Social change selects among available ideas rather than dictating belief

Evidence

By examining the transition from the organism to the machine as the dominant metaphor binding together the cosmos, society, and the self into a single cultural reality—a world view—I place less emphasis on the development of the internal content of science than on the social and intellectual factors involved in the transformation. Of course, such external factors do not cause intellectuals to invent a science or a metaphysics for the conscious purpose of fitting a social context. Rather, an array of ideas exists, available to a given age; some of these for unarticulated or even unconscious reasons seem plausible to individuals or social groups; others do not. Some ideas spread; others temporarily die out. But the direction and cumulation of social changes begin to differentiate among the spectrum of possibilities so that some ideas assume a more central role in the array, while others move to the periphery. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 66

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Merchant’s model of idea-selection — differential plausibility and cumulation of social change rather than conscious invention — is a genuinely nuanced account of cultural transformation worth sitting with in any theories-of-change course.
• XREF: connects to: New social knowledge alters the social world rather than merely describing it — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 363; Societies absorb new ideas only when those ideas do not threaten core beliefs — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1397; New conceptions spread by rational form, authority, or organisational membership — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1214 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• New social knowledge alters the social world rather than merely describing it #complicates (0.72) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 363
• Societies absorb new ideas only when those ideas do not threaten core beliefs #qualifies (0.72) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1397
• New conceptions spread by rational form, authority, or organisational membership #expands (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1214
• The truth of ideas is independent of their social origins #complicates (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 210