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

by Jenks; Chris

• ISBN13: 9780415336505
• ISBN10: 0415336503
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Qualitative Complexityoffers a critique of the humanist paradigm in contemporary social theory. Drawing from sources in sociology, philosophy, complexity theory, 'fuzzy logic', systems theory, cognitive science and evolutionary biology, the authors present a new series of interdisciplinary perspectives on the sociology of complex, self-organizing structures.

Author Biography

Chris Jenks is Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Sociology at Brunel University.

Table of Contents

PART I The interdisciplinary field	1	(102)
Complexity theory: a positioning paper	3	(26)
From Descartes' conjecture to Kant's subject and the computo	29	(18)
Autopoiesis in cognitive biology	47	(14)
Emergentism, evolutionary psychology and culture	61	(20)
Prigogine's thermodynamics, ontology and sociology	81	(22)
PART II Critical developments	103	(108)
Modernism and determinism: linear expectations and qualitative complexity analyses	105	(24)
Complexity theory as a critique of post-modernism	129	(35)
Cognition and the renewal of systems theory: redundant idioms and disputed positions	164	(17)
The evolution of intelligence, consciousness and language: implications for social theory	181	(17)
Complexity, language and culture: social systems in qualitative, i.e. not formal, terms	198	(13)
PART III The fields of complex analysis: contemporary complexity theory	211	(66)
The ethics of pragmatism: politics and post-structuralism in transition after the complexity turn	213	(28)
The topology of complexity	241	(16)
Re-interpreting global complexity as an ontology: human ecology	257	(20)
Notes	277	(9)
Bibliography	286	(5)
Index	291