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The Theory of Social Pulsation


Ivo Komsic

The Theory of Social Pulsation is a new social theory elaborated from the social phenomenology and philosophy of sciences’ standpoint. It represents an innovative interpretation of social phenomena postulated as active states of social actors including individuals, social groups, and social facts (organizations, institutions, systems). As an active state of social actors, pulsation is defined by eight variables that constitute social phenomena as a whole: (a) intention, (b) reaction, (c) reflection, (d) communication, (e) institutionalization, (f) internalization, (g) structuration, and (h) innovation.

Ivo Komsic argues that social states are pulsating and within those states, social causality is transferred from one social actor to another. Social actors continuously transfer social causality from one to another, depending on the intensity of its pulsation. Balanced or unbalanced, functional or dysfunctional, consensual or imposed, a system will be classified in the presence or absence of one of these phenomena, by its greater or lesser intensity. The theory posits a new paradigm that tends to overcome the "eternal" problem in sociology—relations between individuals as social actors and social structure, that is, "social statics" and "social dynamics," the role of the great historical personalities and the "objective law of history," freedom and necessity in social action, micro and macro social levels.

The model of social communication analyzed in the book can be used as a general model of social and political communication, particularly in multiethnic and multicultural societies considering the contemporary state of affairs globally.

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Proposition II


Pulsating one with the another, social actors produce social facts—social relations, institutions, values, rules, laws.


All social facts are in a state of pulsation towards all social actors, and should be regarded as such. They all have their subjectivity and their active power that manifests itself as pulsation. With individuals, it is social intention, with others, it is their purpose—that is, the “meaningful content” on which they are based.

Individuals and other social facts do not exist separately, like singular and social products, but rather as subjects with active power. Society is a web of social pulsation because all social actors simultaneously act toward one another and everybody is in a same state—every actor is within that web, in every way. Social actors do not have a single social function or a single relation, but always incorporate everything, always within the web. Organized societies differ from the simpler and the underdeveloped ones by precisely the size of their pulsations web.

An important characteristic of social pulsation is its unequal intensity. The intensity depends on the strength of individual intentions and “meaningful content” by which social facts are upheld. Previous theories did not sufficiently take this into account. In fact, the social pulsation of individuals←27 | 28→ as social actors can be very strong and overwhelming and it can objectify itself into a social fact without social agreement that is acquired through communication. This is the case...



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