The Epistemic Push-Pull of ideas
Economists make a distinction between demand-pull inflation and cost-push inflation -- this is the pushmi-pullyu of economic theory, since inflation can be pulled by high demand or pushed by high cost. It occurred to me that a somewhat parallel distinction might be made in with idea diffusion, i.e., that there is both a push of idea diffusion and a pull of idea diffusion.
Idea diffusion as typically formulated is a somewhat passive and unexciting term to describe the gradual dissemination of ideas, and there is some justification of this passivity and gradualism when speaking in terms of the earliest human societies. Idea diffusion probably began in the most haphazard way, entirely at the whim of particular individuals who happened to have an interest in in some idea, and so borrowed it from another society and diffused in in their own society.
Perhaps it would be appropriate to say that idea diffusion simpliciter is appropriate to this gradual and haphazard model of the movement of ideas. When societies become more complex, and ideas begin to matter more for the constitution of the social order, then more active forms of idea diffusion begin to emerge, and among these more active forms of idea diffusion we can distinguish from idea diffusion push and idea diffusion pull.
When we consider the centrality of religious ideas for the organization of society under agrarian-ecclesiastical civilization, it is not surprising that the transmission of religious ideas becomes of paramount importance,and we begin to find religious idea diffusion push in the form of evangelism and conversion. This did not occur, however, until late in the development of agrarian-ecclesiastical civilization, after the axialization of agrarian-ecclesiastical civilization, when we begin to find proselytizing religions.
For most of agrarian-ecclesiastical civilization, religion was closely tied to the idea of the territorial principle in law: religion, like law, belonged to a particular ethnic community, and conversion would mean the loss of ones ethnic community, hence the loss of one's identity (in societies dominated by the primary mask).Β
Idea diffusion pull appears as soon as societies become sufficiently complex that espionage becomes important to the function of a state diplomacy and warfare. When states or other agents feel the need for specialized knowledge of competing societies in order to expand at the expense of their neighbors, or to resist the expansion of their neighbors, they begin the systematic collection of intelligence on competing powers and so engage in idea diffusion pull.Β
With the advent of industrial-technological civilization, the idea diffusion push of religious evangelism begins to decline as a force shaping societies, and increasingly it is the diffusion of political and later scientific ideas that are actively pushed -- for example, the dissemination of revolutionary ideas by a revolutionary cadre, and the subsequent revolution itself as a vehicle for the active transmission of a political idea -- and actively pulled -- for example, systematic research, as in a literature search, to discover the relevant scientific work that has been done to date on a given idea.
