In today's world of the twenty-first century, both technology and social communities which technology develops have gotten a greater change process than those in the past. Social change introduces the concept of chaos to us. Literally, chaos means order in disorder. Individuals have fallen into despair as a result of social changes. Determining the situations of chaos which individuals experience is an important step. This chapter compares chaotic cases of Social Studies teacher candidates who study in Turkey and the United States of America about social phenomena. This research was carried out in two different education institutions including a faculty of education in Turkey and a college in the United States of America. A total of 30 social studies teacher candidates including 15 people in Turkey and 15 people in the United States of America were participated into the research. Data obtained were analyzed by the method of content analysis after research conducted.
TopThe Concept Of Chaos And The Theory Of Chaos
Chaos is undoubtedly a confusing term. On the one hand, chaos belongs to the mythological heritage of many different ancient cultures, almost as a cultural universal, on the other hand, as already stated, it refers to a very particular research program in the study of the temporal evolution of nonlinear deterministic systems (Plaza i Font & Regis, 2006, p. 4).
Chaos and cosmos are two important concepts which evoke each other. The meaning of the chaos in daily language is different from the meaning of the chaos in science language. Chaos means confusion and disorder. Traffic chaos, meaning chaos, chaotic discussion and so on. In the language of science roughly means the absolute situation which doesn’t take shape (Cramer, 1998, p. 195). On the other hand, Ruella describes chaos ‘It is is nothing more than a lot of randomness have come together in a certain volume or coincidence (Ruelle, 2004, p. 4). Therefore, chaos is the situations which any structuring, building or order can’t appear. In the other words, the other order is not one another: Chaos is the only alternative of the order (Bauman, 2003, p. 17).
Name of the father of Chaos Theory is James A. Yorke who is an American (Ruelle, 1994 p. 65). However, before Yorke gave the name to the theory in the west it had been known that scientist had agreement on there were non-linear dynamic systems which showed unpredictable behavior in the long term and are sensitive to initial conditions, non-periodic.
Several years later, chaos suddenly became the trend after these developments and international seminars organized for this purpose began to be discussed. As a result of these discussions, the chaos had the privilege of being referred Nonlinear Science (Ruelle, 1994, p. 65).
Chaos and transformation theories have emerged as new currencies in the Social Sciences. We live in a complex world where is full of uncertainties, randomness, and unpredictable developments. All these are driving our world and organizations into breakdowns which are full of chaos and catastrophes. A key feature of paradigmatic chaos is what Warren Bennis calls “temporary societies” Peter Drucker calls the “age of discontinuity” and Charles Handy calls the “age of unreason and beyond certainty.” We should keep the force of imagination in our hands, think consider in undesirable ways and make unnecessary things in order to be ready for managing private life and our societies in the modern world. (Farazmand, 2003, p. 340).
One of the most important questions which chaos theory pay attention is whether small causes will lead to more significant results than themselves or not. Whether small causes will lead to big and more significant results can be seen with such phrase:
A horse shoe was lost for a nail was lost
A horse was lost for a horse shoe was lost
A horseman was lost for a horse was lost
A news was lost for a horseman was lost
A war was lost for a news was lost
A kingdom was destroyed for a war was lost (Gürsakal, 2007, p. 45).