1. Complex Systems and Postmodernism: ANew Perspective for Society in the Twenty-First Century

The objective of this chapter is to claim that the Hobbesian problem asking how the social order is possible must be replaced with the problem of how the edge of chaos is established. Fluctuation, noise, disequilibrium, and chaos have been noticed and emphasized in the last two decades as the major factors in the science of complexity. We may say that the current of the new scientific view of complex systems indicates the passing of a Copernican Change from the order theory to the chaos theory of the world in the twenty-first century. The postmodernism succeeding the poststructuralism is a social version of the science of complexity and offers the viewpoint that foresees the self-organization of the coming new civilization. In the ‘edge of chaos’ in modern civilization, the social system enters an excitation state and the ‘rhizomic (schizophrenic)’ movement dedifferentiates the modern structural-functional system. Social roles and statuses formed with the functional requirement are dedifferentiated, and the actions not constrained by them become dominant. In addition, control and manipulation become invalidated and concepts such as control center, authorities and wholeness of system are refuted. The increase of the arguments regarding complex systems and postmodernism symbolically signals that modern civilization has reached the edge of chaos. Probably, a plan of the new civilization will come out from the chaos theory of the world. In the twenty-first century, the situation of society seems to have become heated by the generation of noise, fluctuation, and chaos.