The potential of the attractor: non-metaphorical transport between sciences and social theory

Complexity science has rapidly moved across different domains of knowledge and expertise over the last two decades and, beginning with chaos theory in the 1980s, has attracted much media attention. This paper investigates some uncertainties in that movement with two questions in mind. One concerns how complexity theory can be used in domains such as the social sciences or humanities. The other concerns the significance of complexity theory as a cultural-scientific event in its own right. The paper starts from the suggestion made by (Thrift, 1999) that the movement of complexity discourse involves a metaphorical borrowing. This borrowing attests to a structure of feeling rooted in a long-standing European-American time-sense which could be called 'possibilization'. Treating complexity purely as a source of metaphors to be used in different ways runs the risk of losing the singularity of complexity as a scientific event. In order to frame some alternatives to a metaphorical borrowing of complexity metaphors, the paper focuses on three recent attempts – (Delanda, 2002; Massumi, 2002; Stengers, 1997-2000;) to move complexity science into philosophical theory, cultural studies and the politics of knowledge. These attempts point towards a different 'potentializing' temporality associated with complexity.