Abstract

Ecological and other biological concepts are employed commonly by archaeologists and anthropologists to explain cultural adaptation and change processes. Often, cultural evolution is compared to biological evolution, meaning speciation. Cultural systems dynamics, however, are related more realistically to ecosystem dynamics. Especially suitable is the application of non-linear dynamical systems theory to ecological and cultural systems changes. The result is a new emphasis on life history evolution rather than speciation only. Self-organized life systems maximize long-term survival by adjusting to non-linear external influences, such as climate, via punctuated or pulsating unrepeated system state changes. All macroscopic systems, cultural systems included, are non-reversible, time-dependent and, therefore, non-linear or dynamical, each with its own sequence of unrepeated states or trajectory, entropically drawn to states of increasing disorder. When plotted mathematically, dynamical systems trajectories behave as fractals, bifurcating and separating exponentially with unpredictable yet infinite repetition in finite space. This causes the trajectories to fold over and wind around loci called strange or chaotic attractors, the basis of chaos theory. Chaotic trajectories cut ordered paths through a morass of random influences. The result is simplicity within complexity, order within seeming disorder or chaos, a basic structure of self-organization common to systems which are subject to unpredictable, random influences. This recently proposed chaos paradigm in science is the result of a new search for non-regularities or unrepeated phenomena, rather than the traditional search for regularities only which relegates chaos to background 'noise.' The new paradigm includes a new deterministic emphasis in science. This is in the form of a new causality in which the order within seeming disorder cuts a predetermined path through chaotic or non-regular influences, the structure of the macroscopic order determined by the confinement of the disorder within finite boundaries. The change process is fractal, the trajectories of change bifurcating exponentially until they reach the limits of their physical parameters. Should a trajectory break out of these parametric limits, the bifurcation process begins all over again. Each bifurcation point is, in effect, a decision point, determining the paths of the trajectories until they reach further bifurcation points. This is similar to the 'pulsating' ecosystem change process newly proposed by Howard Odum, is related to Stephen J. Gould's 'punctuated equilibrium' evolutionary theory and is based directly on chaos theory. It is a case of entropy sowing the seeds of its own demise - increasing randomization can result only in the chaotic order which springs from random behaviour, resulting in re-affirmation of the order to disorder to restructuring sequence. The suggested chaotic cultural order functions so that uncertainty alternates with certainty on a pulsating basis, with a new system state path partly determined by its former state, and partly by chance changes occurring during the chaotic or decision intervals. Thus, the deterministic nature of cultural systems changes is due to an ordered form of disorder which occurs on a pulsating basis, and which provides 'choice' or trajectory alternatives. However, once a state emerges from a chaotic interval, its trajectory is predetermined by the system order until it collapses once more into a chaotic state.