A collection of projects organised under the umbrella of a broader interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research programme dedicated to Complex Thinking: building theoretical, methodological and pragmatic foundations and to promoting practice.
An interconnected interdisciplinary research programme dedicated to building theoretical, methodological and pragmatic foundations and supporting the practice of Complex Thinking applied to understanding, promoting and managing positive changes in "real-world" complex social and ecological systems.
Building Foundations for Complex Thinking (2018-ongoing). This is a broader project, aggregating several sub-projects:
Diffusion of Complexity Concepts: An interdisciplinary mapping (2018)
The Relatoscope Studies (2023-ongoing)
The Complexigraphy studies (following the COMPLEX PRO study) (2023-ongoing)
The Complex Thinking Academy (2018-ongoing)
What is (in) a Relation (2023-ongoing)
Complex Thinking & AI (May-October 2024)
This initiative is grounded in the idea that a variety of modes of thinking are required for understanding, promoting and managing change in complex systems and that their interaction can generate complexity (e.g. emergence) and information which can guide the observer in its coupling relation with a target system of interest in effective and sustainable ways, even in conditions of high risk and uncertainty.
Following Ashby’s law of requisite variety (1958), we state that the potential of interventions in complex systems is dependent on the complexity of the intervenors themselves, namely their contributions for the coupling relationship with a system of interest. This complexity must be grounded in the modes of thinking that, constrained by (and constraining) our explanatory approaches and theoretical models, guide our actions (Morin, 1990): our modes of thinking need to be congruent and commensurate with the nature and complexity of the systems we seek to address.
It is possible to organise our modes of thinking in such a way that the resulting coherence fosters the emergence of relevant information about a target system of interest (Checkland 1999; Caves and Melo 2018), ourselves and our relationship with it, so as to improve and expand our possibilities for acting in positive ways in relation to it and to better manage the change processes implicated in this relationship.
More complex modes of thinking are more likely to lead to the emergence of novel and pragmatically meaningful information about a given target system that informs actions supporting a positive co-evolving relationship and eco-systemic fitness between the observer, the system of interest and their environment.
Complex thinking as a process that is sustained by a set of practices that simultaneously:
(i) attend to (describing, explaining, predicting) and adjust to the complexity of (a selected part of) the world (the system of interest) and the properties that sustain its complexity (as recognised by given communities of observers at a given point in time); and
(ii) enact such properties as contributions to the coupling relationship;
An outcome of coupling
Complex thinking as an outcome generates:
(i) a multiplicity of descriptions, explanations and anticipations as well as a framework for their integration;
(ii) meaningful emergent novel information, translated as differences that makes a difference (Bateson 1979) in the observer, the target system and/or their coupling relationship towards increased coherence and complexity;
(iii) a variety of possibilities of action for promoting, supporting or managing change in both the observer, the world, and their subsequent coupling relation, guiding choices that build
(iv) constructive interactions and positive co-evolving relationships capable of sustaining positive outcomes for the observer, the target system and their environments, as agreed by a set of critical observers (entities either involved and/or more or less directly affected by the outcomes).
