Mark Jones writes that his difference with Steven Jay Gould is over the sense of progress in social systems. That the concept of contingency in Gould's evolutionary theories conflicts with "progress". While I am not able to speak about biology and give explanatory dilation upon the subject of contingency in biology, contingency is the perfect way to remove God from human agency. "Progressive" views require a rule within, whether genetic, or authority to make progress happen. Gould talks about how forms can happen in circumstances which allow such elaborations. The explosion of forms, selects for the shape of things, in a world as it is, and how could rules determine everything, except by a "God like" hand guiding things. One could say feudalism created the conditions for capitalism, but a comet could have hit earth in 1760 and poof all the subsequent history didn't occur. In a sense then contingency allows for human agency to create social systems given the whole of the systems form.
This is why some advocates of revolution will talk about you can't anticipate what a revolutionary society will look like, because you can't really anticipate such structures. There is no God like rule there to lead to revolution. And thus to this "revolutionary" to anticipate is always a reformist rather revolutionary tendency. Again Gould's way appeals to me a lot here. Previous evolutionary structures continue to exist after contingent change happens. We can anticipate future change, advocate different forms of change, but we can't truly know what will work best until the fires of practice sort out what works, and what doesn't. In addition during periods before change is possible the present social system acts to limit such change as much as is possible. One can see proposals for change happening all the time, but they seldom have the means to go beyond very limited first appearances. It is the conditions of change which allow certain things to really emerge at certain times. That is why Marxist can get excited about business downturns, because they are the preconditions for allowing various new forms to emerge from the destruction that happens during the last of the up business cycle. It is the room to change that is important. We can't know before hand what will be most important or we would have a God like control over events, but we must have the freedom to try as much as possible. Thanks Steven Jay Gould! regards, Doyle Saylor