Understanding Change

1. Models, Methodologies, and Metaphors on the Move
Andreas Wimmer

Part I. Chaos and Order in Climate Change

2. Climate Change: Complexity, Chaos and Order
Paul Higgins

3. Chaos in Social Systems: Assessment and Relevance
L. Douglas Kiel

4. Economics, Chaos and Environmental Complexity
Hans-Walter Lorenz

Part II. Genetic Variation in Evolution

5. The Topology of the Possible
Walter Fontana

6. Neutrality as a Paradigm of Change
Rudolf Stichweh

7. Using Evolutionary Analogies in Social Science: Two Case Studies
Edmund Chattoe

Part III. Economics of Continuity: Path Dependency

8. The Grip of History and the Scope for Novelty: Some Results and Open Questions on Path Dependence in Economic Processes
Carolina Castaldi, Giovanni Dosi

9. Analyzing Path Dependence: Lessons from the Social Sciences
James Mahoney

10. Path Dependence and Historical Contingency in Biology
Eörs Szathmáry

Part IV. Institutional Inertia

11. The New Institutional Economics: Can It Deliver for Change and Development?
Jeffrey B. Nugent

12. Institutions, Politics and Culture: A Case for ‘Old’ Institutionalism in the Study of Historical Change
John Harriss

13. Exporting Metaphors, Concepts and Methods from the Natural Sciences to the Social Sciences and vice versa
Raghavendra Gadagkar

Part V. The Multilinear Modernization of Societies

14. Multiple Modernities in the Framework of a Comparative Evolutionary Perspective
Samuel N. Eisenstadt

15. On Modernity and Wellbeing
Oded Stark

16. Multiplicity in Non-Linear Systems
Somdatta Sinha

Part VI. Constellations of Contingency: Political History

17. Historical-Institutionalism in Political Science and the Problem of Change
Ellen M. Immergut

18. Social Science and History: How Predictable Is Political Behavior?
Roger D. Congleton

19. Reconstructing Change in Historical Systems: Are There Commonalties Between Evolutionary Biology and the Humanities?
Joel Cracraft

20. History, Uncertainty, and Disciplinary Difference: Concluding Observations by a Social Scientist
Reinhart Kössler

Keywords: Social Sciences, Social Theory, Evolutionary Biology, Environment, general, Intellectual Studies, Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods, Sociology, general