CHAOS, CLASS AND COMPLEX SOCIAL DYNAMICS Structure and Process in Postmodern Philosophy of Science T. R. Young Visiting Professor Sociology University of Michigan-Flint September 23, 1992 March 14, 1994 October 7, 1994 Key Terms: Class Structure Process Causality, degrees of Complexity Theory Fractal geometry Nonlinear Dynamics No. 170 Distributed as part of the Red Feather Institute Transforming Sociology Series. The Red Feather Institute, 8085 Essex, Weidman, Michigan, 48893. We must once again, from the tree of knowledge, eat. ...von Kleck CHAOS, CLASS AND COMPLEX SOCIAL DYNAMICS Structure and Process in Postmodern Philosophy of Science (NOTE 1) T. R. Young ABSTRACT Two central concerns of those who work in class analysis are treated using these ideas and concepts, a) just where does one draw the boundaries to class affiliation and b) how much determinacy may one attribute to class privilege in a large, complex social formation. First, fractal structures emerge from nonlinear dynamics; the boundaries between class strata as well as other fractal structures in a society are complex such that it is often difficult to locate structure as such; then too, a variety of class strata may be generated in complex social formations. Second, Nonlinear class dynamics produce different results depending upon; a) scale of observation, b) region of an outcome basin sampled and c) dynamical phase to which system dynamics take it. The paper, as a whole speaks to the larger question about the continuing utility of class as a concept in research and in social policy. REFLEXIVE STATEMENT. There is much opposition to the use of class and class position as a research topic in conservative modernist theory as well as in the more nihilistic moments of postmodern theory. However, these objections can be met if the new sciences of Chaos/Complexity are used to search for class strata and class driven behaviors. The same may be said for all such structures which shape the lives of human beings who, perforce, must live out their days in systems with great inequalities in race, gender and national relations. Thus the new sciences of Chaos and Complexity can be made to speak out on behalf of social justice and political agency within the larger dramas in social enquiry and social knowledge. INTRODUCTION Nonlinear dynamics and the fractal geometries of naturally occurring systems offer quite a new understanding of the concept, 'structure' as it is used to describe patterned behavior in a wide variety of social activity. These revelations are subsumed by the new sciences of complex nonlinear dynamics or, more simply, Chaos theory. (NOTE 2) Building on findings from this new science, I offer a way of thinking about class structure and the dynamics of class struggle in which the midline between reality and illusion; between actuality and apparition; between noumena and phenomena is reconceptualized. In brief, dynamics found in Chaos/Complexity research mean that structures have a loose and variable structure while interactions between such structures, may display variable causal connections. Two major conjectures are developed here, a) the shape, number and size of class strata differ; in complex societies, class stratification may be hidden in data sets in ways not amenable to currently used research tools. In short, in complex social formations, there are a great many valid ways to draw the boundaries between owners and workers, each of which has a varying facticity and varying utility for social policy. The second conjecture is that, b) class structure, as fractal, may be determinative or limited in causal efficacy depending upon the character of feedback between class status and the dynamics of other such fractal structures. It is very important to note that, in Complexity theory, both form and causal efficacy varies with 1) region in an basin of fractals, 2) scale of observation over the fractal basin and 3) dynamical phase in which a class system is observed; there are five such phases. CHAOS/COMPLEXITY THEORY. Chaos theory is a set of propositions about the changing mix of order and disorder found in all complex systems. In brief, there are five dynamical regimes which can be used to describe the dynamics of complex natural and social systems. Each regime has its own mixture of order and disorder. The move from one dynamical regime (called an attractor) occurs when small changes in key parameters exceed quite specific values. With each qualitative change (called a bifurcation), disorder increases; causality fades while predictivity becomes less useful as a test of the validity of research findings. Complexity theory as such is a set of statements about the nonlinear behavior of really existing complex systems in which chaotic regimes are found (Waldorp, 1992). These statements speak to the ways in which complex systems change, adjust to changes in their environment, force changes in still other systems and, finally, create entirely new physical, biological and social forms when the ratio of order to disorder exceeds given values. Chaos theory grounds a postmodern philosophy of science (Young and Yarbrough, 1994c). The basic concepts of Chaos/Complexity theory put forward a view of reality as constantly changing, variably bounded and with differentially interacting components. In this new understanding, causality opens and closes, emerges and fades, gains and loses efficacy. In Chaos/Complexity, structure may or may not grow out of process. In these findings, we begin to see forms of feedback which destroy or which entail semi-stable dynamics. It is impossible to ground stable, universal and comprehensive models of nature and society given such fractal structures whose nonlinear dynamics exhibit such variable causality. Yet there is enough order and enough pattern upon which to ground truth claims about class dynamics. Of the five dynamical states found in Chaos/Complexity, two are very ordered and ground the formal axiomatic models of modern science. Two more dynamical states have varying but fairly dependable ratios of order/disorder. Even in the fifth dynamical state, deep chaos, surprising amounts of order are found. It is of considerable interest to note that out of such great disorder, new life forms and new social forms emerge; the second Law of Thermodynamics is not the fate of all structure. Chaos/Complexity theory teaches us to look for those critical change points in unemployment, inequality ratios, and fiscal crises at which human beings have a opportunity to re- organize social institutions. Either cooperation or force and guile can be used a these strategic moments to effect or inhibit change. In economics, there is enough structure such that it is possible to plan or to exploit in the both production and distribution; classic concerns in marxian theory. Postmodern sensibility, grounded on Chaos/Complexity would suggest that class, race and gender have changing causal efficacy on crime. New forms of crime; new forms of gender relations; new forms of health care are open to seek and to study. The new problematics set before sociology, economics, political science and other social sciences will occupy whole teams of scholars for generations to come. Thus there is enough pattern in any social formation upon which to ground limited, historically variable truth claims. Thus, I want to honor much of the postmodern critique of theory (Seidman, 1991) while, at the same time show a way to retain the concept of class structure and class relations which are so easily dismissed by modernist scholarship. Then too, a postmodern view that all science is a politics remains and, indeed is given a much better grounding than mere assertion of chair-bound theorists. The political character of the knowledge process is found, in class analysis as in other research, in the timing, location and phase of nonlinear dynamics selected by the research design and uncovered by the analytic tactics selected (Young, 1994a). CLASS AND POSTMODERN CRITIQUE For many postmodernists, the body of science produces only 'texts;' fictive works which only feebly mirror the realities under discussion. In the case of class analysis, postmodernists assert that class is also a text, written by those who look at society and see just about what they want to see. In post-structural critique, the search a grand theory which brackets all human behavior within one 'grand narrative,' (Hassan, 1985) or within a 'master narrative' (Lyotard, 1984) is simply not on. Marxist class analysis, Freudian theory, Islamic or Christian theology as well as Utilitarianism cum Choice theory of modern criminology are all seen to be an artifact of an 'author' or 'reader' who hide themselves behind, as Richardson (1988:203) puts it, '...the bramble of the passive voice.' In postmodern terms, all theory on nature or society becomes a 'readerly text' which invites a rewriting at every reading (Rosenau, 1992:35). Validities Post-structuralists rightly argue that human beings extract, from a large array of data, just those facts which support their favored theory. Post-structuralists are correct in the assertion that structuralists commit anthropomorphic sin by treating their own favorite and totalizing theory as God's Will or a Law of Nature. Post-structuralists are correct when they assert that structural analysts subvert emancipatory human agency when they hide the raw and self-serving politics of human endeavor behind putatively 'objectively' existing and extra-personal forces. Then too, structuralists often abort human agency also by pre-empting all possible futures with the one future set by the false reification the theory at hand as inexorable natural law. Chaos/Complexity offers lessons on those moments when human agency is possible and when it is difficult (Young, 1992). For post-structuralists then, marxian class analysis is a 'gran narratif' which claims to be scientific and objective but which serves to legitimate hegemony of a ruling socialist elite. Those who follow Lyotard and Hassan reject all such master texts as logocentric, linear, totalizing and beyond criticism. The architects of such grand narratives, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Marx, Lenin, Luther and Parsons are, falsely, believed by their followers to be infallible. Like more ancient traditional narratives in song and drama, such modernist master narratives are subjective, relative, and interpretative (Lyotard, 1984:26). Much of postmodern critique is anti-foundational; that is, despairing of any permanent consensus about the underlying realities which are taken as subject matter. Bacon, Newton, Kant, Hume, Laplace, Descartes and above all, Hegel thought that the underlying reality could be mapped out with certainty. Postmodern critique abandons quest for sure and certain knowledge for more modest missions. Yet we have not reached the end of history on our intellectual journeys...the case presented here, dimly seen as through a glass darkly, is that it is possible to ground theory in general and class theory in particular in ways which re-affirm the possibility of objective knowledge about these changing realities. CLASS AND MODERNIZATION THEORY Many modernist sociologists believe they can look at a social formation objectively and make truth statements with a high degree of validity, and in the looking see a decline in class status as a causal nexus in advanced industrialized societies (Nisbet, 1959; Clark and Lipset, 1991; Pakulski, 1993). Given their belief that class has faded as a social fact, the end of history is said to be upon us; there are no further arguments within economic or political arenas, one has only to work out of the structural-functional paradigm and co-operate with the state in the control and management of workers, students, minorities and third world countries that they may enjoy the blessings of modern industrialized nations. Opposed to this reading of the data are scholars who argue that class remains a powerful dynamic. Hout, Brooks and Manza (1993), sum up that position nicely. They present data and analysis in which retains its classic 19th century precepts and propositions. However, if those structures in nature and society do not fit the assumptions of modern science about structure and dynamics; if social structures vary in their geometry, in their linearity, in their causal (determinative) efficacy; if there are times when other causal agents move within the same dynamical field, then modernist critique becomes irrelevant and the use of modernist tactics to defend class analysis remains open to critique. Complexity theory offers a new and quite different 'positivism' which is much less totalizing and much more modest in its truth claims. CHAOS, CLASS AND COMPLEXITY Complexity theory allows of truth statements about class upon which to ground truth statements. However, those truth statements are very different from those grounded in aristotlean, euclidean, cartesian, newtonian/leibnizian views of structure and theory. Fractal geometries yield fractal truth values which displace ideas of absolute truth/falsity. (NOTE 3) Truth values can change as system dynamics change. Truth values expand and contract as scale of observation enlarges or diminishes. In all this, the researcher may derive predictive truth values from large data sets and thus ground a certain limited human agency based upon them. The task of postmodern science as well as emancipatory postmodern politics is to do the kind of research which gives us a larger, more modest view of that which is and that which is possible (Young, 1994a). We can begin by considering some of the very good grounds for rebuilding concepts of class which cannot be put aside by postmodern criticism and thus defeat the larger quest for social justice. Nonlinear Dynamics and Fractal Class Structures Helpful to a resolution of the issue whether class structure(s) exist or not; are totalizing or not; are determinative or not, is the concept of the fractal. In the simplest terms possible, a fractal is an estimate of the ratio of order and disorder in the periods and cycles which describe its behavior. Fractal structures have fuzzy edges, open areas and self-similarity in near-by regions (Mandelbrot, 1977). In the hunt for class strata, class sectors produced by nonlinear class dynamics, the postmodern sociologist, using complexity theory, would expect to find configurations quite different from the neat and tidy patterns of linear, planar and cubic realities presumed by modernity. (NOTE 4) In those causal fields with 2n, 4n, 8n or 16n class fractals, the boundaries between class strata become progressively blurred as we shall see below. In deep chaos, a fractal class structure may occupy so much of the space available to it that it appears to be non- existent. In deep chaos, one cannot easily find clear and bounded structures nor can the behavior of individuals, firms or societies be predicted with certainty. Fractal class strata have open regions such that other structures may occupy the same time-space region with, or without, mutual causality. This means that, in the same time- space continuum gender, caste, ethnic, religion or educational level may, or may not, interact with class status. More on this later. Finally, the concepts of the soliton and of nonlinear feedback loops have very interesting lessons for a postmodern approach to class analysis. The concept of structure is complicated, also, by the fact that, that which is process at one time/space unit may become structure at another. It is not entirely a poetics to say that process converts into structure since the pattern of the dynamics of animal species, of business firms, or of people who take their religion seriously may become so stable that still other species, firms and religions re-organize their own behavior to accommodate such dependability...and thus consolidate causal inter- dependence. More of this later in the section on entrainment and postmodern views on causality. Class Fractals The simplest form of a binary class structure is called a butterfly attractor (NOTE 5) and is seen in Figure 1. In complex class dynamics, the number of basins of attraction can expand to 4, 8, 16 strata in the same outcome field and then cascade to an infinity of basins of attraction. In the simple binary attractor shown, the class status of a person would be largely 'determined' at birth by the interaction of two key parameters. Future class status is much less certain when three or more parameters are at work to shape the distribution of class standing. The parameters which shape class standing themselves change over time. In a given social formation, class status might well be a product of father's occupation, and race/ethnicity for men; if so, future class status should be fairly certain. In more complex social formations, father's occupation might fade in causal efficacy as another parameter, say educational credentials, emerges to re-configure class dynamics. Nonlinear Dynamics: Small Changes/Large Effects In this new scientific paradigm, class structures do not emerge and change in the orderly manner expected of linear systems. In early days of commodity capitalism, the economic fate of any given farmer, artisan or tradesperson might well depend upon arbitrarily small changes. A slight shift in climate or in price or in transport cost could hurl large numbers of farmers into wage labor. Of all independent farmers in a bad year, it would be impossible to predict who would survive and who be left with only labor power to sell. It is important to note that it is a small change in an ordinary variable which drives large changes in the fate of any given set of farmers, not necessarily the introduction of a new variable. Indeed, the very concept of nonlinearity encompasses this transition from regular, predictable dynamics to evermore unpredictable dynamics given the same set of variables. The body of knowledge which refers to the sequence of transformations in dynamical regimes is called bifurcation theory. (NOTE 6) Bifurcation Theory The interesting thing about the bifurcation map below is that, at each bifurcation of a key parameter, more complex or 'strange' attractors appear. (NOTE 7) For our purposes, class structures/attractors would bifurcate as key parameters reach critical points (Feigenbaum, 1978). Where before, we see simplicity, order and clearly defined class antagonisms, in complex societies, class structure could have an very large number of attractors; each of which is deeply connected to others in ways difficult to sort clearly and cleanly. And, as bifurcations continue to pile up, class structure becomes so complex as to ground the kind of critique made by conservative apologists for capitalism and endorsed by postmodernists who accept the simple and ordered geometries of modernity. Class lines are blurring and class correlates are weakened. Class is not however, thereby of no further interest to either theory or policy. Different theory is needed and much different policy is required to cope with these larger, less visible structures in race, class, gender, religious and ethnic divisions. The question for class analysis based upon this distinctly postmodern philosophy of science is, What are the key parameters which produce ever greater divisions of labor in each form of capitalism. (NOTE 8) New techniques are available to a) locate hidden class attractors and b) identify those key variables which produce bifurcations. We return to this point in the work of Patricia Hamilton and her colleagues discussed below. First let us review the formation of class dynamics and think about what some of those key variables might be. Class Bifurcations One of the more important features of capitalist systems is that labor costs drive the search for more efficient tools of production. Slavery, feudalism and primitive communalism were driven to increase labor supply; the more slaves, serfs or children, the better the chances of survival. In capitalist firms, factories, mines and mills, the fewer the workers and the better the technology, the more the profit and better the chance of survival. Capitalism has a built-in mechanism to divide and re-divide the class system, the quest for a better means of production. Better technology and fewer workers means more surplus value; more surplus value means the possibility of ever greater divisions of labor. A factory can hire more and more specialists, supervisors, accountants and such as long as market share holds up. In such a setting, class fractals can be very complex indeed. Similarly, the production of more goods with a reduction in the number of worked means that a surplus accumulates, workers simply cannot buy back all of the wealth they produce since, a) they cannot use it all and b) they do not get 100% of the value of the wealth they produce. Whole new sectors of workers are hired to help generate demand and to expand to foreign markets. Thus, technology in both production and distribution serves as a key variable to divide and sub-divide the labor force. Marx spoke of four outcome basins/attractors for economic actors in early capitalism; bourgeoisie, petite bourgeoisie, proletariat and those surplus to the productive needs of capital. Wright, in 1979, thought that six class sectors were adequate to the concept; in 1985, he increased his class segments to twelve. One would expect such a expansion of class fractals if the conditions above developed. There has been little or no research in the social sciences from which we could model the actual dynamics of class bifurcation, however we can use a bit of imagination to understand what to expect should such a research effort be made. In brief, a small increase on a key parameter should see an expansion of an outcome basin from one to two then from two to four or more 'attractors,' i.e., class sectors. In a particular case, a small change in either productivity or in 'surplus' production could stabilize or de-stabilize class relations depending upon the direction and timing of the changes. Such dynamics are very different from those expected in linear dynamics. In fact, surprize and qualitative change are hallmark of bifurcation theory. Figure 2 shows a generic bifurcation map and the critical points at which transitions from 2n to 4n to 8n and 16n or more class fractals might occur. There are three points at which significant i.e., nonlinear, change occurs. These change points entail qualitatively new outcomes for class dynamics...outcomes which can be dramatically different from previous states. This fact implies that some small ratio of class inequality well may be helpful to the economic welfare of a society but at a slightly higher ratio in the extraction of surplus value, new and very disagreeable effects might ensue; but see below. The first two dynamic regimes in Figure 2 need not detain us. They describe the well ordered dynamics of simple systems so beloved by modern science and those oriented to precision and prediction. (NOTE 9) The torus emerges (region 3) with the second bifurcation. A torus can be used to model the behavior of given set of firms or families over the course of a cycle but in most complex situations the torus is part of a larger outcome basin and is deeply connected to still other tori to make up 2n, 4n, and more complex outcome basins. Butterfly attractors are found in Region 4 in Figure 2. One wing of a Butterfly attractor can be split into still other butterfly attractors such that 4n, 8n, or 16n outcome basins with sufficient order to permit both planning and innovation. It is with the butterfly attractor where really 'strange' behavior is observed. The ratio of order to disorder becomes of considerable theoretical and political interest. In Butterfly attractors, the ratio of order to disorder is such that both flexibility and certitude are possible. That is, in class dynamics, a set of similarly situated workers or owners may have two different destinies in an outcome field modelled by the butterfly attractor; some would continue to work and to prosper, others in other plants or industries would join the 'surplus' labor force. (NOTE 10) There is great certainty that some would lose/change their class position but it would be impossible to predict just who, among the workers or who among the owners would move to another 'attractor.' It is here that personal effort and small events have great effect. A foreman's mood might determine the future of a given worker; a city's tax structure might determine the fate of a whole plant. Transformations to regions 3, 4, and 5 comes when key parameter(s) bifurcate producing two (or more) basins of attraction to which a worker or a firm could move. In order to grasp this idea, think of a molecule of water. Without any transformation of the structure of a water molecule, a slight change in key parameter, for example temperature, will offer two basins between which it could move. It could be in random motion in a fluid state or it could be part of a much more complex snowflake and it could move easily back and forth between states without any measurable change in its physical structure. The same is true of a wide range of complex systems; molecules, viruses, moth populations, fish populations, economics, psychology and, in this instance, class strata. The capacity to produce value by particular workers or owners do not change; it is variables in the larger field which produce new attractors. Deep Chaos Region 5 in Figure 2 denotes a regime in which so much pattern is lost to ever more bifurcated attractors that prediction and all the ordinary canons of social research or social control for ordered systems do not obtain. The progression from stability to great instability in outcomes occurs ever more quickly. Note that the region in which one finds 16n attractors is smaller that in 8n regimes and much smaller than in 2n or 4n dynamical regimes. The tumble into deep chaos can occur very quickly after the fourth bifurcation. That progression to chaos is very precise and has been modelled by Mitchell Feigenbaum (1978). Yet the second law of thermodynamics does not hold even in deep chaos. New forms of order emerge; larger, less visible macro-structures are found. In terms of class dynamics, new class sectors can form; entirely new social formations can, but may not, appear. The future is open and human agency is possible. The task of future class analysts is to model out the change points, identify the factors which drive change and to suggest policy which may either stabilize or de-stabilize present settings of class structure. Research by the Hamilton team, mentioned below, serves as an exemplar for such research. Controlling Chaos And too, even in deep chaos, stability is possible. But only chaos can cope with chaos. Efforts to control labor market in uncertain times; to control inflation or to prevent crime fail since pattern and predictability fade and fail. Within semi-stable attractors, there is sufficient order such that causality is dependable, prediction possible, planning rational and control feasible. In ever more chaotic regimes, causality fades, prediction fails, rationality becomes a liability while control technology is rendered powerless to restrain human behavior. Social policy requires new strategies since only chaos can cope with chaos. Having set the background, we may now look at the two problematics mentioned at the beginning of this article; a) how does one draw class boundaries from a set of complex data and b) to what extent does class retain causal efficacy. PARALLEL SLICES OF CLASS STRUCTURE. In complex societies with manifold and overlapping dynamical regimes, data sets from national surveys are so complex that different versions of the same reality are possible. Careful and experienced statisticians can produce valid but very different conclusions depending upon the way in which they analyze data sets. The modernist view that structures are ontologically bounded and dynamically stable gives way, in the science of complex and nonlinear dynamics, to the view that the boundaries between such categories would be exceedingly open in some dynamical regimes and change dramatically as dynamical regimes succeed each other. In terms of class analysis, each data set would have regions in which class attractors are hidden deep in the data. Then too, the margins between attractors are so loose and variable that differing correlations would be found for the same, repeat same set of parameters. And, finally, the ability to find hidden attractors and to assert strong or weak correlations would depend the parameters selected to encode class standing. All this means that the convention in modernist social science of discarding weak correlations or of extrapolating from strong correlations is not tenable. One must design a research protocol which accepts that the boundaries of hidden class attractors expand and contract continuously; that class sectors split when key variables change and that quite new fates await those who are in the unskilled working class, the professional and technical strata, the middle management strata as well as small and large owners. Research is not impossible simply much more complex than thought and requiring analytic tools and inferential tools just now developing. Some idea of how easy it is to come up with conflicting findings about class dynamics in complex class structures can be seen in the work of William Johnson and Michael Ornstein, (1980). They compared several different approaches to the scanning for class dynamics in complex data sets. Those who used conventional measures of class standing (education, income, occupation, self- identification and such) were not able to locate such basins of attraction in national survey data. Those using other parameters (the ownership and control of production facilities, control over new capital investment, and control of the labour process itself), three researchers (Carchedi, Poulantzas and Wright) were able to find hidden attractors while those using conventional measures above, were not. Even for those who used the same measures, differing correlations were found. Table 1 shows the differing results of searching roughly comparable data sets. [Table 1 about here] CAUSALITY AND CHANGING TRUTH VALUES A second problematic in class analysis has to do with the degree to which class relations 'determine' law, religion, politics and life style. Chaos- Complexity theory forces a new view on causality. Those who follow the literature in class conflict register causality in the concept of 'determination.' In the postmodern philosophy of science just now emerging, causality can be tight or loose. Those who claim that a given structure (race, class, gender or religion) is always and everywhere independent and determinative; those who set tight correlations with high levels of improbability as a test of good research, these do much mischief to the knowledge process. In brief, Chaos/Complexity theory, with its concept of the fractal and its emphasis upon scale, region and dynamical phase of observation offers an entirely new vision of natural and social systems. In this theoretical paradigm, the behavior of a system over time takes on a fractal facticity. That facticity begins to affect other systems in the same time-space region. Moments of nonlinear change, entirely foreign to modernist visions of system dynamics, entail the generation of new outcome basins for similarly situated systems. As new attractors/sectors emerge, other sectors and other systems in the field adjust or compete with them. Causality thus fades, blooms, fails and transposes within the scope of nonlinear dynamics (Young, 1994b). In this paradigm, causality has changing efficacy. There are two major items to consider in judgments about the causal efficacy of class (and other) structures in a dynamical system. First, there is the question of whether or not the structure in question has sufficient 'facticity' to affect other structures/systems in the region. I treat this question under the rubric of 'reification.' Causality emerges as systems in an eco-system adjust to the new energy demands and possibilities which the newly formed structure requires/provides. The second question is, given facticity and response to this 'fact' by other systems in the region, there is also the question of the nature of that interaction. I treat this question under the rubric of 'feedback.' Different feedback loops produce different causal effects. REIFICATIONS; FALSE AND TRUE Sometimes it is proper to treat something as real; some times not. (NOTE 11) Given that reality has a changing factual value, the question can be very difficult and very political. Chaos/Complexity offers some help. The scale of observation affects the truth value of claims for structural analysis. For those who look at everyday behavior, they rightly see only process. Yet at some point, such processes come to have enough pattern that other persons, businesses and whole societies adjust their own behavior in anticipation of self-similar iterations of such tori. Causal efficacy is thus variable and dependent upon the reifications others make and act as if structure-as-attractor were valid. Figure 3 shows how process transforms into structure. In the case of class dynamics, the new forms of production and distribution become entrenched in other aspects of social life and 'lock-in' class dynamics. That happens when secondary adjustments are made by other owners, workers, suppliers and adjunct service agencies such that both owners and workers have difficulty in keeping the same pattern of behavior or changing to still newer patterns of production and/or distribution. (NOTE 12) In the history of class analysis, at the point workers came to depend upon wages and only wages to acquire the necessities of life, class relations solidified and reification became appropriate. Those who turn to alternate economic systems (crime, welfare, kinship or subsistence farming) de-reify class relations. Societies which adopt socialism, communism, feudalism or perchance slavery, de-reify class relations. The purist of pure empiricists would call this naming of process a false reification; a conceptual act which falsely treats a process as if it were an ontos--a thing in and of itself. There are doubtlessly false reifications. (NOTE 13) These false reifications are not the subject matter at hand. What is the subject matter are those fractal sets which have enough pattern for other creatures to model and to respond. In topological mathematics, the larger the value of a fractal, the more fully it occupies the region available to it, the less sharply delineated are its boundaries. Point, limit and tori attractors take up very little space and offer fairly clear boundaries such that the concept of structure seems appropriate. We would have little trouble treating the portrait of a point attractor as an unity rightly reified but we would have a great deal of trouble making and sustaining a claim that a butterfly attractor had unity. We can see space within and between any two iterations of any given cycle of behavior. We are tempted to deny thingness to such shapes since they do not have clear and definite boundaries. However, the purist of pure empiricists would have no trouble counting a tree or a bird or a human as a thing yet, if one were to change scale of observation, the thingness of the tree or bird would be lost to sensibility and thus to facticity. As one changes scale of observation from organic to molecular to atomic to quantum scales, things lose their boundaries and exist only as process. An electron is the process that energy waves makes when they intersect; an atom is the process that electrons and other particles make when they go about their separate business. A molecule is a process of atoms always changing, always vibrating, always in semi-stable exchange of parts. A tissue is even more a process as electrons, atoms, molecules and cells come and go; in the course of a month or so, the entire set of atoms which make up a tissue may be exchanged for another entirely different set yet the tissue remains as an empirical fact. Absent sharp boundaries, any slippage in causal efficacy has to be explained, in the modern science paradigm, by intervening variables not yet conceptualized, measured and correlated to the dynamics of a system. Chaos theory does not require recourse to missing variables; nonlinearity is a feature of the whole system. There are no missing variables to seek since causality is not linear. (NOTE 14) When one accepts that process converts into structure as one changes scale of observation, one concedes that there is a great deal of latitude in selecting out of an infinitude of unit acts at the human level of perception one such set of behaviors, packaging them in concepts congenial to one's politics, giving each set a name and treating it as a solid and permanent structural feature of a society. Those in the postmodern camp appreciate the subjectivity in such selection and assign to the human hand and human wit, great responsibility for all the conceptual categories used by both science or poet. This stands against a Husserlian view that such concepts are, in fact, prior to human will and desire (Husserl, 1913). (NOTE 15) Class Process as Class Structure Class as process has no separate embodiment apart from the actions of those who live out the norms. In order to treat a process as if it were a concrete thing having its own ontology; its own 'thingness,' it is necessary to abstract, out a billions of differing unit acts of situated people, some sub-set of self-similar unit acts and to treat each pattern as if it had distinct form of its own and then to give it a name. The name we give patterns created by process in Chaos/Complexity theory is attractor; in sociological terminology, it is called structure. Structure/attractor thus is an abstraction of a pattern arising from all the single separate acts which are the immediate data of experience. The larger structure of class is unseen, unheard, ungraspable to human sense of particular men and women, but may in fact, shape and preshape the fate of people in daily life. Class structure emerges from the activities of some person hiring the labor power of other persons, paying them less than 100% of the market value of that labor and using the 'surplus' for a number of purposes including the consolidation of power in negotiating the terms of work and wages for this and other workers. Both owners and workers then make secondary and tertiary adjustments which 'entrain' the causality of class relations. Other institutions, educational, political, religious, kin and social control adjust to the emergence of this new structure and further entrench causality. Art, science, music, drama and poetry become oriented to these structures of inequality and divorce themselves from older structures of inequality; feudal, slavery, gender or ethnic inequality. The same is true of structures of inequality in kinship, religion or culture. As capitalism and economic inequality is globalized, still larger structures emerge and displace older causal dynamics. In Chaos/Complexity, all theories of causality are change theories. Social control is a whole new essay but, in brief, ancient ways of controlling people with mor‚s, values, primary groups, coercion and violence give way to entirely new tactics in which the state claims a monopoly of force and uses it to protect 'property' rights. Then too, some of the 'surplus value' is used, as Marcuse put it, to colonize human consciousness. In Chaos/Complexity, when 'workers' have parallel sources of income; family, community support, farming, hunting, fishing or stealing, class tactics of control fail. When these other economic systems parallel class structures, the causal efficacy of class position is reduced. All this is very, very complicated and awaits treatment by a new generation of social scientists. Time and Social Facticity If we try to ascertain the process by which it is reasonably valid to consider a given person an owner or worker, we have to search out, from the history of the individual, a few unit acts from a much richer, messier stew of unit acts which make up the totality of the life of that person. In so doing, we as researchers, edit out much of that which did in fact occur and interpolate many things which did, in fact, not occur. One is not, ontologically, an owner or worker when one is at home with one's family or when one is gardening, fishing or stealing. One creates and dissolves the social facticity of one's own self as an owner or worker in fairly regular but imprecise time intervals. Social reality comes and goes in ways physical reality does not. Yet sometimes, the potential for being an owner/worker is very high even when at its lowest level of facticity. If a friend or neighbor requires goods or services, one could drive to one's store or shop 'after hours' and get that item; the facticity increases rapidly out of phase with ordinary periods of being. Likewise, a lay person could make or sell the same goods or provide the same labor power without any formal role allocation. Thieves sell things all the time but they are not counted as 'owners.' Neighbors provide labor but they are not counted as 'employees.' The problem of time, then, complicates the problem of fact. Fact and Facticity have no definite time-space location; what is true of owners and workers one moment in time is not true the next and the next. Only by an arbitrary slicing up and freezing of time is it possible to proclaim a settled truth in either the physical or the social world. In the social world, one must pick and chose behavioral events out of a much larger inventory of events, conceptualize them as economic exchanges and dismiss all non-economic events. In such a world, truth must have tests other than stability or finality. Truth In non-linear processes, truth is very much like the Cheshire cat; the dynamical base from which it came can disappear leaving one with an empty smile for any given truth statement. In non-linear dynamics, the future is not necessarily contained in the past; it does not unfold inexorably toward a predetermined end-state. Only time will reveal which of many potentialities will emerge. There is no linear equation which, even with all pre-settings known, will yield a true statement of a coming event. Even in equilibrium states, systems have small errors not attributable to ignorance of initial settings. A comet or a planet makes small deviations in arrival at a mathematically predicted point and from a predicted path. In such a world, the quest for permanent, stable, one-valued truth statements is a fool's errand. What is possible are fractal statements of truth value; given all the unit acts possible, the unit acts of doctorness occupy some fraction of the total time-space continua allotted to that person. In far from stable equilibrium dynamics, truth-statements become impossible except for the briefest of seconds and then truth disappears since the states require more time to unfold. Scale and Facticity The same point arises when one considers the level of reality under discussion. Social reality encompasses and depends upon differing levels of systems organization. A social group does not exist apart from the physical, physiological and psychological bases which comprise it nor does it exist apart from the cultural matrix within which each social occasion is located and which gives it meaning. Statements about a social group or occasion are true contingent upon all these included systems functioning adequately, however the included systems may be changing continuously. To say that such and such a group is growing or shrinking; is active or inactive; is progressive or conservative; is large or small; is old or young; is stable or changing--these are contingent truths; contingent not only upon boundary questions but also contingent upon which scale of observation upon which one is focussing. If we observe a class system up close in the life of a single person, it seems to be a loose and disconnected set of actions; if we observe it alone in a shop or office, its facticity seems hard and firm; bosses give orders, workers follow them. Value is produced, owners share it out in small portions. If we observe that same system as part of a larger community, we see that it may have very little facticity in terms of its effect on the city or state in which it is located; its members may cease to act on the class component of their self system when embedded in a religious system which redistributes wealth such that class as a construct diminishes in causal efficacy. Other structures ricochet within and across class boundaries. Alternate futures become possible that were never possible before. Impact of class relations upon ecological and physiological systems extend out as in the formation of a crystalline growth. There is no animal species or plant species that is unaffected by such intrusions. Causality oscillates in every direction taking unforeseen and unforeseeable leaps, turns and transformations. The pattern of causal activity ignores boundaries and disregards ancient stabilities. Dynamical Regime and Facticity. In the first four dynamical regimes depicted in Figure 1, four have enough pattern and predictability that one is justified in calling the patterns by the name of structure. In the third and fourth dynamical regime, there is considerable flexibility in saying exactly where structure begins and ends as I have noted earlier. It is in the fifth dynamical regime where one has great problems but even in that regime there are hidden structures which can be discern if one use new techniques. Patricia Hamilton and her colleagues have found hidden fractals in a very complex data set (Hamilton, et. al, 1994). The Hamilton team used new techniques for finding these loose and pulsating structures. These fractals depict the clustering of births to teenage mothers. Using ordinary techniques from linear dynamics, the data would appear to be so 'noisy' that one could not sort out the key parameters which drive teen-age pregnancy. One would find cor-relations so small that some very interesting causal patterns would be overlooked. Perhaps the first successful application of Chaos/Complexity to social data, their research has profound implications for class analysis. If the same attractors are hidden in the data used by Clark and Nisbet (1991) or by Pakulski, then they would not, of a matter of course, be able to find them. Not finding them, they would assert the claim that class is a dying factor in advanced industrialized states. To the extent those who teach and those who make policy believe such simple science, great mischief can be done to the larger interests of a people and a society. NONLINEAR FEEDBACK All semi-stable structures in an unstable environment must resort to nonlinear feedback loops if they are to survive. Positive feedback tends to drive a system into deep chaos; negative feedback tends to eliminate a system. In terms of class inequality, small ratios of inequality might well stimulate improvement in kind and quality of production while slightly larger changes produce sufficient surplus such that inequality explodes far beyond that required for improvement in goods and services. Given great surpluses, the political process can be bought, the knowledge process distorted, communication systems pre‰mpted and the medical profession recruited to serve the interests of class elites. For a beneficial class structure to survive, the pure rationality of the market must be defeated since it well may lead to the disemployment of workers; to the greater and greater prosperity for some and increasing desperation for many. There are a number of nonlinear feedback mechanisms which could be used to preserve, the benefits of market systems. Thus it is very important to note that markets cannot allowed to be 'free' else both positive and negative feedback will destroy whatever benefits accrue form market systems and the class system which rides upon it. Stabilizing Nonlinear Feedback loops. Much of what I say in this section requires empiric research of the sort done by the Hamilton team, yet I think I can identify some mechanisms which, nonlinear in terms of the logic of capitalism, work to ameliorate the harsher consequences. The name we give to one set of nonlinear feedback activities when they responds to questions of equity and collectivity, is social justice. If all wages and wealth are, in the first instance set by economic struggles in the market places, political adjustments make it possible for that struggle to continue. Social security, aid to dependent children, free schooling and health care, subsidies and grants, aid from kinship groupings, charity and mutual aid are all nonlinear feedback mechanisms; nonlinear in terms of market place dynamics. Positive feedback amplifies deviation. This means, in Chaos/Complexity that the more wealth is concentrated among the upper classes, the more intra-class crime and/or social justice one must see if a complex system is to be stabilized. Crime is a nonlinear feedback loop. Income is not meted out in direct ratio to percentage of ownership nor is value of the wages given measured out in direct ratio to hours worked. Taxation is the mildest form of political 'crime' against the capitalist class. Kidnapping, bombing, murder and revolutionary justice are the more violent forms of crime against the capitalist class. Street crime is usually interclass crime and does little to preserve market systems; indeed, if such crime exceeds given limits, it joins with the linear dynamics to delegitimate market systems. Labor theories of value have to be modified when either social justice or crime is used to redistribute wealth. All this is speculation of course; at present not much more than the poetic imagination of one who has read, thought and written for years about such questions. Still there is much food for thought about crime and social control which needs sorting out using these new concepts and new research tools. Solitons and Social Structure The fractal nature of system boundaries makes it possible for more than one social structure to occupy the same time-space continua. Thus in a supermarket, a factory, an insurance office or a classroom, differing structures, given open and semi-stable boundaries, may be found. If one thinks of class, racism, patriarchy, and bureaucracy along with religion and ethnicity each as separate solitons occupying the same social space, then the picture one has of causality is one in which one or more such solitons could maintain integrity even though logically incompatible and dynamically incoherent. Those in the postmodern camp who oppose 'totalizing theories' such as the work of Comte, Spencer, Marx, Parsons or Homans will find much of interest in the concept of the soliton. Those who write of the multiplicity of factors which give structure, pattern and causality to human behavior such as Weber, are given support by the fractal geometry of nonlinear regimes. More concretely, there may be several social structures which co- exist side by side in the complex dynamics of work, school, church and play. For our purposes, class struggle, patriarchy, ethnicity, protestantism, capitalism, and bureaucratic state welfare may occupy the same time-space continua. It is not a matter of choosing as between them to generate a coherent and parsimonious theory of human behavior but accepting that all these and more can exist together in a behavioral framework such as a school, a factory, a church or an entire society. If one uses the concept of the soliton to sort out the causal dynamics of complex societies, one need not participate in an argument between a marxist and a weberian over which 'structure' is determinative...it is entirely possible, given each as a fractal for each to be a product of sentient human beings and, in turn, affect the behavior of other sentient human beings as a structure. If one use the concept of the fractal, one can accept that there may well be varying causal efficacy of one's favorite structure (class, race, gender, bureau or religion] depending upon the nature of the feedback loops between them. Indeed a particular kind of a fractal, the soliton permits a given structure to pass through another structure with little or no reciprocal causal efficacy. Conclusion The new science of complexity holds much promise for social science in general and class analysis in particular. It offers resolution of the polemics over the concept of class structure in a way that satisfies postmodern insistence that human beings do much of the work of reality making attributed to god and nature while, at the same time, doing much of the knowledge work which explains and describes how 'reality' works. Such interactive work does in fact produce a kind of reality that has facticity about it but that reality is neither solid nor untouched by human hands. The operative question for social policy centers around the degree to which class or any other structure of domination is an inevitable part of the human process. Chaos/Complexity suggests that there are moments when human beings can enter into the reality construction (and reconstruction) process and, in the doing, build social forms more congenial to the human project. That question is the topic of still other papers in the series but the short answer appears to be that, given nonlinear feedback loops between differing social life worlds, the integrity of widely disparate social formations can be maintained. Successful research efforts should renew class consciousness and at the same time, give better guidance to class struggle. The re-entry of people into the historical process which was so much a part of the history of the century since Marx wrote is given renewed encouragement by the discovery of those change points at which small efforts to organize yield large results. Discovery of hidden structures driven by class standing in both street and corporate crime, in gender violence, in teen-age pregnancy as in death at an early age help fuel the drive for social justice so much a legacy of class struggle in the past. Chaos/Complexity teaches us that the future is not determined; nor is the past, prologue. We have many futures ahead of us. Which we shall chose and how we shall chose them is still an open question, Chaos/Complexity can give us some of the information about what exists and what might exist in the short term but it takes an encompassing and perhaps, religious sensibility which incorporates compassion and community to make wise choices from among all moves possible for individuals as for whole economic formation. REFERENCES Arthur, Brian. 1990 Positive Feedbacks in the Economy. Scientific American. February. Pp. 92-99. Clark, Terry Nichols, Seymour Martin Lipset and Michael Rempel. The Declining Political Significance of Social Class. International Sociology. 3:293-316. September. Clark, Terry Nichols and Seymour Martin Lipset. 1993 Are Social Classes Dying? International Sociology. 4:397-410. December. Feigenbaum, Mitchell 1978 Quantitative Universality for a Class of Nonlinear transformations, in the Journal of Statistical Physics, 19:25-52. Cited in Gleick, p. 157. Gleick, James 1987 Chaos: Making a New Science N.Y.: Penguin Books. Hassan, Ihab. 1985. "The Culture of Post-modernism." Theory, Culture and Society 2 (3):119-31. Hout, Mike, Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza. 1993 The Persistence of Classes in Post-Industrial Societies. International Sociology. 3:259-277. September. Johnson, William and Michael Ornstein. 1980 Measuring Social Class: A Comparison of Marxist and Conventional Approaches. Red Feather: the Red Feather Institute. (Now in Weidman, Michigan) Hamilton, Patti, Bruce West, Mona Cherri, Jim Mackey, and Paul Fisher. 1994. Preliminary Evidence of Nonlinear Dynamics in Births to Adolescents in Texas, 1964 to 1990. Theoretic and Applied Chaos in Nursing. Summer, 1994. 1:1. Husserl, Edmund. 1913. Ideas Towards a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. Tr. W.R.Boyce Gibson. New York: Macmillan, 1931. Reprint New York: Collier, 1962. Lyotard, J-F. 1984 The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Tr. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massouri. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press. Richardson, Laurel. 1988. "The Collective Story: Postmodernism and the Writing of Sociology." Sociological Focus 21 (3): 199-207. Nisbet, Robert A. 1959. The Decline and Fall of Social Class. Pacific Sociological Review. Pp. 11-17. Pakulski, Jan. 1993 The Dying of Class or Marxist Class theory? International Sociology. 3:279-292. September. Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers 1984 Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature. New York: Bantam Books. Rosenau, Pauline. 1992 Post-modernism and the Social Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Seidman, Steven 1990 "Against Theory as Foundational Discourse," in Perspectives: The Theory Section Newsletter of the American Sociological Society, V. 13, No.2. Waldorp, M. Mitchell 1992 Complexity: the Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. New York: Touchstone Books; Simon & Schuster. Wright, Erik Olin. 1985. Classes. London: Verso. Wright, Erik Olin. 1978. Class, Crises and the State. London: New Left Books. Young, T. R. 1992 . Chaos Theory and Human Agency. In Humanity and Society. November. 16:4. Pp. 441-460. Young, T. R. 1994a Thick Descriptions of Thin Realities. A paper prepared for the Carl Couch Festschrift, forthcoming. Young, T. R. 1994b Chaos and Causality. A paper given at the annual meetings of the Harvey Stone Symposium. University of Illinois at Champagne Urbana. Young, T. R. and James Yarbrough 1994c Chaos Theory and The Knowledge Process: Explorations in Postmodern Philosophy of Science. Forthcoming in Proceedings of the Second Annual Meetings of the Society for Chaos in Psychology. Robin Robertson, ed. TABLE 1 MULTIPLE CLASSIFICATION ANALYSIS OF SEVEN ITEMS: Note: the names of the items tested are omitted in order to retain focus on the variations found. One may refer to the original for this information. Wright's class .24 .20 .20 .17 .23 .19 .21 Occupational status .14 .05 .12 .09 .18 .05 .14 Education .21 .21 .12 .09 .21 .12 .16 Income .16 .09 .17 .11 .09 .04 .06 Poulantzas's class .24 .19 .18 .16 .21 .16 .19 Occupational status .14 .07 .12 .08 .18 .06 .14 Education .21 .20 .12 .09 .21 .16 .16 Income .16 .09 .17 .13 .09 .05 .12 Carchedi's class .26 .23 .19 .16 .19 .17 .22 Occupational status .14 .07 .12 .07 .18 .07 .14 Education .21 .20 .12 .09 .21 .17 .16 Income .16 .09 .17 .11 ' .09 .05 .12 NOTES 1. Revision of a paper given at the Radical Scholars Conference, Chicago, Illinois. October, 1994. 2. Chaos theory is the mathematical foundation of complexity theory. Complexity theory offers propositions about how real systems act in real time/space. The literature on Chaos theory is vast and growing. For three lucid and thoughtful summaries appropriate to the informed lay person, see Paul Davis, 1988 The Cosmic Blueprint, New York: Simon and Schuster (Touchstone books); James Gleick, 1988, has a very accessible social history of the emergence of this new science in Chaos: Making a New Science, New York: Penguin Books. John Briggs and F. David Peat have a delightful explanation of nonlinearity in their, Turbulent Mirror, New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers (1984) offer a more technical version in Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature, New York: Bantam Books. M.M. Waldorp, Complexity (1992) is an excellent intellectual history of the work in Complexity Theory at the Santa Fe Institute which offers understanding of how nonlinear dynamics play out in natural and social systems. 3. Aristotle depended upon the exclusion of middle terms for the efficacy of deduction; 'A' and 'Not-A' had no common area. Middle terms cannot be excluded in complex dynamics; in every region 'A' of any given fractal structure, space exists for another structure, 'Not-A' to exist. Euclidean geometry defines points, lines, planes and solid figures...fractal geometry offers space between points on a line; between areas on a plane and within the dimensions of any n-dimensional object (Mandelbrot, 1977 rev. 1983). Newtonian physics assume a linearity so precise that one can predict behavior to within 10 to the 14 place (Penrose, 1998). Predictability changes dramatically as a fractal becomes more and more open (Mandelbrot, op. cit.). 4. The modern science paradigm relies upon euclidean geometry, aristotlean logic, newtonian dynamics and leibnizean calculus as epistemological tools. With such tools, certainty is given priority over variety and change. The postmodern paradigm relies upon fractal geometry, fuzzy logic, rubber math and nonlinear dynamics. Algorithms replace equations as the preferred mathematics. One describe what occurs rather than predicts what must occur. One looks for the factors which drive system behavior at given times but does not, cannot generalize from the moment to all future moments. 5. An attractor does not really 'attract' workers or owners to any given pattern of behavior. The term is used since it appears that a given region in an outcome field has more attraction than other regions; systems tend to gather there. Actually, the clustering occurs because of the interactions between two or more variables. 6. The interesting thing is that there is a very orderly procession from one dynamical state to another. The onset of uncertainty is marked by a dramatic certainty. One can expect the fate of large numbers of molecules, cells, moths, trout or farmers to change dramatically at these precise points but one could not predict which molecule, cell, moth or farmer might fail...even with a complete knowledge of all existing conditions. Mitchell Feigenbaum (1978) did the basic work which identified these universal change points. 7. These are called 'strange' attractors since they do not behave in linear fashion; twists, jumps, skips and leaps are observed in such regimes. Boundaries become more and more open while two or more attractors can occupy the same time/space regions. 8. Durkheim thought that population density drove the division of labor; Marx thought it was improvement in the means of production driven by a quest for more efficient means of production. I tend to agree with Marx but I can see that Durkheim has a case. Given a better system of agriculture as in the hydraulic societies of antiquity, better food supply meant more infants surviving and living longer and, at the same time, opportunity for new occupations. Durkheim looked at a different set of variables than did Marx. Also note that I am using a three fold categorization of capitalism: commodity [or mercantile] capitalism, industrial and now, finance capitalism. Later I will suggest how to understand the transformation from one to the other from an understanding of the dynamics of 'deep' chaos. 9. Some writers in complexity theory count three dynamical states; I count five since my interests are in the two omitted. The five I count include 1) the point attractor, 2) the limit attractor, 3) the two valued butterfly attractor 4) paired butterfly attractors with between four and sixteen 'wings,' and 5) 'deep' chaos. My interest is in qualitative change as between 2 and 3, above; between 3 and 4, above and between 4 and 5, above. I thus count three points at which qualitatively different change emerges to affect causality, predictivity, and thus certainty. 10. Complexity theory suggests that the same factors which produce a subdivision of labor also produces a subdivision of owners. The connectedness of such complex class formations has not been the topic of research since marxists are more interested in the fate of workers while those in administrative science are more interested in the fate of owners and stockholders. 11. One should note that, in the usage here, reification is an empirical question answered by a) the degree to which a system occupies the space available to it [the more space occupied, the less grounds for reification as a statement of fact] and by b) the degree to which other systems in the region modify their behavior in light of the behavior of the system at hand. See the paper on 'Chaos and Causality,' cited in References. 12. Brian Arthur (1990) mentions several inferior products which, once locked in make change to better difficult. The QWERTY keyboard, VHS recorders, the gasoline engine and light-water nuclear reactors are case in point (Waldorp, 1992:40). 13. False reifications including 'Flying Red Horses,' 'Trolls,' 'Astrological Constellations (Gemini, Cancer, Capricorn), as well as the 'Lock Ness Monster.' One must be careful, however, even fictive concepts can have causal efficacy; angels, devils, demons and such. I have made a case, elsewhere, that the god concept can be 'realized' much as any other social fact as long as people act as if, and embody authentically, the teachings of their god. The reality quotient of such 'gods' is nowise different from the reality quotient of, say, Philadelphia or the United Nations. 14. One will read that Chaotic dynamics are 'deterministic.' From that statement, true on its own terms, one will infer that there must be missing variables to explain the sudden bifurcations in nonlinear dynamics. What is true is that in mathematically driven fractals of the sort one sees in computer software, the outcome states are mechanically determined within a given region. One doesn't know just which pixel will light up in a fractal fern or a mandelbrot set but one knows without doubt that somewhere within a bounded region, and only within that bounded region, the pixel with light. For more complex societal fractals driven by other fractal systems, themselves exhibiting sometimes more, sometimes less uncertainty, the region of uncertainty increases dramatically. For really existing systems, the deterministic character of system dynamics is found in smaller and smaller regions of larger and larger systems. 15. Husserl posited naturally occurring 'eidetic' categories of perception in the attempt to solve the problem on ontology; What is it that really exists apart from human bias and desire. Postmodern Phenomenology accepts that 'things exist in and of themselves' but makes a case that there is wide latitude in selecting any given set of events and giving them a name. See my paper, 'Thick Descriptions of Thin Realities, 1994a.