A Unique Sociology of Knowledge: Sorokin and the New Physics in the Contemporary Age

• In Event: 50662 - Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Conflict and Theory

Abstract

Western civilization is in a period of transition. According to Harvard sociologist, Pitirim Sorokin (1941), we currently live in an extraordinary period in which there is a fundamental ontological change in Western consciousness. According to his theory, throughout the history of Western civilization, there has been a recurring pattern of “ontological shifts,” or changes in the collective understanding of fundamental reality, that occurs in a cyclical pattern. According to Sorokin, the collective understanding of reality periodically switches from “sensate” to “ideational” to “ideological,” and then back again to “sensate,” over and over again.
Recent discoveries in physics and mathematical-physical models, such as the double-slit experiment and chaos theory, reinforce Sorokin’s predictive model. These discoveries and models indicate that we are currently moving from a sensate society to an ideational and ultimately to an ideological society. According to these discoveries, no longer is what we take to be reality adequately described through a Newtonian/Cartesian model in which human beings are “objectively” understood as separate, individual machines, with narrow interaction within closed physical environments. Reality is better described, instead, according to a model in which human beings are conscious, acutely interactive entities with potentially heightened agency.
Positive theories in criminology and sociology, which have its impetus with the mechanistic world view, should take head this new message of an interactive, nonreductive, subjectivity. Acknowledging a subject-researcher dialectic and holding qualitative methods in higher esteem are a couple of ways social sciences can properly reflect these new models. In addition, practicing non-reductive practices, such as meditation, should be encouraged.

Author

• James Michael Botts, Central State University