Society’s development cannot be explained by physical laws of quantity.

Evidence

Herewith is expressed the profound relation between relativity and society, which is the most immediate demonstration of relativity in regard to the material of humanity: society is the supra-singular structure which is nonetheless not abstract. Through this concept historical life is spared the alternatives of having to run either in mere individuals or in abstract generalities. Society is the generality that has, simultaneously, concrete vitality. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 274 (#expands, via linked claim)

This means that a group of individuals can always come together and can always give itself laws and a legislature; it can give itself a constitution. If that group of individuals does not have the capacity for commerce, handicrafts, and agriculture, or the ability to form an army, a magistrature, and so on, it will never, in historical terms, be a nation. It might be a nation in juridical terms, but never in historical terms. A contract, a law, or a consensus can never really create a nation. Conversely, it is perfectly possible for a group of individuals to have the wherewithal, the historical ability to develop works, to exercise functions, without ever having been given a common law anda legislature. Such people would, in a sense, be in possession of the substantive and functional elements of the nation; they are not in possession of its formal elements. They are capable of nationhood, but they will not be a nation. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 235 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Mechanical causality cannot account for qualitative change or historical novelty.; Law cannot create a nation that lacks material productive capacities — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 235; Societies only rise or fall when material conditions make it possible (+7 more)

Related

• Society’s laws cannot be physical laws because social aggregates transform quantitatively into quality (similarity 0.82)
• Society is a concrete generality neither reducible to individuals nor abstract (similarity 0.82)
• Numbers name the intermediate agent between individual and society that neither alone can enact (similarity 0.81)
• The nation is a construct, not a unit for social analysis (similarity 0.80)
• Human essence is the ensemble of social relations, not an individual abstraction (similarity 0.80)
• Systems theory cannot legitimately describe either science or society (similarity 0.80)
• Law cannot create a nation that lacks material productive capacities (similarity 0.79)
• Biology and abstract reason never united humans; concrete thought did (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Societies only rise or fall when material conditions make it possible #corroborates (0.95)
• Law cannot create a nation that lacks material productive capacities #corroborates (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 235
• Society is a concrete generality neither reducible to individuals nor abstract #expands (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 274
• Education and abstract values are unattainable without the material conditions that make them possible #corroborates (0.80) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 347
• Physical reality fails to match common sense, while mathematical reality does not #qualifies (0.75) — G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology, 262
• Theory develops unevenly, paced by practical necessities rather than its own logic #expands (0.70)