Sociocultural Evolution and Social Differentiation: The Study of the History of Society and the two Sociologies of Change and Transformation

Abstract

Abstract Sociology has two interesting and useful theories of social change: differentiation theory and the theory of sociocultural evolution. Both have their origins in biological theory (embryology and general biology); both have been completely sociologized over more than a hundred years. Evolution is a theory about the interplay of structures and events in communication systems; differentiation is a theory about sorting processes that are the starting point of the formation of new systems with new system/environment distinctions. If one understands and analyzes these two theories in this way – and that is what the present paper does – the complementarity of evolution and differentiation becomes clearly visible. Most sociologists are not aware of this complementarity. The goal of this paper is to correct this deficiency.