The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity

Beginning with the Scientific Revolution and concluding with today'sterrorist networks, Antoine J. Bousquet advances a novel history of scientificmethodology in the context of the battlefield. For centuries, scientific conceptualframeworks have been applied to theories of war, particularly with the invention ofsuch influential technologies as the clock, the engine, and the computer.Conversely, many scientific developments have been stimulated or conditioned by theexperience of war, especially in the wake of the unprecedented technological andindustrial effort of World War II.Marked by an increasinglytight symbiosis between technology, science, and conflict, the constitution andperpetuation of this scientific way of warfare are best understood as an attempt bythe state to turn violent aggression into a rational instrument of policy. In hisstudy, Bousquet explores the relative benefits (such a unique chain of command tosafeguard the use of nuclear weapons) and decentralizing (such as the flexiblenetworks that connect insurgents) military affairs. He then follows with specificscientific approaches to war: mechanistic, thermodynamic, cybernetic, and"chaoplexic," a network-centric theory allied with the non-linearsciences.