21st Century vs. 19th Century Science and Society

SOcialism was originally conceived of as a scientific approach to economy. In the 19th century, science was creating all sorts of technological advances. Nature was falling to man's powers with technology. Man was soon to rule all of nature. We could design precision clocks, engines, and factories -- why not design an economy, a society, a culture?

The science of the time was Newtonian physics (balls rolling down planes, explaining planetary orbits, making better telescopes and microscopes -- the kind pf physics many in the humanities, political science, and the soft sciences all still believe to be physics) and thermodynamics (engines, heat, and entropy -- which says that everything is going to die of heat death and that we should therefore abandon all hope). If this was science, then socialism made sense -- indeed, we have since learned that if we do try to plan/design an economy, it will succumb to entropy and run down like an engine. Marx said Communism would come after capitalism because the capitalists would provide the fuel for the engine of socialism. But he forgot one small thing: what will happen when you run out of fuel? It turns out that socialism really is scientific in the 19th century sense and understanding of science and the world -- it always succumbs to entropy.

In our arrogance, we tried to see the world as what we make. We made engines, so the universe was like an engine, running down. There's only one little problem with this, and that is it assumes the universe started off orderly and has become more disordered. It turns out that the opposite is true (but only if you believe in such things as the Big Bang and evolution). We thought the world was a simple, linear system, but it turns out it is a complex system with nonlinear feedback loops and emergent properties, where natural order arises from the bottom up, not the top down. In other words, the world is nothing like 19th century science says it is. Isn't it time that our ideas on economy, society, culture, and government caught up with what we know about the nature of the world, including human nature?