Critical Complexity PDF Download

Author: Rika Preiser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501502611
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Contemporary theories on complex adaptive systems stem from a natural science perspective. Paul Cilliers was one of the first complexity thinkers to translate the theoretical concepts into a qualitative and normative understanding of complexity. This collected volume of essays consolidates his later work. The introduction by Preiser and Woermann reflects on the significance of his contribution within the broader field of complex systems thinking.

Author: Rika Preiser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 150150259X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This book is a collection of all the single authored essays by Paul Cilliers, published between 1990-2011. Being one of few authors who approached the study of complexity from a philosophical perspective, the main themes in these papers explore: - Qualitative characterization of complexity and the normative implications of studying complex adaptive systems, - the philosophical and conceptual similarity to post-structural approaches - how any engagement with complexity leads to a critical engagement with how we do science and design interventions - critical and normative implications for how to engage with complex socio-political concerns in the world. What makes this book unique is that it consolidates a body of work that is distributed over a wide range of academic journals. Although his book "Complexity and Postmodernism" (Routledge, 1998) remains a cornerstone in the field of complexity studies, Cilliers’ journal essays really explore the application of the theoretical concepts in more depth. His ground-breaking ideas conceptualized in these essays have served as a continual source of novelty and inspiration in the process of applying complexity thinking to other fields of study.

Author: Michael C. Jackson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119118387
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 728

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Book Description
The world has become increasingly networked and unpredictable. Decision makers at all levels are required to manage the consequences of complexity every day. They must deal with problems that arise unexpectedly, generate uncertainty, are characterised by interconnectivity, and spread across traditional boundaries. Simple solutions to complex problems are usually inadequate and risk exacerbating the original issues. Leaders of international bodies such as the UN, OECD, UNESCO and WHO — and of major business, public sector, charitable, and professional organizations — have all declared that systems thinking is an essential leadership skill for managing the complexity of the economic, social and environmental issues that confront decision makers. Systems thinking must be implemented more generally, and on a wider scale, to address these issues. An evaluation of different systems methodologies suggests that they concentrate on different aspects of complexity. To be in the best position to deal with complexity, decision makers must understand the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches and learn how to employ them in combination. This is called critical systems thinking. Making use of over 25 case studies, the book offers an account of the development of systems thinking and of major efforts to apply the approach in real-world interventions. Further, it encourages the widespread use of critical systems practice as a means of ensuring responsible leadership in a complex world. Comments on a previous version of the book: Russ Ackoff: ‘the book is the best overview of the field I have seen’ JP van Gigch: ‘Jackson does a masterful job. The book is lucid ...well written and eminently readable’ Professional Manager (Journal of the Chartered Management Institute): ‘Provides an excellent guide and introduction to systems thinking for students of management’

Author: Paul Cilliers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134743297
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
In Complexity and Postmodernism, Paul Cilliers explores the idea of complexity in the light of contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science. Cilliers offers us a unique approach to understanding complexity and computational theory by integrating postmodern theory (like that of Derrida and Lyotard) into his discussion. Complexity and Postmodernism is an exciting and an original book that should be read by anyone interested in gaining a fresh understanding of complexity, postmodernism and connectionism.

Author: Jacek Marczyk
Publisher: Edizioni del Faro
ISBN: 8865378468
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
With all likelihood high complexity is the most evident and dramatic characteristic of not just the economy; it is also the hallmark of our lives. In a complex economy conventional risk management, risk rating and business intelligence technologies are becoming dangerously outdated. The tools and solutions presented in this book have been architectured specifically for turbulence and for a complex economy dominated by shocks, destabilizing events and instability. In particular, the book proposes a new rating model based on resilience, the capacity to withstand such shocks, beyond the increasingly irrelevant but still popular idea of Probability of Default (PoD). Moreover, it is shown how in an interconnected economy rating single companies provides little insight as to its state of health and sustainability and how large-scale systemic analyses of ecosystems of corporations can provide new knowledge and new insights for the global investor. Finally, new approaches to asset allocation and portfolio design based on complexity and resilience are introduced.

Author: Jan Blommaert
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
ISBN: 1783090421
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Superdiversity has rendered familiar places, groups and practices extraordinarily complex, and the traditional tools of analysis need rethinking. In this book, Jan Blommaert investigates his own neighbourhood in Antwerp, Belgium, from a complexity perspective. Using an innovative approach to linguistic landscaping, he demonstrates how multilingual signs can be read as chronicles documenting the complex histories of a place. The book can be read in many ways: as a theoretical and methodological contribution to the study of linguistic landscape; as one of the first monographs which addresses the sociolinguistics of superdiversity; or as a revision of some of the fundamental assumptions of social science through the use of chaos and complexity theory as an inspiration for understanding the structures of contemporary social life.

Author: Robert Geyer
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1782549528
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
'Over recent years Complexity Science has revealed to us new limits to our possible knowledge and control in social, cultural and economic systems. Instead of supposing that past statistics and patterns will give us predictable outcomes for possible actions, we now know the world is, and will always be, creative and surprising. Continuous structural evolution within such systems may change the mechanisms, descriptors, problems and opportunities, often negating policy aims. We therefore need to redevelop our thinking about interventions, policies and policy making, moving perhaps to a humbler, more 'learning' approach. In this Handbook, leading thinkers in multiple domains set out these new ideas and allow us to understand how these new ideas are changing policymaking and policies in this new era.' - Peter M Allen, Cranfield University, UK

Author: Roger Lewin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226476551
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
"Put together one of the world's best science writers with one of the universe's most fascinating subjects and you are bound to produce a wonderful book. . . . The subject of complexity is vital and controversial. This book is important and beautifully done."—Stephen Jay Gould "[Complexity] is that curious mix of complication and organization that we find throughout the natural and human worlds: the workings of a cell, the structure of the brain, the behavior of the stock market, the shifts of political power. . . . It is time science . . . thinks about meaning as well as counting information. . . . This is the core of the complexity manifesto. Read it, think about it . . . but don't ignore it."—Ian Stewart, Nature This second edition has been brought up to date with an essay entitled "On the Edge in the Business World" and an interview with John Holland, author of Emergence: From Chaos to Order.

Author: Minka Woermann
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319390473
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This work addresses the topic of philosophical complexity, which shares certain assumptions with scientific complexity, cybernetics, and General Systems Theory, but which is also developing as a subject field in its own right. Specifically, the post-structural reading of philosophical complexity that was pioneered by Paul Cilliers is further developed in this study. To this end, the ideas of a number of contemporary French post-structural theorists and their predecessors - including Derrida, Nancy, Bataille, Levinas, Foucault, Saussure, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Hegel - are introduced. The implications that their various insights hold for our understanding of complex human systems are teased out at the hand of the themes of economy, (social) ontology, subjectivity, epistemology, and ethics. The analyses are also illuminated at the hand of the problematic of the foreigner and the related challenges of showing hospitality to foreigners. The study presents a sophisticated account of both philosophical complexity and philosophies of difference. By relating these subject fields, the study also extends our understanding of philosophical complexity, and offers an original characterisation of the aforementioned philosophers as complex thinkers.

Author: Kim Christensen
Publisher: Imperial College Press
ISBN: 186094504X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
This book provides a challenging and stimulating introduction to the contemporary topics of complexity and criticality, and explores their common basis of scale invariance, a central unifying theme of the book.Criticality refers to the behaviour of extended systems at a phase transition where scale invariance prevails. The many constituent microscopic parts bring about macroscopic phenomena that cannot be understood by considering a single part alone. The phenomenology of phase transitions is introduced by considering percolation, a simple model with a purely geometrical phase transition, thus enabling the reader to become intuitively familiar with concepts such as scale invariance and renormalisation. The Ising model is then introduced, which captures a thermodynamic phase transition from a disordered to an ordered system as the temperature is lowered in zero external field. By emphasising analogies between percolation and the Ising model, the reader's intuition of phase transitions is developed so that the underlying theoretical formalism may be appreciated fully. These equilibrium systems undergo a phase transition only if an external agent finely tunes certain external parameters to particular values.Besides fractals and phase transitions, there are many examples in Nature of the emergence of such complex behaviour in slowly driven non-equilibrium systems: earthquakes in seismic systems, avalanches in granular media and rainfall in the atmosphere. A class of non-equilibrium systems, not constrained by having to tune external parameters to obtain critical behaviour, is addressed in the framework of simple models, revealing that the repeated application of simple rules may spontaneously give rise to emergent complex behaviour not encoded in the rules themselves. The common basis of complexity and criticality is identified and applied to a range of non-equilibrium systems. Finally, the reader is invited to speculate whether self-organisation in non-equilibrium systems might be a unifying concept for disparate fields such as statistical mechanics, geophysics and atmospheric physics.Visit http: //www.complexityandcriticality.com for animations for the models in the book (available for Windows and Linux), solutions to exercises, as well as a list with corrections.