Chaos Theory, Control Theory, and Literary Theory or: A Story of Three Butterflies

Abstract

Chaos theory is about (dis-)order, a mode or degree of (dis-) organization: it is about how or how much things are, or are not, organized-not about what is thus organized (let alone why). Control theory is about why-about the drive to order, to organize. Central to both theories is the issue of predictability. Chaos theory seeks to measure and describe; control theory seeks to derive and explain. In other words, chaos theory is phenotypical, while control theory is genotypical. Chaos then, like structuralism, is a mode of formalism,' dealing less with content than with formal arrangement; as a result, it lends itself naturally to investigation in a variety of different disciplines, as structuralism did. Like structuralism, it holds out the prospect of renewing and radicalizing a whole spectrum of fields of research. Control theory likewise suggests ways of correcting and moving beyond certain positions adopted by Freud, Derrida, and others. aim of the present essay is to indicate the basic principles of chaos theory and control theory and then to verify their applicability and usefulness to the humanities, particularly literary theory and criticism,2 which have been languishing since structuralism degenerated into deconstructionism, and the history and philosophy of culture.3 In the early 1960s, several men carried out innovative research that led to chaos theory. One was Ren6 Thom, who developed a new branch of topology he called catastrophe theory, which was devoted to the description and analysis, and ultimately the prediction, of processes which are abrupt or discontinuous. The behaviour of continuous processes can be understood by using calculus, invented by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz three hundred years ago. But there has never been equally effective form of mathematics for explaining and predicting the occurrence of discontinuous phenomena.4 Catastrophe theory was hailed as an 'intellectual revolution' in mathematics-the most important development since calculus.5 A major feature of catastrophy theory is the use of pictures: What Rene Thom has done is to prove that, despite the almost limitless number of discontinuous phenomena that can exist in all branches of science, there are only a certain number of different 'pictures' or elementary catastrophes that actually occur.6 In 1977 I adumbrated the application of Thom's new perspective to the problem of reconciling Michel Foucault's epistemes, which are static, with history, which is dynamic. Thom's work suggested that the 65