1st Edition

Qualitative Complexity Ecology, Cognitive Processes and the Re-Emergence of Structures in Post-Humanist Social Theory

By John Smith, Chris Jenks Copyright 2006
    310 Pages
    by Routledge

    320 Pages
    by Routledge

    Offering a critique of the humanist paradigm in contemporary social theory, Qualitative Complexity is the first comprehensive sociological analysis of complexity theory. Drawing from sources in sociology, philosophy, complexity theory, 'fuzzy logic', systems theory, cognitive science and evolutionary biology, John Smith and Chris Jenks present a new series of interdisciplinary perspectives on the sociology of complex, self-organizing structures.

    Part One: The Interdisciplinary Field

    Chapter 1. Complexity Theory: a positioning paper.

    Chapter 2. From Descartes’ Conjecture to Kant’s Subject & the Computo.

    Chapter 3. Autopoiesis in Cognitive Biology.

    Chapter 4. Emergentism, Evolutionary Psychology and Culture.

    Chapter 5. Prigogine’s Thermodynamics, Ontology and Sociology.

    Part Two: Critical Developments

    Chapter 6. Modernism and Determinism: Linear Expectations and Qualitative

    Complexity Analyses.

    Chapter 7. Complexity Theory as a Critique of Postmodernism.

    Chapter 8. Cognition and the Renewal of Systems Theory: redundant idioms and

    disputed positions.

    Chapter 9. The evolution of intelligence, consciousness and language: implications for social theory

    Chapter 10. Complexity, Language and Culture: social systems in qualitative, i.e. not formal terms.

    Part Three: The Fields of Complex Analysis: Contemporary Complexity Theory.

    Chapter 11. The Ethics of Pragmatism: Politics and post-structuralism in transition after the complexity turn.

    Chapter 12. The Topology of Complexity.

    Chapter 13. Re-interpreting Global Complexity as an Ontology: Human Ecology

    Biography

    John Smith, Chris Jenks