Energy, Technology, Disease and Hygiene

Forget for a moment about all of the specifics of form and think for a moment about the basis of power. The physics of it even.

P = ΔW/Δt

In social terms, power is the ability to get work done in a certain amount of time. Work, of course, is simply application of energy.

W = ΔE

So power, including social power, is the ability to bring a certain amount of stored energy to bear on a problem within a given time. This means that social actors looking to exert power want to be able to store energy, and then apply it.

In the modern world, this is made incredibly complex by things like fossil fuels, which are huge storehouses of energy that can by used very quickly, and electricity, which is a relatively efficient means of transferring energy from one place to another quickly.

So let's step back to the premodern context. Energy still came in all the forms that it comes in now: mechanical energy, chemical energy, light, heat... The major difference was that the ability to collect, store, convert and apply energy were much more limited.

The ultimate source of energy is light, which plants convert to stored chemical energy. This energy can then be stored or converted into mechanical energy by animals, or to heat and light by burning. In a more indirect and less important sense, it can be converted into a peculiar form of potential energy in the form of structures.

But basically, we are concerned with mechanical energy, because this has been the primary form in which social actors wanted to exert power. In some sense, human history is the story of collecting and applying mechanical energy. In the premodern context, the power of an individual was largely determined by his or her own ability to convert energy. The power of an institution depended largely on how many people and animals it could control, and thereby make use of their energy. A family generally wanted as many children as it could feed so that it could use their labor. A state likewise wanted as many subjects as it could control, so that it could make use of their labor.

From the case of a single individual gathering plants, to the highly complex premodern empires with systems of taxation and warfare, the system at its root was about getting the most humans (and labor animals) to convert the most plants into energy. This energy could be applied in public works, in creating art, in warfare...whatever. Surplus labor for these things was a matter of surplus mechanical energy, primarily in human form. The development of complex states out of small kin-groups was essentially a matter of developing better technologies to create and organize this surplus. We can make the simplifying categorization of this into two forms of technology:

1. Production technology, generally physical technology.
   
2. Control technology, generally social technology.

The first form of technology comes in many varieties - anything that converts more vegetable matter into human. This most notably included agriculture and its many developments, although things like wind and water mills also produced energy, this was largely non-transferable. The second form of technology was mostly things that we might call "culture" or "institutions," although other things like grain storage also came into play.

So a quick set of examples. An early state, developed around irrigation would produce higher crop yields, and in turn a larger population that could be harnessed for its projects. These crop yields could also be stored, to a limited extent, for feeding future populations and making use of their labor in the future. But this was the only reason to store grain! In the second set of technologies, means of organizing and controlling this expanded population, to get them to build the pyramids or wage war for example, were also developed.

This hints at the major complication, which is that development of one type of technology tended to spur development of the other type. An increased population could not easily be controlled by the same institutions used to manage smaller ones. Likewise, bigger, well-organized populations could be funneled into developing more efficient means of gathering chemical energy in plant form. This is, in some ways a more general form of the Wittfogel thesis that despotic states emerged to control and organize the surplus of irrigation projects.

But its more complex than that. As the elder McNeil pointed out, the surplus of stored energy represented in a growing demographic base was subject to the predations of both micro- and macro-parasites, i.e. diseases and states. The concentration of stored energy created a breeding ground for both new social forms of extraction and for the maintenance of endemic disease. So in extracting and applying more of its population's energy, a state had to compete with plagues.

Both micro- and macro-parasites are further subject to the rule of network effects and the power law. That is to say, as ever-larger systems became integrated, they were more sensitive to propagating failures. Larger empires are more subject to collapse from even localized rebellion and disorder; larger markets are more subject to collapse from even localized recession; larger demographic pools are more subject to disease epidemics.

Thus, through much of history, as new production technologies expanded the energy (aka population) base, the chance of system failure increased. This would typically result in a cycle of dynastic rise, period of division, and the subsequent rise of a new empire, generally built around a new control technology.

It is especially worth noting that these control technologies existed at all scales, and came to include many things that now appear as things that can be grouped under the overdetermined term "hygiene" - everything from ethnicity to manners to epidemiology. I would argue that the changing nature of this term reflected the changing nature of the disease threat. Avoidance of certain foods has always been a good way of preventing diseases from crossing over to humans from their animal source. Race and ethnic taboos likely had their origin in keeping disease pools separate, perhaps in order to prevent cascading system failure by keeping sub-networks partially separated. As this became increasingly difficult, manners perpetuated forms of social separation, and personal hygiene came to encompass things like regular bathing. At the dawn of modernity, the integration of disparate supply networks in goods (as well as people) created a greater need for public health professionals and the modern concept of hygiene.

But control technologies existed in other forms as well. In the economic realm, coinage, finance etc provided more efficient extraction, storage, and some protection against system failure. But these technologies only made sense in an already-connected world.

This is only a preliminary sketch attempting to integrate a variety of very different theories.

Reading list:
McNeil, Plagues and Peoples
McNeil, Something New Under the Sun
Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts
Wittfogel, Hydraulic Despotism
Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity
Evans, Death in Hamburg
Mennel, Norbert Elias: An Introduction
Johnson, The Ghost Map
Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel