Knowledge, science, technology, and society : a theoretical model of socioecological self-organization

Abstract

Recent work signals a return to questions about relationships between diverse knowledge claims and macrolevel change. In this dissertation, I outline a preliminary model of science and technology in society as a basis for a better understanding of relationships between macrolevel patterns of social organization and the actions of individual scientists and technologists at the microlevel. The model is based on a theoretical "resource transfer group" (RTG) as the basic unit of change in both ecosystems and social systems. The model is self-organizing in that no "external" processes are posited to affect system behavior. "Levels" of structured resource transfer relationships act as bounding conditions for other "levels" of the system. I locate science and technology in this system as specific classes of cognitive resources that are transferred among human RTGs by various communicative mechanisms. The relevance of mathematical chaos to modeling the behavior of a system of socioecological self-organization is discussed.