Abstract
What is the legitimate way to apply the findings of complexity theory from the physical sciences in the social domain? This chapter summarises recent philosophy of science on the requirements and features of complex systems in general. It concludes that complex systems must consist of a number of elements in non-linear relationships with one another producing emergent effects in irreversible time. From this starting point, the author proceeds to consider how complexity concepts can be imported into the social sciences, with a number of distinct methodological approaches to doing so considered. Finally it considers how to chart a path between the weaknesses of both scientistic and post-structuralist approaches to complexity thinking within social systems.
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Notes
- 1.
“…what we might call modern complex systems science [is] not a unified whole but rather a collection of disparate parts with some overlapping concepts.” (Mitchell 2009, 289).
- 2.
Although the oft-given example here is the property of ‘wetness’ we might prefer instead the property of turbulent fluid dynamics, given the fact that wetness remains a secondary property, and a single molecule would be imperceptible to a conscious observer, rendering the familiar example somewhat confused on closer examination.
- 3.
Which follows a general shift in sociology from covering laws to causal mechanisms, though we must also note the success of quantitative network social science in discovering generally applicable laws of preferential attachment (Barabási and Albert 1999).
- 4.
See Sawyer, 2005, for an analysis of social complexity which affords full attention to these unique properties of human systems.
- 5.
We might prefer the more complexity-infused evolutionary theory of Stephen Jay Gould here (Gould 2002).
- 6.
- 7.
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Williams, A. (2020). Complexity from the Sciences to Social Systems. In: Political Hegemony and Social Complexity. International Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19795-7_2
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