ABSTRACT
Chaos or complexity theory forces one to question both the normality of any given social order as well as the presumption of directionality and finality in social evolution. As theory and technology develop by which to explore the infinite variety of social life, even less may one offer privilege to given social forms as a product of the 'iron laws' of nature, society, or the gods since human beings increasingly have the knowledge and the means to shape the world as they would have it. Until the scientific revolution, most social philosophy presumed an enduring social life world centered in the present, unchanged from millennia past. The mission for premodern knowledge processes was to teach the folk methods by which a given social life world could be reproduced while the human interest that organized the knowledge process was sanctification of that social order.
