Books and Other Resources
The following list is provisional, just the books that have been
located so far, and may well be replaced when better readings are
found.
Dynamics of a nation among nations
Regarding vector forces:
Nation-Building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq edited by Francis Fukuyama.
The Origins of Political Order: From
Prehuman Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama.
Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama.
Fukuyama does not explicitly mention vectors. However, he exhibits the
forces that could be represented by vectors and that interact with each
other to form a complex network of forces that steer the courses of
nations.
www.techlib.com/science/vectorpolitics.htm So far
this is the only explicit use of vectors to describe politics that I
have found.
("Economic applications of vectors are quite important and numerous."*
However, the use of multiple vectors to analyze more general categories
of human activities is not common, probably because it would be
mathematically problematical if not impracticable due to many vectors
being cross-linked in unknown ways. Maybe it will still be possible to
find some academic sources on this subject.)
Regarding system theory:
System theory is a mental model used to understand the different
ways in which various kinds of mechanisms (in the broadest possible
sense) function.
• Structurally complex systems (for example a space shuttle) are linear
systems and the norm is for all effects to be proportional to the
causal factors that lie behind them.
• Interactively complex systems (for example a high school home room
class) have components that are loosely linked and therefore they are
nonlinear systems. Besides being difficult to predict how these systems
will operate, they also generally exhibit emergent behaviors. (These
components could be measured and represented by vectors.) See the video
of a talk by General Carl van Riper here.
Sources of Power: How People Make
Decisions by Gary Klein
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
See a related
video on decisions made under conditions of uncertainty.
Science of the Artificial by
Herbert Simon
Regarding chaos theory:
"Chaos" is a misnomer, but we'll have to put up with it. It is not true to say that
in a so-called chaotic situation such as a weather system, anyone can
predict accurately as far into the future as one might like. It is also
not true that one will find weather changing from clear skies all over
the western half of the North American continent to a violent
thunderstorm over Sacramento in five minutes. Deviations from
predictions are small in the beginning hours, larger in the first few
days but still generally useful, but the farther from the time of
making the prediction the larger the likely error becomes.
Chaos: Making a New Science,
by James Gleick
Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992) by M. Mitchell Waldrop
Politics
The Problem of Political Authority:
An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey by
Michael Huemer
Evolution of Cooperation by
Robert Axelrod
Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
Economics
Economics in One Lesson, Henry
Hazlitt
Discussion:
PEM: I think this book is one-sided. What is
a fair
wage for workers is not even discussed. It is assumed that workers will
get enough, and that it is fair that the employer get the balance less
taxes.
The Making of Modern Economics: The
Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers, by Mark Skousen
Development as Freedom,
Amartya Sen
Sociology
NurtureShock: New Thinking About
Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
The Social Construction of Reality
by Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T.
The Presentation of Self in Everyday
Life by Goffman, Erving
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,
by Ruth Benedict
Anthropology
Bowling Alone by Robert D.
Putnam
A Cooperative Species: Human
Reciprocity and Its Evolution by Samuel Bowles
Evolution of the Social Contract, by
Brian Skyrms
Philosophy
The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition by Thomas S. Kuhn
Kantian Ethics:
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gaskilld/ethics/Kantian%20Ethics.htm
Anup Shah, War,
Propaganda and the Media, Global Issues, Updated:
March 31, 2005
Thinking Things Through: An Introduction to Logic, by Maylon H. Hepp
Military science
How to think about warfare (more fundamental than strategy lessons,
tactic lessons, etc.)
Overview:
The Art of War: War and Military
Thought, by Martin Van Creveld
James Holmes, Professor of Strategy, Naval War College, lists five
"greatest military strategists" at
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-greatest-military-strategists-all-time-11069
Primary sources:
Master Sun's Art of War (Many
translations) [Patrick Edwin Moran's translation] Martin Van Creveld regards Sun Wu's book as the best text on military theory ever written.
On War by Carl von Clausewitz
[online] This book is regarded by many as a
theory of war has stood the test of time.
John Boyd's modern ideas [Site
1] [Site
2] [Site 3]
Note: Boyd did not write books, and there may be no
permanent repository of the papers and "briefings" that he wrote.
Secondary
sources:
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, and The Cold War: A New History by John
Lewis Gaddis, on non-linear systems
Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Gary Klein
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Preparing for War in the 21st Century
by Generals Robert H. Scales and Paul K. Van Riper
Future Warfare Anthology ed.
General Robert H. Scales
Video talk on butterfly-effect (non-linear) warfare by General Paul K.
Van Riper who directed the disruptive red
team of Millenium Challenge 2002
Defining and Teaching Grand Strategy
by Timothy Andrews Sayle
Strategies of Containment by John Lewis Gaddis
"International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War."
International Security, Winter 1992/93, pp.5- 58; by John Lewis Gaddis
"Chaos, Complexity, and Contemporary History," Think Piece Series
N0.30, Athens, OH: Contemporary History Institute, May 1994; by John
Lewis Gaddis
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). by John Lewis Gaddis
Ancillary readings
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Asssments
"Regaining Strategic Competence"
Joint Force Quarterly
Various articles on strategy
Inside (National Defense
University)
Strategists and Strategy
Practicum in strategy and tactics
Moving Zen, C. W. Nicol [External Reviews]
Zhuang Zi and the Fully Realized Human This book is dedicated to those in the line of fire. It is free, but only via this link.
Deception 101—Primer on Deception. Joseph W. Caddell
guests