New Thinking in Complexity for the Social Sciences and Humanities: A Generative, Transdisciplinary Approach (Springer Complexity) - Hardcover

Jörg, Ton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9400713029 ISBN 13: 9789400713024

Publisher: Springer, 2011

Synopsis

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.

 

About this title

About the Author

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.

From the Back Cover

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9400713029
• ISBN 13: 9789400713024
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 333