VWSN Note 0, November 2021
Pinker’s Better Angels and Dwyer & Micale’s Darker Angels:
an introduction to the VWSM website
VWSN Note 0, November 2021
Pinker’s Better Angels and Dwyer & Micale’s Darker Angels:
an introduction to the VWSM website
full text for paper (28 pages):
Pinker’s Better Angels and Dwyer & Micale’s Darker Angels
web page for paper:
In 2011 Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature was published. The intervening years have seen robust debate relating to Pinker’s thesis of declining violence. The debate has centred around a number of major issues. Now, in 2021, many of these issues have been addressed in Dwyer and Micale’s The Darker Angels of Our Nature; Refuting the Pinker Theory of History & Violence. These same issues are also addressed in my own work which is characterised by a Values, World Society and Modelling (VWSM) approach.
1 Steven Pinker’s book sets an exciting agenda
2 A decline in war death rates?
3 Worldwide violence … World Wars I and II
4 Complexity
5 Progress … the trajectory of value
6 Age, gender and ethnicity
7 Environment
8 Reason and emotion
9 Enlightenment
10 History
11 Debating different approaches
12 Academic disciplines … idea systems … religions … gods … debate
13 ‘Grand History’ and The Future
14 The four books
Chapter extracts for Dwyer & Micale’s Darker Angels
1 Steven Pinker’s book sets an exciting agenda
2 Time series: social value, violence and population
3 Power trajectories: Western Dominance and Eastern Growth: chapter
4 Ukraine 2014: Ukraine: united or divided? West and East; living with others: chapter
… Scotland: ‘our values’? more varied and less distinctive
5 Value Trajectories: Wellbeing, Wealth, Health, Peace and the Environment
6 Rules in society: age, gender, ethnicity and religion
… The USA: violent culture, ethnic structure. PART 2 Events
… The abstract structure of public opinion: the racism protests 2020
7 as above: Value Trajectories: Wellbeing, Wealth, Health, Peace and the Environment
8 Mathematics, logic, artificial intelligence and ordinary language
… Individuals: Activities, Happiness and Other Values, Emotion, Personality
9 ‘Our values’: the enlightenment … the prophet
10 World history: the growth and distribution dynamics of power, truth, value chapter
… World history: progress and destruction, independence and incorporation: chapter
… Power trajectories: Western Dominance and Eastern Growth: chapter
… Cultural trajectories: languages, religions and political cultures
as above: Value Trajectories: Wellbeing, Wealth, Health, Peace and the Environment
… Knowledge Trajectories: Fermat’s Last Theorem and Modularity
11 Debating the mathematical science approach to international relations: chapter
14 Conflict, Complexity and Mathematical Social Science. 2010. (CCMSS)
Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook, 2014. (YB14)
Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook, 2015. (YB15)
Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook, 2017. (YB17)
…
Earlier debate:
Review of Pinker’s Better Angels (Larry Ray, 2013?)
Dark diagnostics and idealized modernities (Larry Ray, 2014?)