On Complexity (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences) - Softcover

Edgar Morin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1572738014 ISBN 13: 9781572738010

Publisher: Hampton Press, 2008

Synopsis

In this volume of key essays Morin turns his attention to the technical and philosophical underpinnings of complexity theory and applies it to a wide-ranging number of issues. These essays will certainly stimulate the critical debate within complexity circles, but is also essential reading for anybody interested in our complex world and how to live in it.

Contents: Foreword: Edgar Morin's Path of Complexity, Alfonso Montuori. BLIND INTELLIGENCE. Becoming Aware. The Pathology of Knowing, Blind Intelligence. The Need for Complex Thought. COMPLEX PATTERN AND DESIGN. Indo-America. Systems Theory. Open Systems. Information/Organization. Organization. Self-organization. Complexity. Subject and Object. Coherence and Epistemological Opening. Scienza Nuova. For a Unity of Science. Integration of the Realities Banished by Classical Science. Beyond Classical Either/Or Alternatives. The Paradigmatic Turning Point. THE PARADIGM OF COMPLEXITY. The Paradigm of Simplicity. Order and Disorder in the Universe. Self-organization. Autonomy. Complexity and completeness. Reason, rationality and rationalization. The Necessity of Macro-concepts. Three Principles. Toward Complexity. COMPLEXITY AND ACTION. Action Is Also a Wager. Action Escapes our Intentions. The Non-trivial Machine. Preparing for the Unexpected. COMPLEXITY AND THE ENTERPRISE. Three Causalities. From Self-organization to Self-eco-organization. To Live and Make a Deal with Disorder. Strategy, Program, and Organization. Complementary and Antagonistic Relations. The Necessity for a Lived Solidarity. ON THE NOTION OF THE SUBJECT, translated by Sean M. Kelly. THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF COMPLEXITY, translated by Sean M. Kelly. Appendix 1: The Concept of System, translated by Sean M. Kelly. Appendix 2: A New Science of Autonomy. Notes. Author Index

About this title

About the Author

Philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin, born in 1921, is one of France's leading contemporary thinkers. His large body of work is characterized by a concern for knowledge capable of grasping the complexity of reality and of observing the singular while placing it within the whole. We need to understand the nature of being human, Morin says. However, first we must discover that "the treasure of human unity is human diversity and that the treasure of human diversity is human unity". He presents his thinking on education in La tête bien faite, Relier les connaissances. His book Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future (2000) has been translated into many languages. 

Edgar Morin has concentrated on developing a method that can meet the challenge of the complexity of our world and reform thinking, preconditions for confronting all fundamental, global problems. His numerous publications include  the six volumes of Method (1977-2004), On Complexity, Homeland Earth, California Journal, Vidal and His Family, Cinema and the Imaginary Man, Pour sortir du XXème siècle, Autocritique, New Trends in the Study of Mass Communications, Homeland Earth, La Voie. Morin has been translated into many languages, including Chinese, English, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. 

Morin has received honorary doctorates in subjects ranging from political science to psychology and sociology from universities in 27 countries in the world and holds an itinerant UNESCO Chair in Complex Thought. Today he is recognized as perhaps the pre-eminent planetary thinker of our time.

From the Back Cover

Edgar Morin has been urging for a shift towards complexity thinking for many decades. He has a unique capability to move between the natural and social sciences--without doing either of them any injustice--and is ideally placed to address the epistemological, ethical and practical problems of our times. What makes Morin unique amongst complexity theorists is the way in which he turns a critical eye on complexity theory itself, resisting a return to determinism, reduction and disjunction in come approaches to complexity.
Paul Cilliers, University of Stellenbosch--Author of Complexity and Postmodernism

The biology of 21st century is moving from the reductionist approach of molecular biology to the systems approach of the new science of systems biology. More than 20 years ago Edgar Morin had already articulated the paradigm of complexity that gives us the clues needed to address the conceptual changes in modern biology.
Magali ROUX-ROUQUIÉ--Senior scientist-CNRS (French National Research Center),
Deputy director USAR-CNRS

Morin is a representative thinker of humanity's planetary age. In remedying the deficiency of
Western classic analytic thinking, Morin's complex thinking shows some affinities to the Chinese classic synthetic thinking, such as the emphasis on the union of the universal and the particular. Morin's path indicates that the creation of the paradigm of complexity depends on the fusion of Western and Eastern thinking, each of which has its strength and weakness.
Yi-zhuang Chen--Professor of Philosophy, Central-South University, People's Republic
of China

I have not been this excited about anything rooted in general system theory since reading von
Bertalanffy and Boulding many years ago. I hope that all my colleagues in organization studies will read this book and respond to it. It is deserving not only of our attention, but will be of interest to those working in all the fields of science, social science and the humanities.
Mary Jo Hatch--Author, Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern
Perspectives, Professor Emeritus, McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia,
USA

Here is a discussion that takes us into the puzzling domain of self in relation to eco-organization.
We normally relate the notion of complexity to technical order, which has led, in Morin's phrase, to "blind intelligence." He postulates a domain of complexity in which living order has a crucial organizing role. By providing a satisfying explanation of the processes of recursion and a perspective of holism in which activities of the whole, "emergents," loop back to constrain parts, Morin's valuable presentation reveals how environment is in us.
Peter J. C. Haries-Jones, PhD--Emeritus Professor, York University,
Author of a Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson

Morin has opened the way to real thinking about human nature, not reducing it to one of its components, bio-physico-chemical, social, psychological, religious, or political. Understanding the interactions between these components without confusion is the challenge of the sciences of
complexity.
Henri Atlan--Author, Enlightenment to Enlightenment: Intercritique of Science and Myth,
Hadassah University Hospital, Jerusalem, Israel, EHESS, Paris

Edition details

• Publisher: Hampton Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1572738014
• ISBN 13: 9781572738010
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Number of pages: 127