Reptation in Sociology

This article is a brief appraisal of Harrison C. White’s occasional but trenchant use of the concept of reptation, which is familiar from polymer research. The concept of reptation is placed in the context of Auguste Comte’s definition of the sociological problem of studying social phenomena in the coordinates of their statics and dynamics and linked to George Spencer-Brown’s calculus of form. The concept of reptation defines social phenomena as phenomena that gain their scope from restrictions recursively and reflectively set by themselves.