New Thinking in Complexity for the Social Sciences and Humanities

This book takes the complexity of our real-world complexity not for granted but as a serious topic for our social sciences and humanities. It is about the possibility of learning a new way of thinking about the real complexity of our world and opening up a new way of viewing and doing science. New tools of thinking and a new language for complexity are developed for dealing with the very complexity of the world in which we live.

The underlying idea and motive for the book is that the notion of complexity may humanize the social sciences, may conceive the complex human being as more human, and turn reality as assumed in our doing social science into a more complex, that is a richer reality for all.
The main focus of this book is on new thinking in complexity, with complexity to be taken as derived from the Latin word complexus: 'that which is interwoven.'
The trans-disciplinary approach advocated here will be trans-disciplinary in two ways: firstly, by going beyond the separate disciplines within the fields of both natural sciences and social sciences, and, secondly, by going beyond the separate cultures of the natural sciences and of the social sciences and humanities.

Offers a way to learn to think in a new way about the subject of study in the social sciences and humanities One can learn to think in complexity about the real complexity of a nonlinear complex reality Opening the social sciences by offering a new agenda for these sciences by taken complexity not for granted but as a serious topic of study with great potential for humanity and society at large Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext

Ton Jörg has been an educational scientist since 1982 at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. He studied Physics and Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam (BSc 1970). In 1969, he started to study Psychology at the same university (M.A. 1977). He worked as an evaluation researcher in different national (on adult education, and physics education) and international projects (3rd SISS-International Science Project). In 1994, he finished his dissertation about the choice of physics as an examination subject. He has been involved in complex systems and complexity thinking since 1971. He wrote articles on invitation to open up a conversation on complexity and education, for journals like Educational Research Review, in 2007, and for Complicity, in 2009, with extended comments of experts in the field.

Klappentext

This book focuses on the development of new thinking in complexity and on the tools needed for this new thinking, i.e. the development of a new language for complexity. This new language is very much about how a nonlinear complex reality is part of real-world complexity. We can start thinking in complexity about the complex topics of our social sciences and humanities by making use of this new language. With the new tools and the new language, it will be possible to deal with the complexity of real-world complexity and to show the promise of harnessing complexity, by turning complexity into effective and advantageous complexity for our social sciences and humanities. It is the very potential of complexity as self-potentiating which makes complexity so beneficial for viewing and doing social sciences. The new tools and the new thinking in complexity may be considered to be the warp and woof of a new science of complexity.

Inhalt
Contents. -Mission of the Book.- Introduction.- Chapter 1: The Crisis in the Social Sciences.- Chapter 2: Giving Birth to a New Science Setting the Agenda.- Chapter 3: A New Agenda for the Social Sciences.- Chapter 4: On Becoming Reflective about our Viewing and Doing Science.- Chapter 5: The Reality of Reality.- Chapter 6: New Ways of Knowing about the Complexity of Reality.- Introduction to Chapters 7 to 9.-Chapter 7: Rethinking Interaction.- Chapter 8: Rethinking Causality.- Chapter 9: Rethinking the Unit of Study.- Chapter 10: The Complexity of Complexity. - Chapter 11: The Complexity of Human Interaction.- Chapter 12: Summary and Conclusions. References.- Name Index.- Subject Index.