Emergence and complexity: A new approach to social systems theory.

In this paper, I review the history of systems thinking in sociology. I group this history into three stages, or ?waves.? This paper focuses on the third wave of systems thinking in sociology, which is based in complexity theories that emerged in the mid 1990s. I show that although emergence is occasionally mentioned in the first two waves, it became a central concept only in the third wave. Because of the root metaphors that inspired the first two waves, I show why they are of only marginal and metaphorical usefulness to sociologists. In contrast, third wave complexity theory is not only directly relevant to sociology, but in fact offers theoretical and methodological tools that have the potential to speak to core unresolved sociological issues. The first wave of social systems theory is Parsons?s structural functionalism, the second wave is derived from the general systems theory of the 1960s through the 1980s, and the third wave is associated with the complex dynamical systems theory that originated in the 1990s. Because the third wave has not yet had much impact on the social sciences, a primary goal of this paper is to demonstrate that third wave theory addresses weaknesses of the first and second waves, and to show the practical and theoretical implications for the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]