Valence
= "the combining power of an element, its capacity to dock and bond with another." [1]
Definition
David Ronfeldt:
" Valency is an entity’s capacity to connect and bond with an outside entity."
(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/preferential-valences-and-valence)
Description
David Ronfeldt:
"Valence or valency — meaning the combining capability of an element. The term is from the Latin valentia (strength, capacity to bond) as well as valens (being strong, stout, robust, healthy) and valēre (be strong, have worth). German chemist Edward Frankland, using the German derivative valenz, brought valence into the sciences in 1852 to explain how atomic elements bond to form compounds. He found the bonding occurred between electrons in the outer shells of atoms, and that the number of bonds an atom can make depends on the number of electrons present in its outer shell (normally no more than eight). While matters get more complicated than that, the key point for me is that valence meant a surface(?) was available where electrons from different atoms could bond with each other, rather like a lock and key. Thus an element’s valence — its combining power, the number of bonds it can make with other elements — came to be expressed as a number in chemistry and physics."
(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/preferential-valences-and-valence)
Status
David Ronfeldt:
"Great concept that has made its way into psychology and linguistics, but not yet into theorizing about societal evolution."
Discussion
"(By Karatani’s own admission, "Strictly speaking, D is not one of the modes of exchange. It is a drive that seeks to negate and sublate 'exchange' (whether of mode A, B, or C). It appears in the form of an ideational/religious power."
I now know better why, for I’ve been studying up on the hard-science concept of
- “valence” — the combining power of an element, its capacity to dock and bond with another. Great concept that has made its way into psychology and linguistics, but not yet into theorizing about societal evolution.
It calls for attention to bonding, the need and necessity for bonding. It seems deeper than modes for organizing (TIMN), relating (P2P), and/or exchanging (Karatani). In light of this concept, each of TIMN’s four forms of organization, P2P’s four relational modalities, and Karatani’s four modes of exchange can be seen anew as different ways of bonding (and of preventing bonding).
Thus the purpose of a “gift economy” is not so much to establish exchange relations as to create bonds. Same goes for TIMN’s Tribes, P2P’s (Fiske’s) communal shareholding, and Karatani’s Mode A.
It makes sense to see them as bonding systems, as much if not more than as exchange systems. It may also make sense to analyze bloated states-markets axes as being held together by valence alignment and control systems. (And to view Trump’s defining tactic toward nearly everything as valence manipulation.) This concept of valency as the capacity to dock and bond, to access and connect, leads to better ways to define differences between TIMN’s Tribes and Networks forms, as well as Karatani’s Modes A and D. One key difference is that the earlier Tribes (A) form is mainly about people’s capacities for in-group bonding (not exchanging, but bonding through a common identity), whereas the later form (my +N, his D) seems mainly about people’s capacities for out-group bonding (again, not exchanging but bonding, this time around increasingly planetary and spiritual identities).
People yearn to bond before they yearn to exchange. For people are born to bond. All life is born to bond. All “major evolutionary transitions” (METs) are about ways to bond. Bonding is a sine qua non of all evolution, all life. Or so I’m sensing from learning about valence. Seems kinda obvious. But I haven’t found any writings by established social theorists who recognize the significance of valence — bonding capability — for societal evolvability."
Some general remarks by David Ronfeldt
David Ronfeldt:
1.
" It means entities can unite and combine, selectively and conditionally. Back then valency wasn’t about variable degrees of wanting vs. fearing, pursuing vs. fleeing, etc., as the soft sciences currently treat it. No, it was about a docking point(?) that was open (or not) and a line that could or could not be crossed.
With my eye on the concept’s potential use for understanding societal evolution, I say it’s best to see valence as an entity’s yes-or-no capacity to dock and bond with another entity. More broadly, it’s about societal rights, rules, and regulations regarding what can (and cannot) dock and bond with what. A valency system, then, is a system of routes, rights, rules, and regulations governing entities’ powers to meet, attach, and combine. I think my new take on TIMN will work better if I adopt this traditional hard-science view of valency as a binary phenomenon — a condition that either does or doesn’t exist. Psychology’s approach to valence, which purports to measure in-between degrees and tendencies, now seems far more about affinity or avidity than valency. So I’m setting psychology’s approach aside for perhaps another day. But I do see fit to retain its idea/observation that valence systems exist.
Realizing valence and valency systems are prevalent all around us
Looking at today’s world with this tighter optic in mind, I see valency operating all around. It’s evident in society’s rights and wrongs, dos and don’ts, permissions and prohibitions. In travel visas, building permits, marriage and drivers licenses, even library cards. In job qualifications; and non-compete agreements. In eligibility requirements for joining local fraternities and clubs, as well as international military alliances and trade agreements. In designations of go and no-go zones. In electoral districting and city zoning laws. In laws approving corporate contributions to political campaigns. In approvals and denials of access to services and privileges. In criteria for who gets to cross a boundary, enter a door, pass through a gate, park and sit where. In beliefs about whether to accept another person’s gender, race, religion, and/or ethnicity. In recent moves to privatize national parks and other public lands. The list could go on for pages. Valency controls and their manipulation abound in all sorts of public and private dealings, even when parents tell children they’re grounded and can’t watch TV until their school homework’s done. .
Cultures, religions, ideologies, maybe complex system of all sorts, appear to have, and to depend on having, valence settings of one sort or another. Cultures and religions tend to be rife with valence settings and valency alignment systems, for example regarding who may marry whom and be accepted where. As for ideological isms and ocracies, democracy freely allows multivalent and polyvalent bonds, autocracy and monarchy not so much, feudalism even less. In this light, slavery is a bivalent system of extreme inequivalence where the master rules every bond. The Spanish Inquisition was about religious valency. The U.S. civil rights struggle in the 1960s was about racial valency. And what’s lately happening in the streets of Wisconsin is a valency battle over openness to immigrant rights. Valency warfare is becoming a thing in America.
Indeed, just about everything appears to have if not need some kind of valency setting. It indicates who is able to gain access and connect to something, and who may not. Which means I could simply write about access instead of valence — use plain english instead of scientific lingo. I see-sawed about that for a while. But the more I used and learned about the word valence, the more I realized it’s the way to go.
Or am I taking the word too far? Reading too much into its seeming possibilities? Wouldn’t it already be in prevalent use by now if it could mean all I’m supposing? I wonder. But I’m continuing anyway, in case valence really can be found and used as expansively as I’m detecting. And by the way, more about that adjective prevalent in a moment.
If I’d stuck with access or some other plain word, I would not have noticed the patterns I’m writing about. More importantly, using valence adds a scientific light to my efforts to find evolutionary principles in other fields that may apply to TIMN. Valence is already well-known for its significance in chemistry, physics, psychology, and linguistics. It’s about time it helped as well with theorizing about the nature of societies and their METs (major evolutionary transitions). Valency alignment and re-alignment processes may play far larger roles in social and cultural evolution than theorists have noticed so far. The same point may apply to evolutionary theorizing about our planet’s geosphere, biosphere, and emerging noosphere as a holistic system.
To my knowledge, no MET theorist has written a word about valency dynamics. Yet I bet they matter a lot during METs where a society’s complexity increases. If an MET involves the rise of a next/new TIMN form of organization, the ensuing processes of structural-functional differentiation are bound to result in valence-shifting as the new form absorbs actors and activities from the older forms/realms. Too much for me to explore and confirm right now, but here’s a marker for my claim, hoping others begin to think about it too. Might be important.
Realizing we already use words about -valence and could use more
Furthermore — a clincher for using the word valence instead of access or some other plain word — I’ve remembered that people already use three valence-related words all the time. Valence is not in common usage, but ambivalence, equivalence, and prevalence are. People often remark that they feel ambivalent about this or that. The word is from the Latin roots ambi- (both, on both sides) and valere (to be strong and worthy, as already discussed). While not originally a scientific term, ambivalence was brought into the sciences by Swiss psychologist Eugen Bleuler in 1910, drawing on the German derivative equivalenz to mean having simultaneously contradictory if not conflictive feelings or beliefs about something — seeing “strength on both sides,” being on the fence and pulled in opposite directions, even feeling wary of attachment, as in a love-hate relationship. I often feel ambivalent, but my initial ambivalence toward using the word valence is gone.
The etymology of equivalence should be obvious. But here’s an important point about prevalence and prevalent: they don’t merely mean something is widespread, as I’ve long thought. They stem originally from praevalēre (”to be very able” or “to have superior power”), which itself comes from prae- (”before”) and, once again, valere (”to have power, be strong”). In short, prevalence and prevalent initially meant something prevailed to the point of having a capability to rule. Modern usage has watered this out in favor of meaning little more than widespread acceptance. Also noteworthy is the word countervail, since its Latin roots contra and, again, valere mean “to be of worth against.” (Curiously, our word value is also rooted in valere.)
While researching these words, three adjectives occurred to me: invalent, provalent, and antivalent. However, I see they’ve not yet been coined for common usage (though invalent has appeared in old German theological debates, and lately in technical reports about sensor designs). All three sure look like they’d be useful:
— Invalent could mean lacking a capacity to connect and bond, or lacking in attachment and acceptance capacity. Imagine a political campaign where a party’s platform is failing to connect with people, or a leader whose ideas are falling flat. They could be said to be running invalent campaigns for support. Valency is all around us, but so is invalency. Sounds like a winner of a word to me.
— Provalent could mean being in favor of developing valency, being pro-social in a particular way, perhaps in favor of multivalency and/or polyvalency, two words already in use in the sciences and elsewhere. Maybe proto-valent would be a useful coinage too, say for meaning something is becoming more open and available for docking and bonding.
— Antivalent could apply to the state of many prejudiced, biased, and otherwise opposed mindsets. Their antivalence would mean they are closed, opposed, or even hostile to connection. Gosh, I can think of some goings-on that I’m feeling antivalent about right now."
(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/preferential-valences-and-valence)
2.
"If I’m understanding valence correctly, it’s the precondition that makes bonding possible. Evolution advances according to bond-making, and bond-making advances according to valence (availability). Valence settings and valence alignment-and-control systems determine whether an approaching bonding possibility is valid or invalid. If valid, valences open the way for another entity’s binding energies to gain access and take hold, and then for the two entities to become mutually organized (co-valent)."
(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/peoples-yearnings-to-bond-part-2)
Valency and David Ronfeldt's TIMN theory
David Ronfeldt:
A strong valency between Tribes and Networks?
"Since several posts ago, I’ve wondered whether Tribes and Networks may have a positive valence toward each other within civil society — a valence and affinity that exceeds their valence and affinity for the other two forms and their realms, Institutions and Markets. The answer seems to be yes at present (but not necessarily all across history).
To recap, the Tribes form excels at maximizing people’s sense of group identity and belonging, family and community, recognition and acceptance — a person’s place and position in a close circle of care and cooperation, initially for security and survival amid the outside world, later for asserting one’s place and functioning alongside the outside world. In contrast, the Networks form excels at maximizing people’s outreach in order to expand connectivity, coordination, and collaboration with others for agreed purposes, beyond and apart from whether those others are deemed in-groups or out-groups from a Tribes standpoint. Tribes tend to stress narrowed identities; Networks, transcendent identities. Tribes tend to build like-to-like relations; Networks, like to-unlike relations. Tribes emphasize provenance; Networks pursue providence — as glib generalities.
Examples? MAGA seems a good Tribes-oriented example; so do motorcycle clubs. In contrast, Doctors Without Borders, Homeboy Industries (and its Global Homeboy Network), Rotary International, and Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen seem good Networks-oriented examples.
But exactly how and where do these positive and negative valences show up? My eyes go to a set of issues that are central to Tribes and Networks dynamics these days: the back-and-forth among civil society actors over identity, immigration, refugee, citizenship, diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI), and related welfare and humanitarian-aid issues. These once-calm issues have become terribly polarizing, as Tribes of all sorts have organized around all sides. Such issues beg for resolution and transcendence, yet many may remain unsettled until a Networks-based realm can eventually emerge from civil society, resetting everything.
Valences and valence systems show up in three ways I’ve identified so far:
In narratives about who deserves access and connection to what: The issues I just mentioned — immigration etc. — involve a constant interplay between in-group and out-reach narratives, i.e. between pro-Tribes and pro-Networks stances that often arouse a range of racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, and other identitarian sensitivities. As a stereotype, rival narratives may pit red-neck conservatives against liberal do-gooder cosmopolitans — the former seeking exclusion, the latter inclusion. All sides become reactive as well as promotive, and their narratives become entangled (a kind of stickiness). The more they bend toward inclusion and acceptance, the more they signal a positive valency between Tribes and Networks actors.
In organizations that form, bond, and fight as allies around those narratives: Numerous CSOs, NGOs, and other voluntary organizations (even militias and gangs) have grown around the immigration etc. issues I listed above. So have news and opinion media that want in on the action. Local ordinances that result from citizen initiatives may be another manifestation of valency between the Tribes and Networks forms.
In documents that authorize rights to access and connection: Laws, codes, permits, licenses, cards, etc. that extend rights to people for everything from citizenship to club membership all mean a valence has been authorized.
Listing sticky narratives, intermediary entities, and authorizing documents provides a start to finding that valency (combining power) has grown between the Tribes and Networks forms within civil society. To be more scientific, I’d have to add more issue areas and examples, point out measures for specifying valences, map narrative and other interactions, and show that comparably more is currently going on between Tribes and Networks than between any other TIMN pair. Far too much to for me to imagine doing. But I feel I have enough material to persist with assuming it’s an hypothesis worth study — and to proceed to make more points."
Strong valency between Institutions and Markets too?
"Which leads to asking where that leaves TIMN’s other two forms and their realms, Institutions (government) and Markets (capitalist economy). Could they too be said to have a sticky affinity or preferential valence? Stronger than either has for the other two forms, Tribes and Networks? Or for civil society as a realm?
I see evidence that’s currently so — again, in the build-up of narratives, organizations, and legal documentats that work to bind the Institutions and Markets forms/realms together. It seems evident in the symbiosis called the “military-industrial complex.” In the ways that policy frameworks, which included government, business, and civil society as options in the 1950s-1960s, now only emphasize government (the public sector) and business (the private sector) as options. And in the ways that leaders and other personnel often go back and forth between public- and private-sector jobs during their careers — the “revolving door” phenomenon.
But wait — “seems evident” is a far cry from “is clearly the case.” This valence concept keeps bugging me. If I follow recent usages in psychology and linguistics, seemingly any tendency (orientation, affectivity, affinity) toward something else indicates valency. That’s not as discriminating as the concept’s original usage in chemistry and physics, where atomic elements exhibited not a tendency but a certainty toward each other. I better ponder this some more."
(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/preferential-valences-and-valence)