ecology, cognitive processes and the re-emergence of structures in post-humanist social theory /
John Smith and Chris Jenks.
New York :
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group,
2006.
vi, 302 pages ;
24 cm.
International library of sociology
"Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge."
Includes bibliographical references (286-290) and index.
The interdisciplinary field -- Complexity theory : a positioning paper -- From Descartes' conjecture to Kant's subject and the computo -- Autopoiesis in cognitive biology -- Emergentism, evolutionary psychology and culture -- Prigogine's thermodynamics, ontology and sociology -- Critical developments -- Modernism and determinism : linear expectations and qualitative complexity analyses -- Complexity theory as a critique of postmodernism -- Cognition and the renewal of systems theory : redundant idioms and disputed positions -- The evolution of intelligence, consciousness and language : implications for social theory -- Complexity, language and culture : social systems in qualitative, i.e. not formal, terms -- The fields of complex analysis : contemporary complexity theory -- The ethics of pragmatism : politics and post-structuralism in transition after the complexity turn -- The topology of complexity -- Re-interpreting global complexity as an ontology : human ecology.
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"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 structure."--Jacket.