Performing Complexity: Building Foundations for the Practice of Complex Thinking

✍ Scribed by Ana Teixeira de Melo

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 83
• Series: SpringerBriefs in Complexity
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In the face of growing challenges, we need modes of thinking that allow us to not only grasp complexity but also perform it. In this book, the author approaches complexity from the standpoint of a relational worldview. The author recasts complex thinking as a mode of coupling between an observer and the world. Further, she explores the process and outcome of that coupling, namely, meaningful information that may have transformative effects and impact the management of change in the ‘real world’. The author presents a new framework for operationalising complex thinking in a set of dimensions and properties through which it may be enacted. This framework may inform the development and coordination of new tools and strategies to support the practice and evaluation of complex thinking across a variety of domains. Intended for a wide interdisciplinary audience of academics, practitioners and policymakers alike, the book is an invitation to pursue inter- and transdisciplinary dialogues and collaborations.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface......Page 7
Acknowledgements......Page 9
About This Book......Page 11
Contents......Page 12
About the Author......Page 14
List of Figures......Page 16
1.1 Modes of Thinking......Page 17
1.2 Thinking Complexity......Page 19
1.3 Thinking Complexity Complexly......Page 22
References......Page 24
2.1 What and Where Is Complexity?......Page 28
2.2 A Relational Worldview for Complexity: From Differentiation and Integration, to Recursiveness and Emergence......Page 30
2.3 The (Co)Evolution of Complexity: The Universe and Its Observers......Page 32
2.4 Knowing Through Coupling......Page 35
2.5 From Relational to Relative Complexity(Ies)......Page 37
References......Page 45
3.1 Complex Thinking as a Mode of Coupling......Page 48
3.2 Dimensions and Properties of Complex Thinking......Page 50
3.3 First and Second-Order or Emergent Complex Thinking......Page 55
3.4 The Processes and Contents of the Thinking: Complex Thinking, Complexity Thinking and Complex Systems Thinking......Page 60
References......Page 62
4 An Operational Framework for Complex Thinking......Page 64
4.1.1 Structural Variety and Dimensionality......Page 69
4.2 Dynamic/Process Complexity......Page 70
4.3 Causal and Explanatory Complexity......Page 71
4.3.3 Complex Circularity: Part-Whole Relations......Page 72
4.4.2 Trinities and Levels......Page 73
4.5.3 Intentionalities......Page 74
4.7 Pragmatic Complexity......Page 75
4.8.2 Aesthetical Value......Page 76
4.9.3 Flexibility/Openness......Page 77
References......Page 78
5.1 From Thinking to Performing Complexity......Page 79
References......Page 82
Postface......Page 83