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Chaos, Order, and Sociological Theoy *
Author(s) -
Baker Patrick L.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
sociological inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.446
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1475-682X
pISSN - 0038-0245
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-682x.1993.tb00300.x
Subject(s) - sociology , order (exchange) , epistemology , chaos theory , perspective (graphical) , social order , order and disorder , context (archaeology) , value (mathematics) , attractor , mathematics , chaotic , computer science , economics , law , philosophy , physics , artificial intelligence , finance , quantum mechanics , politics , political science , biology , mathematical analysis , geometry , paleontology , statistics
This article reexamines, in historical context, the “problem of order” and change in sociological theory in the light of the findings of Chaos Theory. The value of this new perspective is that order and disorder, order and change, are no longer presented as irreconcilable opposites but as dimensions of the same process. Order generates chaos, and chaos generates order. These ideas are linked into a holistic perspective in which “centriphery” is seen as an attractor that accounts for order and change in human social life and entropy as an equal partner to information/energy in the creative thrust of human social life.