ABSTRACT
Complexity theory and its precursors have been influential in science, technology and mathematics for some time. This influence is newer and less developed in social science. In the perspectives of critical phenomenology, post-modern critical theory, post-structuralism and contemporary aesthetics, it is at times completely absent, much to their cost. Some derivatives of post-structuralism seem to believe that a more materialistic outlook, sometimes ironically called the ‘semiotics of materiality’1, or more recognisably, actornetwork theory (ANT), is sufficient to meet the challenge of complexity. This is, in our view, both insufficient and prone to seed the belief that the detailed arguments of complexity theory, especially the development we essay below, can be anticipated and pre-empted; they can be taken, so to speak, as already in the discipline of sociology. This is not the case, but rather a recipe, for insularity. True, the notion of ‘complexity’ appears in sociological discourse, but is so permeated by the inappropriate idioms of poststructuralism that its qualitative impact is massively diminished, if not lost altogether.
