ABSTRACT
I argued in the previous chapter that a philosophy or epistemology of complexity and/or a theory of complex adaptive systems represent an advance in scientific thinking because, as an epistemological point of departure, they both include as well as supersede reductionism. As an epistemology, complexity thinking tries to hold on to both parts of what have traditionally been thought of as paradoxical or logically exclusive positions, such as local and global, individual and society, particular and general. It is, in my view, providing a meta-epistemology, trying to step back one more level, to see if scholars cannot reconcile the hitherto logically irreconcilable. In this sense, it is a shift in perspective, a shift in standpoint, and a shift exercising the human ability to recursive thinking (Hofstadter, 1979, pp. 103-152). In this moving up one level, it argues that some paradoxes cannot be solved and cannot be dissolved. We have to live with them, and we should stop trying to get rid of them but rather should include them in our thinking. By questioning and trying to supersede the anti-paradoxical nature of scholarly thought itself, an epistemology of complexity stretches our understanding of reality further than has previously been done. It tries to deal with the recognition that rationality needs to categorize. However, this categorization causes problems because reality is more complex than rational categories allow, and categorization deconstructs the unity of reality (Hofstadter, 1979, pp. 246-272). In fact, as Morin (2008) argues, rational categories could do violence to the intricate complexity of reality. One could thus perhaps claim that complexity thinking takes the complexity of reality as its point of departure, and it does not try to simplify reality by its conceptual work but rather allows for this complexity. Put simply, it asks the question, How can one think, be rational, while maintaining the complexity of reality?
