chemical knowledge, of experience with large-scale reactions, and of techniques for separation and purification that were vital for expansion into the new chemical business of pharmaceuticals.” The value of investing in technology and promoting research and development through synergistic partnerships between government, business, and the university system, as this teaches, must not be undervalued.

The book’s handling of cotton, however, was disappointing. This is, perhaps, the prime example of overzealousness in applying chemistry to history. The authors make the bold claim that “cellulose, in the form of cotton, was responsible for two of the most influential events of the nineteenth century: the Industrial Revolution and the American Civil War” (85). This is a serious overstatement, and the authors fail to substantiate either claim with sound historical analysis. While no historian would deny that cotton played a role in both, it’s erroneous to claim that cotton was the single driving factor behind either. The book’s analysis of the American Civil War is particularly galling. The authors claim that “slavery was the most important issue in the Civil War between abolitionist North and the southern states.” In fact, while slavery certainly played a role in triggering the war, it was primarily caused by deeper political factors. Questions over federalism and the power of the states, and significant differences in political culture (inflamed by economic divisions) both played bigger roles than slavery. Abraham Lincoln himself believed that maintaining the Union was more important than anything else, including the issue of slavery (the abolition of which he used in a tactical manner to maintain the northern coalition and deter the European powers from intervening on behalf of the Confederacy). The South’s production of cotton and the ensuing system of slavery, while important factors, do not deserve the importance ascribed to them. The Industrial Revolution was similarly brought about by a complex interaction of movements, technological and social changes, and politics. Although cotton was indeed an important factor leading to the Industrial Revolution, its role as described by the authors is a gross simplification.

Another historical anecdote of questionable value is found under the discussion of ergot alkaloids. These molecules infect foods and can cause medical epidemics. In the summer of 1722, Peter the Great was bringing a Cossack army down toward the Black Sea in order to accomplish his goal of securing a warm water part for Russia. While camped at Astrakhan, however, his troops consumed contaminated rye; “the resulting ergotism supposedly killed twenty thousand troops and so crippled the tsar’s army that his planned campaign against the Turks was aborted.” This is indubitable. However, the authors conclude by claiming that “Russia’s goal of a southern port on the Black Sea was stopped by ergot alkaloids.” This assertion is highly questionable. Even supposing Peter’s army penetrated all the way through Turkey (a doubtful proposition), and was able to capture a port, he lacked enough logistical support and firepower to hold onto his acquisitions. The Ottomans would have been all but certain to force him out. If they didn’t, and Peter somehow managed to defeat the Turks, Austria or Britain would have most assuredly intervened. Tipping the balance of power in Eastern Europe so dramatically would have invited a military response that Peter simply had no chance of countering.

Napoleon’s Buttons is a thoroughly interesting book analyzing the chemical properties and historical influences of various molecules. Although the authors have a tendency to get carried away with the importance of chemistry, they effectively convey the point that chemistry has been and continues to be an important factor in world history and current events. Despite the fact that the historical analysis is generally shallow and often not put in context, as a chronicle of chemistry and history this book finds success. Tepidly recommended.

The late IB Cohen was one of the most influential science historians of the 20th century, establishing the History of Science department at Harvard University and writing a number of memorable books. His final work, The Triumph of Numbers, just recently published, although narrow in scope, concerns itself with the impact of mathematics upon the course of science and history. In the style of an accessible lecture, Cohen explains the evolution of numbers as the framework of rigorous academic science; he provides a detailed look of the development of the mathematical infrastructure underpinning modern social science, and shows just how important this foundation is.

Cohen’s essay takes the reader on a tour of the relationship between mathematics and science through history, lavishing most of his attention on the period from the Scientific Revolution to the close of the 19th century. He shows how the Scientific Revolution was the period in which mathematics and the physical sciences became inextricably linked, and how the new attributes of this melding (particularly falsifiability) came to define the scientific method. Even more, he examines how numbers began to infiltrate the framework of governance and ordinary life. Practical considerations (such as operating militaries) gave impetus to the yet undeveloped field of statistics and analysis. As this field progressed, visionaries such as Quetelet (the founder of modern statistics) adopted mathematics to the study of the social sciences, fundamentally improving it. Cohen masterfully chronicles the course of this change, as well as the powerful figures like Dickens who stood in opposition to its path

Yet it is not the general theme of the book that most caught my attention. Throughout the essay, Cohen incorporates small segments discussing some of the more interesting applications of mathematics to society. Two of them in particular had me fascinated.

The first concerns the application of arithmetic to the issue of morality. Francis Hutcheson, one of the influential philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, devised algebraic expressions to “analyze the moral sense” (69). Cohen cites the example of Hutcheson’s attempt to compute the degree of morality of an action through the following equation: B = (M +- I) / A. “B” represents the virtue of the action, “M” is the quantity of good produced by the act, “I” stands for the self-interest in doing the act, and “A” is the doer’s natural ability to do good. Hutcheson’s equation and other work, rooted in virtue ethics, was nevertheless a precursor to Jeremy Bentham’s conception of utilitarianism. It represented an attempt to qualify virtue, and made the claim that happiness (public good) could be directly equated with virtue. Although the practicality of the model is questionable, it does mathematically represent some common sense representations of virtue. It shows, for instance, that “if two people have the same natural ability to do good (A), the one who produces more public good (M) is more benevolent (B). Conversely, if two people produce the same amount of public good, the one with more ability is less benevolent (since it was in that person’s ability to do more” (70). Hutcheson eventually came to the conclusion that virtue is the ratio of the quantity of good over the number of beneficiaries.

The second describes a dispute between statistician Quetelet and noted philosopher Comte. Quetelet called the application of mathematics to the study of society “social physics”; Comte, on the other hand, termed the scientific study of society “sociology.” Yet the difference was more than superficial; Quetelet and Comte had devised directly opposite systems for the study of society.

Comte believed in a pyramid of knowledge, with mathematics as the base, physics built on mathematics, then chemistry, then biology, and finally the crown of knowledge, sociology. This scheme implied a historical hierarchy since physics depended on mathematics, just as a true or “positive” science of chemistry needed physics for its construction. In a sense Comte’s scheme implied that to have a science of society, a sociology, a science of the behavior of human beings, it was first necessary to have a science of individual behavior, a “positive” science of biology

Quetelet’s approach was just the opposite. In his system there was no need to have a positive science of biology before creating a social physics. For him this new science was not reached by induction from the study of the behavior of individuals (sociology). Rather, Quetelet went directly by means of statistics to a science of collective behavior. (144)

Quetelet’s system of statistical analysis eventually superseded Comte’s conception of induction from the individual. As systems analysts have shown since, the emergent properties and extreme complexity of systems such as human society cannot be discovered through Comte’s approach. Quetelet rightly prevailed, despite his reliance on probabilities and chance.

For the discriminating reader looking for a book on the evolution of mathematics in analyzing society, this essay would make an excellent selection; it’s well written, reads quickly, and incorporates some gems of the past that have gotten lost in the modern shuffle. A fitting tribute to Mr. Cohen’s career indeed.

Attn: Posting for the next two weeks will be very sparse.