I missed the Conference on Computational Science last week, but found myself very moved by comments by David Allen sent to David Lazer, that David posted in his blog. What Allen heard, in the give and take of presentations on the ways that data can elucidate human interactions and connections, was further evidence of the paradigm shift from the current worldview (“neoclassical economic thinking”) to the view of the social network. He states:

Social network analysis would vary from the neoclassical view particularly in two fateful ways, I suggest: Rather than begin from static equilibria (borrowed of course from physics, earlier), dynamics are ‘natural’ to social network analysis. More, neoclassicism takes off from the individual, or individual firm; there is no place, really, for connections among the atoms. Social network analysis comes at phenomena, of course, from exactly the opposite direction.

One aspect of the evidence is that apparently researchers who focus on the social network are having difficulty finding publications that will accept papers that come from this new worldview. It does take a leap, to think that it’s all about the connections and not just the nodes. But the network is the connections and the nodes. If we are in a period in which we can live with complexity and dynamism, can’t we also accept the the AND here?

Allen naturally tips the hat to Thomas Kuhn, whose book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions had a profound impact on my thinking (not to mention my world view). He also quotes (much to my delight) the Max Planck version of how worldviews change: “Science advances one funeral at a time.”