Talcott parsons, social entropy theory, and living systems theory

Parsonian functionalism popularized grand, macrosociological systems theory in sociology, and dominated the field for over two decades. Unfortunately, it was heavily criticized as teleological, tautological, static, untestable, and conservative. The criticisms not only hastened its demise, but left a harsh legacy in which contemporary systems approaches are often labeled as “functionalism” and thus diminished or even dismissed. Living Systems Theory (LST) has contributed greatly to sociological thought, but it too, is in danger of being labeled as functionalist. In order to make clear the sociological contributions of LST, this paper first briefly compares it with Parsonian functionalism, and then with the major postfunctionalist sociological systems approach, Social Entropy Theory (SET). The analysis shows that not only are LST and SET complementary, but that both generally escape the pitfalls of functionalism. Thus, macrosociological systems theory is once again on solid ground. However, many social scientists do not realize this, and are not yet aware of the contributions of the newer systems approaches. This paper and a companion paper seek to make the contributions of contemporary macrosociological approaches such as LST more familiar and accessible to social scientists.