FUZZY LOGIC, ANALOGY AND METHODS OF RESEARCH: A COMPLEX MULTIDIMENSIONAL APPROACH Alfredo Givigliano 1 University of Pisa in J. BLASIUS, J. HOX, E. DE LEEUW, P. SCHMIDT (eds.), Social Science Methodology in the New Millennium. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Logic and Methodology, TT-Publikaties, Köln 2000. (CD-ROM) The traditional methods used in the social research, are structured according with Classical Logic. The distinction between the syntactic and the semantic aspect of the date isn’t the way to make adequate instruments of research in a world more and more complex in the sense of a plurality of memberships and degrees of truth, which identify the construction of meaning by the subject, in other words the reality like a multidimensional and fractal structure. The problem of constitution of categories with given and close border like mathematical sets (in the Cantor’s sense) makes really hard to read the social events (what is a social events?) only by a qualitative point of view, the same could be said by a quantitative one. To use together quantitative and qualitative concepts, we need to put them in a logical framework which includes the analogy as a model and instrument of research; also to make possible to go from the theory to the empirical field. Key words: Chaos Theory, Epistemology, Fractal, Meaning, Social Network 1 Laboratory of Social Research, Dept. of Social Sciences, University of Pisa, givigliano@dss.unipi.it - http:www.dss.unipi.it/lab; http://www-serra.unipi.it/dsslab/laboratorio/index.htm