I was going to mention this guy with a dark ages theory I encountered about 15 years ago, as an example of how not to go about thinking on this issue, but I see Rags has dredged his opus up. It suffers from the usual problems when someone from a hard science like physics tries his hand in the social sciences. They come up with elaboate theories that are largely based on their own analysis. This is a fool's errand. If it were possible to construct a valid theory of dark ages from armchair theorizing, it would have been done long ago and demonstrated to work.
Even in physics they build on the work of others. A valid social theory is going to build on the work of others. I believe there is a role for natural scientists is this endeavor, but I do not think they are going to come from physics. Biology is a better field since it deals with complex living systems: procaryotic cells, eucaryotic cells, and complex combinations of eucaryotic cells (animals and plants) that themsleves interact with themselves and the enviroment in ecosystem ensembles. People are one kind of animal interacting in an ecosystem.
Over the last century biology has become a mature science with the discovery of evolution, biochemistry, genetics, and mathematical formulations of the evolution of populations of biological organisms. They are now about where physics was in the 19th century. And like with the "hard" sciences like physics and chemistry, a lot of technology based on biology has been developed that works. We live longer, we invented antibiotics (a direct application of evolution). We can now modfied organisms (applications of evolution, genetics, biochemistry). Mathematical frameworks for the behavior of populations of animals and plants in an evironment has been developed.
It is this discipline of natural (and increasingly "hard") scientists who have the best chance of making a contribution to social science. To do so they have to move up a notch in complexity from the natural systems to the much more complex interactions humans (who have gigantic brains which function to manage social releationships) in highly artifical environments of their own creation. And to do they they are going to have to really on the previous work of large numbers of social scientists so as avoid going into blind alleys like this dark ages guy (and all the other similar stuff I've seen) have done.
Even in physics they build on the work of others. A valid social theory is going to build on the work of others. I believe there is a role for natural scientists is this endeavor, but I do not think they are going to come from physics. Biology is a better field since it deals with complex living systems: procaryotic cells, eucaryotic cells, and complex combinations of eucaryotic cells (animals and plants) that themsleves interact with themselves and the enviroment in ecosystem ensembles. People are one kind of animal interacting in an ecosystem.
Over the last century biology has become a mature science with the discovery of evolution, biochemistry, genetics, and mathematical formulations of the evolution of populations of biological organisms. They are now about where physics was in the 19th century. And like with the "hard" sciences like physics and chemistry, a lot of technology based on biology has been developed that works. We live longer, we invented antibiotics (a direct application of evolution). We can now modfied organisms (applications of evolution, genetics, biochemistry). Mathematical frameworks for the behavior of populations of animals and plants in an evironment has been developed.
It is this discipline of natural (and increasingly "hard") scientists who have the best chance of making a contribution to social science. To do so they have to move up a notch in complexity from the natural systems to the much more complex interactions humans (who have gigantic brains which function to manage social releationships) in highly artifical environments of their own creation. And to do they they are going to have to really on the previous work of large numbers of social scientists so as avoid going into blind alleys like this dark ages guy (and all the other similar stuff I've seen) have done.