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In this vital new study, Andrew Abbott presents a fresh and daring analysis of the evolution and development of the social sciences. Chaos of Disciplines reconsiders how knowledge actually changes and advances. Challenging the accepted belief that social sciences are in a perpetual state of progress, Abbott contends that disciplines instead cycle around an inevitable pattern of core principles. New schools of thought, then, are less a reaction to an established order than they are a reinvention of fundamental concepts. Chaos of Disciplines uses fractals to explain the patterns of disciplines, and then applies them to key debates that surround the social sciences. Abbott argues that knowledge in different disciplines is organized by common oppositions that function at any level of theoretical or methodological scale. Opposing perspectives of thought and method, then, in fields ranging from history, sociology, and literature, are to the contrary, radically similar; much like fractals, they are each mutual reflections of their own distinctions.

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CONTENTS

Preface = ⅸ

Prologue = xv

Part 1 Self-Similarity in Social Science

 1 The Chaos of Disciplines = 3

 2 The Duality of Stress = 34

 3 The Fraction of Construction = 60

 Appendix : A History of "Social Construction" to 1990 = 89

 4 The Unity of History = 91

 5 The Context of Disciplines = 121

Part 2 Two Essays on Self-Similarity

 6 Self-Similar Social Structures = 157

 Appendix : Fractal Scales = 186

 7 The Selfishness of Men = 197

Epilogue = 233

References = 237

Index = 253