Self‐organization and Intermittency in Social Systems: Towards a Science of Complexity

Abstract

The concept of self‐organization proposed by Von Foerster and developed recently by I. Prigogine and the “synergetics” of H. Haken state a framework that promises to be fruitful in the construction of theories synthesizing the microscale and the macroscale points of view in complex systems. This concept may be especially interesting in human sciences, like sociology, where the duality microsociology/ macrosociology remains. Tries to identify explicitly the main features defining the self‐organization of microelements that produce a macroscopic system, and applies the concept to phenomena of social evolution, suggesting a formulation of the micro/macro relationship in social sciences in terms of the probabilistic field theory.

Citation

Garciá‐Olivares, A. (1993), "Self‐organization and Intermittency in Social Systems: Towards a Science of Complexity", Kybernetes, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 9-19. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb005967