The prediction of social catastrophes: Between necessity and contingency

Abstract

AbstractThe article argues that social catastrophes are the product of networks of unsaturated social relations that lead to the exponential spread of a social evil (pandemic, poverty, desertification, etc.). In the exponential curve of catastrophe there is an inflection point where, if unsaturated social relations are saturated, the catastrophe can be halted and ultimately avoided. The inflection point can be conceived as a generative relational complex in which both necessity and contingency of social relations are at work. Necessity is due to constitutive mechanisms that are automatic and, therefore, to some extent mathematically predictable. Contingency refers to non‐automatic, in principle unpredictable relational mechanisms. However, contingency can be of two kinds. It can mean “dependence on” other factors, which can have some degree of predictability, or can be understood as the possibility of “being otherwise”, which is less predictable in its outcomes, but can also open up new opportunities to change the catastrophic trend. The reduction of the exponential curve to logistics can be expected if the networks of relationships at the inflection point are saturated in one way or another. This can be achieved by managing the contingent factors of both types in order to steer the morphogenetic processes of the social networks that configure the inflection point as a relational complex.