Sociological discourses in virtual reality - A hybrid system for the reconstruction and comparison of sociological theories

The hybrid system THEOPRO (theories in PROLOG) is constructed for the logical reconstruction and structural comparison of sociological theories-in its present state of development, the theories of historical materialism (Marx) and the theory of social systems by Luhmann. It consists of an expert system (knowledge-based system, rule-based system) and a simple neural net. The knowledge base of the expert system contains about 900-1,000 concepts of the two theories, respectively, and about 1,800-2,000 ''sentences,'' that is, PROLOG formulas of both theories. Special rules allow formal ''interpretations'' of singular sentences and the mapping of sentences of one theory onto sentences of the other. The neural net renders simple simulations of social processes according to the theories; the weight matrices of the net are constructed by the expert system.