ilya_prigogine_isabelle_stengers_alvin_tofflerbookfi-org

205 ORDER THROUGH FLUCTUATIONS
learning from or enlarging their experience and about a population
of primates where each individual is an entanglement of
its own experiences and the traditions of the populations in
which he lives.
We also find that, within anthropology itself, basic choices
must be made between various approaches to collective phenomena.
It is well known, for example, that structural anthropology
privileges those aspects of society where the tools
of logic and finite mathematics can be used, aspects such as
the elementary structures of kinship or the analysis of myths,
whose transformations are often compared to crystalline
growth. Discrete elements are counted and combined. This
contrasts with approaches that analyze evolution in terms of
processes involving large, partially chaotic populations. We
are dealing with two different outlooks and two types of models:
Levi-Strauss defines them respectively as "mechanical"
and "statistical." In the mechanical model "the elements are
of the same scale as the phenomena" and individual behavior
is based on prescriptions referring to the structural organization
of society. The anthropologist makes the logic of this behavior
explicit. The sociologist, on the other hand, works with
statistical models for large populations and defines averages
and thresholds.I7
A society defined entirely in terms of a functional model
would correspond to the Aristotelian idea of natural hierarchy
and order. Each official would perform the duties for which he
has been appointed. These duties would translate at each level
the different aspects of the organization of the society as a
whole. The king gives orders to the architect, the architect to
the contractor, the contractor to the workers. Everywhere a
mastermind is at work. On the contrary, termites and other
social insects seem to approach the "statistical" model. As we
have seen, there seems to be no mastermind behind the construction
of the termites' nest, when interactions among individuals
produce certain types of collective behavior in some
circumstances, but none of these interactions refer to any
global task, being all purely local. Such a description necessarily
implies averages and reintroduces the question of stability
and bifurcations.
Which events will regress, and which arc likely to affect the
whole system? What are the situations of choice, and what are