File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1997/97-04-21.004, message 15


Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 08:26:41 +0200
From: G P L Van der Linde <VDLINGPL-AT-alpha.unisa.ac.za>
Subject: Re: chaos theory and social science -Reply


I missed the postings on chaos theory, but I would like to say that I don't
think the theory can be "applied" at all. It always deals with very specific
phenomena, ie, complex dynamic systems with aperiodic behaviour. Any
attempt to "apply" chaos theory to something else would be reductionist. I
do think, however, that the theory can be used as a conceptual
framework in the discussion of social ao phenomena, but even then, one
would have to be extremely careful to avoid banalizing the concepts.
Gerhard van der Linde

>>> Ariane Sacco <sacco-AT-student.uni-kassel.de> 25/March/1997
01:00pm >>>
Hello,

The two mails on chaos theory read to me like one more version of an
argument between the "two cultures". 
But perhaps it is more than a question of bad application of
scientific findings in the social sciences. Too often in social
questions scientific findings have been used to bolster a certain
social or moral theory. And often the scientific findings weren
not real science but social or moral statements. One  example would be
social darwinism.
Does the natural fally apply to moving hypotheses from natural science
to social science? How does the change of context affect the
hypotheses.

Ariane


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