The Principle of Ontological Uncertainty in Complex Systems and the Superpositional State of Society

This article develops an ontological framework for the analysis of social and historical processes based on the hypotheses of societal superposition and the principle of measure. In contrast to managerial, normative, and descriptive approaches, uncertainty is conceptualized not as a deficit of information or a failure of prediction, but as a fundamental structural property of social reality. Society is understood as a system of multiple potential states coexisting within an admissible measure-space and collapsing into actual configurations under contextual, institutional, and event-driven conditions. The analysis demonstrates that compensatory mechanisms—such as expert models, ideologies, collective decision procedures, and governance techniques—may temporarily stabilize local configurations, but cannot eliminate ontological uncertainty or reverse the irreversibility of social transformations. By situating the proposed framework in relation to political philosophy, sociological theory, and complexity-oriented approaches, the article reveals a shared reliance on rationalization and control that lacks a systematic account of the limits of governance. The concluding section outlines the implications of the societal superposition hypothesis for understanding historical contingency, political action, and bounded rationality, and identifies directions for further research, including the formalization of measure, the dynamics of identity, and the constraints of collective choice.