Zurvan Theory

Zurvan theory: A complex systems approach towards agent-structure interactions

Sherwin Vakili

USERN Congress, Tehran, 10^th November 2016

Abstract

Zurvan, which refers to Ancient Persian deity of time, is a name for an inter-disciplinary sociological theory of agent-structure interactions. A theory to analyze the how-why questions related to recursive causal interactions between the “I” (which is philosophically formulated as subject) and social institutions (which are usually mentioned as inter-subjective grand structures). This abstract just covers axiomatic format of its conceptual elements, and should be regarded as a brief overview.

Keywords

Zorvan Theory, complex systems, integral theory, hierarchy, self-organization, focal factor, auto-poietic systems, self, social structure, evolutionary processes

Introductory points

A fundamental question -which has been heavily debated on by sociologists and anthropologists throughout last three decades- is the nature of interaction between mind-bearing self-conscious “persons” and large scale social, political, cultural and economic structures which seems to limit and even determine personal patterns of behavior and contents of conscious mind. From 1990’s on, it seems more and more obvious that traditional reductionist approaches are insufficient, and there is a systemic and integral methodology in need, which can analyze multifactorial processes and use divergent bunches of related data, in an interdisciplinary and synergistic way.

The theory which is formulated in a very brief format in this article is a conclusive research which started in early 1990’s from a neurophysiological starting point, and lead to psycho-sociological questions. At first, the synergic nature of conscious information processing in the brain and emergence of self-conscious understanding of perceptual contents was the core problematic, but it eventually escalated to questions in the field of humanity and social sciences. The key transitional point in this intermingling of lab-based biological subject matters and discursive problems of social science was accepting the fact that there is a leakage of information processing via symbolic systems in an interpersonal level, which interconnects and sometimes functionally unifies the content of individual “minds”.

These sets of questions combined insights from different disciplines –from philosophy of mind and sociobiology to political sociology and social psychology- and lead to a “complex systems” theory to model patterns of agency-social structure interactions and explain some related key concepts. In this theory the emergence of psychological entities and evolution of social structures is formulated by three different layers of time-creating processes, and because of centrality of temporal patterns in the model, it is entitled Zurvan (which means ‘time’ in ancient Persian languages). This theory have been published as seven books and a set of articles in Persian (1998-2013)^[1] and here we just look its abstract conceptual scaffold, rather than dealing with methodological details or presenting its applications in specific fields. However it may be mentioned that this theoretical model have been used to analyze and reformulate the content of Iranian historical, philosophical and mythological heritage, which is by its own right published in three related packages of academic books and articles.

Hierarchical levels of psycho-social phenomena

There are at least four descriptive hierarchical levels in which a thorough model of self must be established on:

Biological level: contains the micro-scale physico-chemical processes which create and maintain life in its material corporality. Unit of functional self-organization in this level is “body”, whose evolutionary dynamism is formulated in modern biology.
Psychological level: refers to “software” that works through the hardware of brains, and may be dubbed personality system. Basic phenomena situated in this level are human brain processing outputs such as memory, emotions and rationality. In this level we experience the self-conscious “I”.
Sociological level: is a macro-scale descriptive field which contains all inter-personal functions. Core system of this level is social institution, which is defined as a system of three or more psychological entities who have a stable and repetitive symbolic interactions, so that there emerges a functional unity.
Cultural level: is a macro field of semantic formal systems. Due to its software-like nature, its relationship with social phenomena is somehow like interactions of psychology-biology levels. This domain contains a basic system of self-replicative symbolic structure, something like Dawkins’ memes^[2] or Luhmann’s ‘theme’,^[3] which is redefined in Zurvan model and is called a “Manesh”, rooted in ancient Persian word for “thinking”. Each Manesh is a cultural element that can be transferred from one psychological system to another via symbolic media, in which natural languages are the most prominent.

These levels are more or less alike Talcott Parson’s AGIL model of social systems. The main differences are that in Zurvan there is an insistence on evolutionary self-organizing dynamics of each layer, and an additional stress on the fact that they are supposed to be understood as mere descriptive levels, born from a methodological necessity, rather than a real ontological bifurcation in external ‘beings’. So, we are dealing with a unified and integrated self, which is subtracted to four levels of description.

Each layer of this descriptive machine contains a basic evolutionary system, which is an auto-poietic self-organizing functional unit. It means that bodies, personality systems, institutions and Maneshes each are evolutionary systems that by cycles of replication, mutation and natural selection may experience an increase of their internal complexity. Complexity itself may be quantified as number of system’s elements multiplied by density of connections and communicative actions.

So, there are four basic evolutionary systems which combine to create the subject/ self, plus its grand scale socio-cultural products. Each of these systems is analytically a self-referent hyper-cycle of information processing functions. Which makes room for increasing of complexity via synchronically expansion of stablished processes in space-time (growth) or diachronically duplication of system’s genetic information (reproduction).

As mentioned before, these layers are extracted from an epistemological perspective, which is rooted in our cognitive instruments. It means that ontologically we have just one conclusive and holistic being, which must be reduced to hierarchical descriptive territories for the sake of epistemic convenience. We may define the boundary of each of these descriptive territories by referring to factors which may be summarized as in table-1.

Besides possessing an autonomous evolutionary system in each layer, which is its structural main character, there are different tempo of processes in each system that by itself determines a unique timescale for each level. What we consciously perceive is psychological tempo, based on seconds. In biological layer we may discriminate phenomena which usually have a micro-second tempo. On sociological level we have a linear institutional time, traditionally divided by days and day-parts, but as an evolutionary pattern of complexity expansion in social systems, we observe the growing accuracy of time-processing units, upgraded to hours and minutes in modern times. In cultural level the tempo is harmonized by upcoming generations, and so its timescale is in decade-century order. The same can be said about spatial dimension of emerging phenomena of each layer.

Table-1: four descriptive hierarchical layers

Global attractors and teleonomy

We may abbreviate four hierarchical descriptive levels as BPSC (Biological-Psychological- Social- Cultural). As we mentioned earlier, there is a basic evolutionary system in each layer that relates to Subject-Self and overall determines its integral dynamism. These are bodies, personality systems, social institutions and Maneshes, which themselves may be abbreviated as BPIM.

Each basic system of BPIM possess an innate goal that determines its information processing mechanisms, and by doing so, statistically shapes system’s organized behavior. In biological level there is a known and standardized global attractor which is survival fitness. In psychological perspective a bulk of documents parallel to our intuitive insight shows that the main aim of the system is pleasure. In social systems the main teleological factor is power, which may be codified and quantified as money, votes or prestige. Maneshes in cultural layer have a global attractor of their own, which may be titled as meaning and defined as semantic content of the replicating symbolic system. Each innate goal is an objective and experimentally conceivable factor, so that system’s behavior is mainly concentrated on its maximization.

Each global innate goal emerges from lower level attractors and is under influence of objectives of upper layers. Biological fitness is a factor emerging from parallel genetic and physiological information processes in micro and macro biological levels. This innate aim may be formulated and processed in neural systems, and this is an evolutionary pathway that leads to differentiation of reward system in the brain, which itself is the hardware anchor of psychological pleasure. Social power itself is emerging from this psychological concept. Power is the phase-space of behavioral choices, when added up to probability of success in choosing them. It means that if agent A have a sum of possible behavioral reservoir which is statistically more inclusive and more ‘unexpected’ (have a richer information content) than B, and if average probability of successful performing of them in A is more than B, then A have more power than B.

This concept of power may refer to a social system, or metaphorically to a psychological entity which is active in that social context. Usually power is a social translation for resource availability, meaning the potential of a system to gain and guard common resources which in psychological level creates pleasure or in biological level maintains life. Meaning may be seen as an emerging property of social systems, which codifies, classifies and categorizes the complex patterns of social interactions in an abstract context.

Therefore, there are four main innate goals, each of them organizes and regulates behaviors in one of the four BPIM systems. These four factors (fitness, pleasure, power and meaning) can then be abbreviated as FPPM. Each of these attractors are interconnected with one another and emerge from lower level functions. They may be translated, interpreted and compiled in (but not reduces to) other hierarchical levels. It means that they have a functional independence and that is why we have four different layers of BPSC and four distinct systems of BPIM, which are ontologically integrated and wholesome.

Problems and solutions

There are plenty of problems which may be addressed by this theoretical paradigm, and there are numerous articles available that formulate them. Here we may just mention some of them briefly. Among them, these questions are more urgent from a strategic point of view:

The problem of resource conflict, which leads to competitive win/lose interactional choices. We may learn from the Zurvan theory that this ‘myth of resource constancy’ is a fallacy which may be explained as an evolutionary by-product. Resources are limited just in biological level and because of this layer’s ancient evolutionary roots, this stress of scarcity generalizes to other levels of BPSC. So, the accessible win/win policies may be neglected. This myth of constancy of (pleasure, power, meaning) resources in psychological level may create some self-damaging behavior such as ascetic lifestyle.
The problem of FPPM divergence and incongruence, is a condition in which choosing a procedure to maximize one factor in FPPM set, lowers down the others. As an example we may refer to drug addiction, which activates pleasure system of the brain via chemical abuse and simultaneously suppresses the other three. As is said, four layers and four systems and four global attractors are ontologically integrated and unified. The divergence of the factors which are functionally and evolutionarily fused and coherent needs to be explained as a systemic malfunctions which is emerging because of BPIM functional autonomy, and ‘capture’ of one global attractor by the other.
The problem of cognition-practice- taste integration, which is the need to interpret and unify (if possible) epistemic, ethic and aesthetic propositions and contents. In Zurvan we may translate all three Kantian domains into functions of FPPM optimization. So we can introduce a naturalized epistemology-ethics-aesthetics. FPPM are objective and practical factors, so our model of analyzing and interpreting epistemo-ethico-aesthetic values may be formulated in a scientific language.
The problem of Self originality, which is usually interpreted in modern-postmodern conflict. In Zurvan model psychological level with around a hundred billion processor units (neurons) and their average ten thousand interconnections (synapses) is the most complex layer of BPSC. It means that Luhmannian reduction of self to Action-Communication processes^[4] (which is equal to sociological-cultural levels in our model) is not possible. ‘I’ is an autonomous, self-conscious, and semantically self-referent system and it cannot be ontologically dissolved in other entities.

Applications

This integral model can be used for multi-layer self-society-civilization analysis. Evolutionary pathways or cognito-emotional systems may be understood in an accurate sense by parallel analyzing of biological, social and cultural systems. In the same sense evolutionary patterns emerging in societal, national or civilizational levels can be better understood if it be intermingled with other BPSC processes.

Most importantly, we may objectively evaluate the FPPM content of socio-cultural movements and socio-political choices and by doing so judging them justly. Malfunctions that eradicates systemic complexity can be analyzed and defective hyper-cycles and incompetent pathways may be discriminated, and possibly reformed and rehabilitated.

This theoretical paradigm is used to critically inspect modernity as a civilizational framework. Also it has been applied to evaluate the content of Iranian civilization in its ancient and long lasting history and its vast geographical expression, which in present day contains about thirty countries and a population of more than 300 millions. It seems that some psychological or ethical elements of Iranian culture–such as concept of Charisma ( ) and Justice ( )- can be used to criticize and rewrite the concept of modern subject, as well as other social and cultural regularities. Outstandingly among them, Mehr (love + covenant) is powerful alternative to solve modern problem such as mechanized violence, political unrest and environmental ill-treatment.

References

Dawkins, Richard, Selfish gene, (London: Academic press, 1979).

Luhmann, Niklas, Social Systems, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995).

Vakili, Sherwin, Complex Systems Theory, (Tehran: ShourAfarin Pub., 2010 (1389 H.)).

Vakili, Sherwin, Theory of power, (Tehran: ShourAfarin Pub., 2010 (1389 H.)).

Vakili, Sherwin, Theory of Manesh, (Tehran: ShourAfarin Pub., 2010 (1389 H.)).

Vakili, Sherwin, Psychology of self-image, (Tehran: ShourAfarin Pub., 2010 (1389 H.)).

Vakili, Sherwin, Zurvan’s Graal (Jaam-e Jam-e Zurvan), (Tehran: ShourAfarin Pub., 2014 (1393 H.)).

Vakili, Sherwin, On Time, (Tehran: ShourAfarin Pub., 2012 (1391 H.)).

Vakili, Sherwin, Time, Language and Women, (Tehran: ShourAfarin Pub., 2012 (1391 H.)).