ABSTRACT
For most social scientists-perhaps anthropologists especially-there has always been an intuitive awe of the mysterious complexity of any society from huntergatherer to those labeled “complex.” This intuition also is consistent with the realization that change, no matter the scale and intensity, is ever present. Then another feature has always been obvious-there is nothing equivalent to a “central planning authority” that organizes and directs the shape of social and cultural systems-they “emerge” over time through the countless behaviors and thoughts of their participants. Social scientists, likewise, realize that explanations of social phenomena and their changes do not lend themselves easily to reductionist explanations. Causes are many and difficult to sort according to their weight, scale, or influence upon the phenomena in question. We can refer here to the holistic and multicausal perspectives especially prevalent in anthropology. Finally, social scientists tend to abstract their study domains as “systems”—political, social, economic, medical, and religious, among others. These are seen as “greater than the sum of their parts”—that is, they have a character that is significantly different from their internal ingredients, such as peoples, ideologies, behaviors, and technology.
