The older sociological literature, often written in a polemical style, had opposed and played off against each other statics and dynamics, continuance and change, structure and process, system maintenance and evolution.
This offered the opportunity for a light-touch theorizing that grounded the assertion of one aspect on the critique of the absoluteness of the other. The intention of the following three parts is to overcome such contrasts. In this respect they form a unity. And they try not only to assert the unity of these contrasts abstractly, but to work them out in theory itself.
General theories based on concepts like system, evolution, communication are necessarily unspecific. Necessarily: this means that it is not possible to specify, for example, the theory of evolution within the framework of its own terms.
The older sociological literature, often written in a polemical style, had opposed and played off against each other statics and dynamics, continuance and change, structure and process, system maintenance and evolution.
This offered the opportunity for a light-touch theorizing that grounded the assertion of one aspect on the critique of the absoluteness of the other. The intention of the following three parts is to overcome such contrasts. In this respect they form a unity. And they try not only to assert the unity of these contrasts abstractly, but to work them out in theory itself.
General theories based on concepts like system, evolution, communication are necessarily unspecific. Necessarily: this means that it is not possible to specify, for example, the theory of evolution within the framework of its own terms.
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