Chaos As Social Order

Chaos As Social Order

Introduction

            Chaos is a new way of understanding social order.  Rather than a perverse paradox, this assertion draws on the diverse developments of chaos theory in the natural and mathematical sciences (Barnsley 1988; Crutchfield et al 1986; Dewdney 1985; Gleick 1987; Mandelbrot 1983; Mullin 1993).  Over the past two decades, chaos theory has been applied in many disciplines of theoretical and applied science (Baier and Klein 1991; Cohen and Stewart 1994; Davies and Gribbin 1992; Gleick 1987; Hao 1990; Holden 1986; Moon 1987; Mullin 1993; Rasband 1990; Ruelle 1989), including some areas of social science (Brown 1994; Chen; Dendrinos and Sonis 1990; Gell-Mann 47-48; Goodwin 1990; Hao 573-632; Holton and May; Kiel and Elliott 1996; Lewin 44-62; Nicolis 1991).  The latter applications, however, have used chaos theory as a mathematical tool incorporated into conventional conceptual frameworks rather than as an alternative conceptual framework which could illuminate the very social order from which chaos theory has arisen.  To serve conceptually chaos theory must be understood conceptually.

            In this article, I do not produce mathematical models or computer simulations nor do I offer copious new data.  I also definitely do not use chaos as a metaphor.  This is not a literary exercise designed to decorate the social sciences with yet another image, such as the machine, the organism, the deductive system, or the adversarial debate (Morgan 1986).

            It might seem appropriate to group chaos with such heuristic metaphors.  These metaphors have been used in social science to approach and explore phenomena which were thought to be

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