“Bateson’s Butterfly”: Observable monitoring of emerging factors for continuity and social change

Abstract

The butterfly model inspired by Gregory Bateson´s “ecology of mind” retrieves the anthropological tradition of visual field data recording that began in 1898 and responds to Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s General System Theory and its principles of isomorphism and logical hierarchy between differentiated systems as a requirement for transdisciplinary analysis of phenomena. The spiral flow of non-dialectical character between complementary systems, where each turn of the helix represents the momentum resulting from attraction to an open set of initial conditions, introduces the emergence of particular phenomena aimed at metarule of change that feeds the entire system. Topological modeling supports replacing elements once their logic correspondence is saved, and is presented as an operational tool to address social phenomena of stability and change.