From Globalization to Chaos – (application of entropy measure)

Shahab Sabahi

Energy and Environment for Development – Policy Analysis Research Group

With applying the philosophical reasoning approach (see my previous post), I examine the link between globalization and expecting more confrontations. In science, there is an analytical measure, it is called entropy, that being employed to evaluate phenomena which directly dominate human’s life. It can be used to explain aging, society decay, stability life, information, language, codifications, norms and cultures. According to this measure, the trends for the all phenomena tend to converge toward a universal trend for equalization, like the concept of globalization. Globalization has its adherent dynamics which force the whole system to equalization and developing a universal norm. In scientific term it means that an increase in global entropy. It is going to create an equivalent thermal death. There is another philosophical explanation that brings some hope that an open system, as our life system is, may not follow the entropy increasing direction. Chaos theory (I. Prigogine) explains chaotic moves keep a system away from reaching that equalization condition.    

With this perspective, S. Huntington’s “clash of civilizations and new world order” is rather philosophically described a natural phenomenon than posits just a hypothesis.