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.