Chaos/Complexity Theory

"According to chaos theory, change is an organizational model that is contemporaneous and one of the best models for post-modern 21st century organizations. Chaos theory recognizes the inevitability of change, it is only the timing and vector that is difficult to predict. (Taneja, Pryor, Humprys, & Singleton,  2013).  Acquisitions, mergers, and unfortunately bankruptcies and government takeovers are increasingly common and all support the presuppositions of chaos theory. Just as in chemistry, change can be organic in that it flows from the ongoing processes or it is inorganic, a different type altogether.

The complex environments of today’s markets makes managing organizations in complexity and turbulence a concern for senior managers, and necessitate developing a dynamic strategic framework to cope with complexity in managing organizations. This paper demonstrates a study that was conducted to value a structured set of management principles and sub-elements by a panel of experts to develop a conceptual framework to manage in complex and very high dynamic environments. The panel consisted of 22 senior level managers of grade “A” companies in the construction industry in Qatar State using a two-round Delphi technique. The study developed two frameworks. The first framework is for managing complexity in the construction sector. The second one is the primary general framework, which forms a basis for a generalized framework for other industries. This study participates in developing valuable management practices in complex environments to tackle uncertainty, unpredictability, disorder, rapid changes and non-linearity, which would be of great help for leaders, senior managers and practitioners who operate in complex environments. Journal: Construction Management and Economics Volume 36, 2018 - Issue 4

Multi-particle quantum statistical correlations measured in the collisions of heavy nuclei at the unrivaled energies. Remarkable consequences have been observed and speculated that such significant repercussions may arise due to non-chaotic and granular nature particle emanated sources. To study such kind of chaotic fraction as well as the particles emission, we have demonstrated and analyzed the ejection of particles from the disseminated agglomeration of tiny droplets which produced quantum statistics multi-particle correlations which do not only reflect the size of the fluid droplets but also contribute the specific clues about the congenital properties of chaos-coherence matter produced during the collisions. Such correlations possess the existence of gesture of the mixed-phase of chaotic and coherent fractions in the considered collisions. The main object of this research is that we investigate the intrinsic properties of produced matter by intensity correlations to utilize it in engineering applications. The purpose of these findings is to analyze the meticulous correlations to expedite the nature of the particle ejecting sources and observe remarkable suppression in the cumulant correlations relative to the full three and four particles interferences in the granular nature sources.

The progress in the field of computers in addition to improving our lives, is also helping to better understand the universe .
Understanding the logic of computing and information is changing the way we look at the universe
from the philosophical point of view and is helping us to better understand the physical laws that form the basis of cosmology .

The concept of “rewilding” has made its way into popular culture in recent years, describing a network of supporting the health of the environment and humanity itself through the cultivation of un-cultivated spaces within existing structures. This paper looks at recent cutting-edge works in literary criticism and theory to see how they handle this growing contemporary impulse to defer to wildness, ie. Complexity, as the “natural” form of cultural and biological processes.

In this paper, the dimensions of the new paradigm, the paradigm of complexity and its impact on strategic management are examined. The results of this study show that, since the fundamental issue of strategic management in turbulent environments is to achieve creativity which can adapt with a turbulent environment as well as maintaining stability, strategic management in complexity paradigm will not be a rational formulation of the strategic plan which is then implemented and controlled. In this paradigm, however, the creation of strategy should be an emergent and self-organized process that arises from spontaneous group discussion between directors and managers on strategic issues. Implementation of strategies should also be flexible and at the same time, orderly. Decision-making should be decentralized, and provide and facilitate learning and experiencing. Also, the personnel should be encouraged to change. The control should be done locally and through the personnel. Managers must provide members with the information needed for this approach and exert control through the members or their teams.

his paper aims at revealing the originality of Max Weber’s conception of the logical category of “historicity”, suggesting that in his writings on the methodology of the social sciences we can find a stimulating and forerunner contribution to the analysis of some logical and formal problems concerning the relationship between human knowledge and the chaos of reality (what we might call, ante-litteram, “science of chaos”). In particular, considering that in Weber’s conception scientific knowledge finds no facts “to grasp” in the natural world, but rather a chaos of unique and infinitely divisible events, the analysis will be focused on the following aspects: (a) Weber’s separation of causal imputation from the notion of necessary (natural) law; (b) the importance attached to “probability judgments” with different degrees of certainty; (c) the proclaimed irreducibility of individual events to scientific models, laws, and (ideal)-types; (d) the effects imputed to the differentiation of the point of view of a scientific observer.

Intermittency in the logistic map is studied by using Discrete Wavelet and Gabor Transforln. The evolution of the periodic zones in the appearance of bursts is observed as fun(:tion of the i)aranleter. The total energy of the system is found concentrated at high frequency levels, wherl more bursts are present. It is shown that the results obtailled with time-frequency analysis are in agreement with the prediction of the analytical model.

Recent work has conjectured that, under general boundary conditions, non-equilibrium Renormalization Group flows are likely to end up on strange attractors. If this conjecture is true, effective field theories must necessarily reflect the properties of these attractors. We start from the observation that, seemingly disparate concepts such as the Berry phase, gauge potentials and the curvature tensor of General Relativity (GR), share a common geometric foundation. Developing further, we posit that the dynamics of gauge and gravitational fields may be derived from the global attributes of strange attractors. The motivation behind this ansatz is that the Navier-Stokes equations bridge the gap between fluid turbulence, on the one hand, and the mathematics of GR and gauge theory, on the other.

We conduct tests for the presence of low-dimensional chaotic structure in the futures prices of four important agricultural commodities. Though there is strong evidence of non-linear dependence, the evidence suggests that there is no long-lasting chaotic structure. The dimension estimates for the commodity futures series are generally much higher than would be for low dimension chaotic series. Our test results indicate that autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH)-type processes, with controls for seasonality and contract-maturity effects, explain much of the non-linearity in the data. We make a case that employing seasonally adjusted price series is important in obtaining robust results via some of the existing tests for chaotic structure. Finally, maximum likelihood methodologies, that are robust to the non-linear dynamics, lend strong support to the Samuelson hypothesis of maturity effects in futures price changes.

Organizations in the 21 st century deal with constant changes such as globalization, technological evolutions, regulatory changes, competition, and other unexpected events, among others. These challenges can be viewed and addressed through the lenses of contemporary theories. This paper selected three contemporary theories namely chaos, complexity, and contingency theories, and presented their foundations and characteristics by comparing and contrasting their key concepts. These concepts include nonlinearity, feedback, bifurcation, strange attractors, fractals, and self-organization for chaos theory; nonlinearity, dynamism, feedback, self-organization, emergence, and adaptability for complexity theory; and adaptation, equifinality, effectiveness, and congruency for contingency theory. Examples of studies and organizational applications of these theories were provided, and implications for scholars and organizational leaders were discussed. By explaining notions such as how the capacity of a system could be greater than the sum of the capacities of its subunits, this paper can act as a starting point for anyone seeking to understand the three theories or use them for research or organizational purposes.

This article juxtaposes the notion of wuwei in Daoism and philosophical principles of self-organization in systems theory to re-imagine classroom dynamics in which pedagogical relationships, students’ interactions with texts, and peer interplay come together to enable an open system of education, learning, and growth. Wuwei is a way of governing and leadership, while self-organization is the emergence of new structures at the global level as a result of local interactions. The combination of topdown and bottom-up processes contributes to create a dynamic classroom. The contemporary Neo-Daoists’ concerns with creating conditions for wuwei to happen can be addressed by principles of self-organization, while wuwei provides a philosophical underpinning that is informative to systems theories. This article first introduces the Daoist notion of wuwei, then articulate important principles of self-organization theory, and further juxtapose the two in both resonance and dissonance in four aspects: the role of change, the role of diversity, the role of the individual person, and the role of the teacher’s wuwei leadership in the selforganizing classroom. In the last section, the article discusses how to shift classroom dynamics toward emergent, relational, and creative pathways, including creating conditions for self-organization and wuwei to happen in the classroom.

Nowadays the increasing complexity and variety of narratives is challenging narratologists to reconsider many of the concept and tools elaborated so far, since their applicability and descriptive power is facing serious troubles due to some interesting changes in the semiosphere, like the popularity of transmedial narratives, the interactivity allowed by digital media and not least the growing audience's awareness of the strategies used to tell a story. Here I will argue that looking at narrative as a complex system can help to grasp the richness of this domain of research and also help to adapt to the changing landscape the most useful instruments elaborated by narratology. Looking at narrative as a complex system means conceiving narrative as a non-linear phenomenon: i.e., narrativity is a property emerging from the organisation of a system constituted by interdependent components interacting with the environment over time in non-linear ways. More specifically, I will claim that narrativity is an emergent behaviour of the system coupled to certain contexts, i.e. a property which is only present when the scope of the system under scrutiny is expanded so to include its environment as well. And in the case of narrative, the environment typically includes the audience.

محيط امروزي روز به روز پيچيدهتر و غير قطعيتر مي شود. سازماني كه در پي شكل دهي روابط متعادل ثابت با محيط ذاتاً غير قابل پيش بيني است و شالوده هاي خود را بر نقاط قوت خود و همسازي با محيط بر زمين قرار مي دهد، با دست خويش خود را نابود مي كند و تسليم نوآوري رقباي ديگر مي شود. در اين پژوهش به بررسي ابعاد پارادايم جديد، يعني پارادايم پيچيدگي پرداخته و تاثير آن بر مديريت استراتژيك و نحوه اجراي استراتژي در اين پارادايم مورد بررسي قرار مي گيرد. نتيجه اين پژوهش نشان مي دهد كه از آنجايي كه مسئله اساسي اجراي استراتژيك در محيط هاي پر تلاطم، دستيابي به خلاقيتي انطباق پذير با محيطي در مرز آشوب، و حفظ هم زمان ثبات و اجراي درست استراتژي است، اجراي استراتژي مي بايست با درگير كردن كليه كارمندان، انعطاف پذيري سريع از طريق تعادل بين ساختار و تغييرات محيطي و پيشرو شدن در ايجاد تغيير پيش از آنكه محيط سازمان را مجبور به تغيير كند، باشد كه اين امر نيازمند مجموعه اي از قوانين استراتژيك است كه به مديران كمك كند تا با تغييرات سريع محيطي، بدون نياز به پيروي از فرآيند آهسته و سنتي اجراي استراتژي، مقابله نمايند.

‘‘Complex’’ is a special attribute we can give to many kinds of systems. Although it is used often as a synonym of ‘‘difficult,’’ it has a specific epistemological meaning, which is going to be shared by the incoming science of complexity. ‘‘Difficult’’ is an object which, by means of an adequate computational power, can be deterministically or stochastically predictable. On the
contrary ‘‘complex’’ is an object which can not be predictable because of logical impossibility or because its predictability would require a computational power far beyond any physical feasibility, now and forever. For complexity refers to some observing system, it is always subjective, and thus it is defined as observed irreducible complexity. Human systems are affected by several sources of complexity, belonging to three classes, in order of descending restrictivity. Systems belonging to the first class are not predictable at all, those belonging to the second class are predictable only through an infinite computational capacity, and those belonging to the third class are predictable only through a trans-computational capacity. The first class has two sources of complexity: logical complexity, directly deriving from self-reference and Goedel’s incompleteness theorems, and relational complexity,
resulting in a sort of indeterminacy principle occurring in social systems. The second class has three sources of complexity: gnosiological complexity, which consists of the variety of possible perceptions; semiotic complexity, which represents the infinite possible interpretations of signs and facts; and chaotic complexity, which characterizes phenomena of nonlinear dynamic systems. The third class coincides with computational complexity, which basically coincides with the mathematical concept of intractability. Artificial, natural, biological and human systems are characterized by the influence of different sources of complexity, and the latter appear to be the most complex.

This essay was submitted in the 2017 FQXi Essay Contest "Wandering Towards a Goal - How Do Mindless Mathematical Laws Give Rise to Aims and Intentions."  The essay critiques the speculations on the infinite multiverse and explores the significance for cosmology of findings from the science of complex dynamic systems.  From the study of emergence, causation and intention, we learn that a universal field guides the emergent cascade to increasing complexity, to life and to sentient consciousness.

Le recours contemporain à la notion de "complexité" renvoie fréquemment à des démarches ayant tendance à unifier sa définition. En langue anglaise, sa réduction à une forme singulière (complexity theory ou complexity science) s'avère ainsi susceptible de masquer la variété des théories permettant de rendre compte des implications inhérentes au recours à cette notion. Cet article, en prenant en considération à la fois les traditions de recherche latines et anglosaxonnes, associées à la notion de complexité, suggère une approche plus nuancée, évitant la simplification de cette notion à certaines des conceptions dominantes qui y sont associées. Partant d'une approche étymologique, cet article propose d'envisager de façon chronologique l'émergence de trois générations de théories de la complexité; ce faisant, certains de leurs enracinements épistémologiques et socio-culturels sont introduits. D'un point de vue épistémologique, la réflexion proposée met en évidence certaines des interprétations hétérogènes sous-jacentes à la définition de ce qui est perçu comme complexe. Suivant une perspective anthropologique, ce texte évoque également la portée à la fois émancipatrice et asservissante susceptible d'être associée à l'idée de complexité. Sur la base des ambiguitiés mises en évidence, cet article suggère finalement de concevoir les contributions renvoyant aux théories contemporaines de la complexité, au même titre que la remise en question de leur légitimité épistémologique et éthique, à partir des boucles et des dynamiques dont elles sont constitutives. Ce faisant, les chercheurs et les praticiens en Sciences de l'éducation devraient considérer leurs pratiques en tant que processus
d'apprentissage dont la complexité renvoie autant aux transformations qu'ils étudient ou provoquent, qu'aux transformations inhérentes aux systèmes de représentations
auxquels ils ont recours pour les conceptualiser.

Arthouse Tacheles, Kyoto School and Chaos Theory ...

Presented at the conference Indeterminate Futures / The Future of Indeterminacy, University of Dundee (UK), 13 – 15 November 2020; published 2 November 2021: https://queenmobs.com/2021/11/how-long-is-now/

The future is no longer seen as open. But before aligning ourselves to the mantra of the “slow cancellation of the future” (Mark Fisher) we should firstly have a closer look at the present, now: for if we can show that the present is indeterminate, it will be a simple task to show that the future is indeterminate as well.

The now is both a particular now – our contemporary present – and each now throughout history: the present now is thus unique. Unlike the future and the past, the now may not be reduced to statistics, probability or algorithms: according to a Sufi’s saying it is the sword that cuts time into two. To counter the “slow cancellation of the future” we thus must become aware that the doctrine of determinism merely holds for the past. Our political and artistic practice may be wholly unpredictable if we literally engage with autopoiesis, dynamic systems and feedback loops right at the edge of chaos, thus transferring an originally scientific concept to politics and arts. If understood precisely, the now is able to disrupt the pattern of determinacy through the unpredictable event of chaos. If the present now is open, the future is open too.

Turbulence, risk and uncertainty are now the normal situation of firms, markets and industries. This normality is underlined by periodic and irregular upturns and downturns which has two main effects. One is vulnerability, against which companies deploy their defensive shield. The latter is opportunity, which should be constantly exploited. This study aims to present a new ambidextrous marketing innovation paradigm for firms which running in a turbulent and complex environment. The model is composed of four main vectors as content, channel, community and context which seem to be influential on stimulating companies' dynamic capabilities to achieve competitive advantage in turbulent markets. It is assumed that these vectors might influence companies' capabilities to tackle their two substantial issues of survival in turbulent environment which are their vulnerability against ever changing environment as well as discovery and exploitation of opportunities. This study is supported by establishing common domain between complex theory, dynamic capability theory and innovation theory. The theoretical underpinning of relationship between innovation approach and turbulent environments are investigated. The approaches suggested by complex theory are contrasted with innovation orientation approaches to evaluate the validity of model. With finding a clear gap in this research area, the proposed model will provide an illustration of how companies might be survived successfully in a complex and turbulent environment.

ФИЛОСОФИЯ И НАУКА самодостраивание Е. Н. КНЯЗЕВА, С. П. КУРДЮМОВ Работа творческой интуиции, достижение состояния инсайта, озарения, «ara-переживания» издавна представали как наиболее загадочные проявления человеческого Я, Для философов, психологов, психоаналитиков, когнитологов она служит предметом многочисленных толкований и перетолкований. До сих пор они трудно поддаются не только логическому анализу, но даже вербальному описанию. Новая междисциплинарная область знания -синергетика,-быть может, она прольет дополнительный свет на механизмы человеческого творчества?

The synchronization of coupled chaotic systems represents a fundamental example of self organization and collective behavior. This well-studied phenomenon is classically characterized in terms of macroscopic parameters , such as Lyapunov exponents, that help predict the system's transitions into globally organized states. However, the local, microscopic, description of this emergent process continues to elude us. Here we show that at the microscopic level, synchronization is captured through a gradual process of topological adjustment in phase space, in which the strange attractors of the two coupled systems continuously converge, taking similar form, until complete topological synchronization ensues. We observe the local nucleation of topological synchronization in specific regions of the system's attractor, providing early signals of synchrony, that appear significantly before the onset of complete synchronization. This local synchronization initiates at the regions of the attractor characterized by lower expansion rates, in which the chaotic trajectories are least sensitive to slight changes in initial conditions. Our findings offer a fresh and novel description of synchronization in chaotic systems, exposing its local embryonic stages that are overlooked by the currently established global analysis. Such local topological synchronization enables the identification of configurations where prediction of the state of one system is possible from measurements on that of the other, even in the absence of global synchronization.

In a global world, speaking foreign languages is an important skill. This book explores the acquisition of Maltese by adult non-native learners, which could easily be applied to any other foreign language acquisition.
What is happening in our mind when it is learning a foreign language? How could an adult learner deal with problems related to memory, personality, and culture shock? I try to answer these questions and solve cognitive and sociocultural challenges through the lens of Chaos/Complexity Theory to improve the competence and performance of the adult learner. Each chapter in this book starts with a funny comic-strip and a quotation. Happy Reading! My book/ebook can be found at the German National Library (Deutsche National Bibliothek): https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm;jsessionid=b... and it can be bought from many international bookshops such as the German publishers, GRIN:  https://www.grin.com/document/1020349 or Amazon: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/dp/3346403491/ref=sr_1_1... or Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/.../a-verbal.../1139514627... or Google Books: https://www.google.de/.../A_Verbal.../Vl8tEAAAQBAJ... or Thalia:  https://www.thalia.de/.../artikeldetails/ID151617601.html or Lehmanns media: https://www.lehmanns.de/.../56816446-9783346403483-a... or Weltbild: https://www.weltbild.ch/.../a-verbal-odyssey-learning... or Suchergebnisse - ImCoSys eBook-Shop: https://imcosys.e-bookshelf.ch/a-verbal-odyssey-learning... or book-ebooks.com: https://www.book-ebooks.com/products/search...... and this book will soon be available in Maltese bookshops.

It is not possible to speak of a single systems approach. There are rather of a number of systems approaches, each loosely drawing on different aspects of a family composed mainly of, general system theory, cybernetics, information theory, chaos theory, and complexity theory. Systems approaches have been used in most of the social sciences, particularly sociology and management, but their use has extended into the arts and humanities.Creativity researchers have used systems approaches drawing on very different sources and in very different ways. The main focus has been to highlight creativity as a phenomenon that occurs in the context of multiple systems, and therefore involves a network of interactions.

This book describes the birth of the new theory of Chaos. This is a difficult new concept that is still evolving but it popularized the term: Butterfly Effect and introduced new concepts to a popular audience, such as fractals and introduced pioneering thinkers, such as Feigenbaum and Mandelbrot; it inspired the novel and movie Jurassic Park. This concept opens up a new view of nature: where previously randomness had to be forced in to explain the unpredictable variations, now chaos is seen as spanning both order (patterns) and disorder. Now, this phenomenon helps explain the shape of clouds, smoke, water eddies, mountain ranges and coastlines. Implicitly, it shows how Newtonian mathematics has constrained physics (and science in general) to make simplifying assumptions that enable  the calculus to become the universal tool-set of the scientific viewpoint. The book describes how this tough problem was cracked by five theoreticians described herein with a novelist's eye.  Key to the solution was the early use of computers to repeat simple calculations, very many times. The viewpoint changed from static 'state' to dynamic process: becoming rather than being. Chaos is everywhere, it is switching the simple mathematical models of classical physics. It is the science of the global nature of systems. I show here (but not in the book or Wiki) that this is the start of the Death of Newtonian Physics and the Calculus: a TRUE REVOLUTION.

The Navier-Stokes differential equations describe the motion of fluids which are incompressible. The three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations misbehave very badly although they are relatively simple-looking. The solutions could wind up being extremely unstable even with nice, smooth, reasonably harmless initial conditions. A mathematical understanding of the outrageous behaviour of these equations would dramatically alter the
field of fluid mechanics. This paper describes why the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations are not solvable, i.e., the equations cannot be used to model turbulence, which is
a three-dimensional phenomenon.

E ste libro trata de la suerte o, por ser más precisos, de cómo percibimos y aceptamos la suerte en nuestra vida y en los negocios. Ya es una obra de referencia y su título forma parte de nuestro vocabulario. En su segunda edición, ¿Existe la Suerte? constituye una piedra angular para cualquiera que esté interesado en los resultados aleatorios. Enmarcado en el foro más llamativo en el que se confunde la suerte por las habilidades (el mundo de la intermediación bursátil), ¿Existe ¡a Suerte? es un análisis cautivador de uno de los factores menos comprendidos de nuestra vida. Con un estilo narrativo y entretenido, el autor consigue abordar las tres principales cuestiones intelectuales: el problema de la inducción, los sesgos de la supervivencia y nuestra falta de ajuste genético al mundo moderno. En esta segunda edición, Taleb recurre a historias y anécdotas para ilustrar nuestra sobreestimación de la causalidad y la heurística que nos hace ver el mundo como algo mucho más explicable de lo que realmente es. ¿Nos ha diseñado la madre naturaleza para que nos tomemos demasiado en serio nuestras creencias y conocimientos? El libro está poblado de personajes que han conseguido comprender, a su manera, la importancia de la suerte: Yogi Berra, la leyenda del béisbol; Karl Popper, el filósofo del conocimiento; Solón, el hombre más sabio del Mundo Antiguo; el moderno financiero George Sores; y el griego mitológico Ulises. También conoceremos al personaje ficticio Ñero que parece comprender el papel de la suerte en su vida profesional pero que, sin embargo, termina siendo también víctima de su propia insensatez supersticiosa. El personaje más reconocible de todos sigue sin tener nombre (el tonto con suerte que está en el sitio adecuado en el momento adecuado) y que personifica la "supervivencia del menos apto". Estos individuos atraen a devotos seguidores que creen en las ideas y métodos de su gurú. Pero nadie puede reproducir lo que se consigue gracias a la suerte. ¿Somos capaces de diferenciar al afortunado charlatán del genuino visionario? ¿Tenemos que intentar siempre descubrir mensajes inexistentes en los sucesos aleatorios? Tal vez sea imposible protegernos de los caprichos de la Diosa Fortuna pero, tras leer ¿Existe la Suerte?, tal vez estemos un poco más preparados.

il mondo contemporaneo sembra orientato verso gli estremi, verso l'assenza di limiti e di vincoli, verso la restaurazione di una ragione assolutistica (scientifica, teorica o politica), verso un orizzonte di autoannientamento. Per cercare di muoversi in senso opposto si è scelto di riflettere sulla relazione, intesa come dialogo tra i saperi e come modalità d'esistenza (intersoggettività responsabile), ma anche come apertura all'altro e alla nonidentità. Con un approccio ancora di tipo relazionale si è guardato anche all'esperienza estetica, tanto rispetto alla produzione dell'opera d'arte quanto alla sua ricezione. alla crisi planetaria (non solo economico-finanziaria) che ci ha investiti non possiamo rispondere con l'isolamento, la paura e la diffidenza, ma con una rinnovata e responsabile apertura all'altro, riscoprendo le "ragioni della relazione". esplorare i sentieri rischiosi, oscuri e incerti della relazione, nelle sue varie forme, sembra offrire all'uomo d'oggi un'interessante possibilità per accedere ad una dimensione realmente aperta e comunitaria.

https://www.urbanomic.com/book/collapse-5/

One of the most fertile collaborations in contemporary popular science writing began with a biologist and a mathematician meeting for lunch at a Coventry pub in 1990. Combining their prodigious knowledge of contemporary science, the unique partnership between Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart has spawned a series of popular science books remarkable in their scope, epistemological subtlety and conceptual innovativeness. To read ‘Jack&Ian’ is to embark upon an exhilarating and intellectually enriching ride through the thickets of contemporary scientific thinking and emerge with a profound sense of how it all interconnects. Their combined critical perspective brings much-needed clarity to popular science memes such as 'emergence’, ‘chaos’ and ‘complex systems’, and they can be relied upon never to neglect the ‘big picture’. In this interview, Cohen and Stewart recount the history of their ‘complicit’ collaboration, discuss the significance of the novel ideas proposed in their co-authored works, explain their criticisms of reductionism, anthropic reasoning and astrobiology, and tell us about the aliens who helped them to write their books.

How do synchronization and self-organization emerge from systems that didn't have these properties to begin with? characterizing and understanding the transition from disorder to synchrony is of fundamental importance in order to understand the emergence of synchronization and self-organization in nature, such as the emergence of the acoustic unison of cricket choruses or the behavior of the human brain. In a new study published in Physics review E, we addressed this challenge and revealed the exact process by which chaotic systems synchronize. We explained for the first time how order and self-organization can emerge from two interacting chaotic systems by shifting the focus of attention from the activity of the system to their structure.

In 1963 Lorenz published his seminal paper Deterministic Non-­‐‑ periodic flow in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. The philosophical ramifications of the unpredictability of phenomenon in nature noted in this work were profound and the implications have fueled an incredible development in dynamical systems. In this paper, we explore this system and its enigmatic strange attractor, by looking into the dynamics of the Lorenz equations, defining its chaotic attributes thru both an analytic and visual approach, and ultimately showing that the Lorenz system does indeed support the existence of this strange attractor.

Синергетику часто называют наукой о сложном, учением о самоорганизации, об универсальных закономерностях эволюции сложных динамических систем, претерпевающих резкие изменения состояний в периоды нестабильности. Центральный вопрос, который обсуждается историками в этой связи – влияние случайностей, которые принципиально невозможно предугадать и прогнозировать, на общий характер развития изучаемого процесса. С этим вопросом связаны и новые подходы к изучению альтернатив общественного развития, возникающих в точках бифуркации.
Методология синергетики может дать ключ к пониманию резких изменений в динамике процесса, которые могут происходить и без сколько-нибудь заметных внешних причин, в силу нелинейного его характера.
Цель данной работы -¬ обсуждение методологических проблем применения концепций синергетики в исторических исследованиях.

This qualitative study investigated the lived experiences of highly sensitive persons (HSPs) to better understand the way they experience careers.  Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) is the underlying personality trait and is present in approximately 20 percent of the population, equally distributed across gender and racial lines.  SPS is considered a non-normative personality trait in some Western societies and subcultures.  Thus, many HSPs experience difficulty finding an appropriate match between innate temperament and career.   
This qualitative research perspective employed semi-structured interviews with 35 participants recruited through social media web sites and snowball sampling.  Participants in the study were primarily from the U.S., but also from five foreign countries.  Participants were chosen based on answers to a recruitment questionnaire and Elaine Aron’s HSP Self-Test.  Major findings reveal a complex, interwoven dynamic interplay between nine major themes: (1) empathy, (2) childhood’s influence, (3) self-care, (4) a rich inner life, (5) creativity, (6) high sensation-seeking, (7) the sociological perspective, (8) the experience of work, and (9) the integral being.  The significance of this study is that it is the first of its kind to investigate this topic in a systematic, scientific manner.

The current era is witnessing serious geopolitical changes during the Arab spring and its waves in the Arab countries specifically. This geopolitics change is reflecting serious geostrategic changes on the OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) as well, which causes serious impacts on all OIC internally and externally. Under the forum theme “Unity in diversity: Source of power”, the paper introduces some crucial geostrategic concepts to develop common national and regional understanding in order to avoid geostrategic confrontation, and to exploit the strategic opportunities. The paper calls for geostrategic interests’ integration management, and for reaching the point of geostrategic equilibrium so as to start developing, what is called by the writer, geostrategic regional initiatives. This paper will propose crucial strategic imperatives within the context of the complex dynamic of the Arab spring’s transitional period and its impact on the region in order to support the unity of the OIC countries in this dilemma.

The study On the Thermodynamics of War and Social Evolution, shows that patterns can be identified in the war dynamics of the System, and that a relationship exists between these war dynamics and social evolution. The research suggests that Prigogine’s idea about non-equilibrium systems being able to attain highly ordered states in response to an increase of energy flux, can also be successfully applied to the social sciences. These new insights could have profound implications for our understanding of war (dynamics), and for our ability to better control and prevent war, in the future.I argue that the System can be considered a non-equilibrium system, and that the (relationship between) war dynamics - and the patterns they produce - and social evolution, can be explained from a (non-equilibrium) thermodynamic perspective: Interactions between components of the System (individual humans, communities, societies, states, etc.) are irreversible, and result in the production of entropy - tensions - in the System.
These tensions (entropy) serve as a source of order and are regulated by means of a dissipative structure that also puts kinetic activity (war) to use, to ensure the most efficient path to thermodynamic equilibrium of the System.

This paper focuses on the subject of N. Katherine Hayles " s complex forms in Audrey Niffenegger " s The Time Traveler's Wife as a postmodern work. In 2003, Niffenegger published her famous novel, The Time Traveler's Wife. The novel is a romance and science fiction which tells the love story of Henry DeTamble – a time traveler – and his artist wife, Clare Anne Abshire – who has to deal with his absence and dangerous experiences. Since it is the complexity of Henry " s mind which causes him to time travel unwillingly and appear in different time and places, the main questions of this research are to what extent the complexity of Henry and Clare " s mind leads them to different apprehensions about the world around themselves and how it defines the characteristics of individuals in 21th century. To answer these questions, N. Katherine Hayles " s Chaos theory in literature can be applicable. Hayles believes that complex form (of human mind) is one of the main characteristics of chaotic systems which does not allow the subject to have certainty and authority over his actions and leads to multiple recognitions of an individual " s identity. One of the major findings of this research is that different and apparently unrelated events in man " s life can affect and in some cases change the perspectives of human beings toward the way man used to see the world.

Research on the theoretical conceptualisations and research methods informing current change agency theory and practice in the field of Organisation Theory (OT) in general, and Organisational Change and Development (OCD) in particular, are deficient to engage with the inherently complex nature of business organisations. The dominant paradigm applied in organisational change interventions assumes that change happens through linear cause and effect approaches, which can be enhanced by technical skills, with the aim of maximising optimisation strategies. The theoretical and practical contributions by organisational scholars to important mainstream debates on alternative conceptualisations and methods to explore and re-think change agency have been limited.

The purpose of this dissertation is to cultivate and foster a re-think of the role of change agents in OCD interventions by employing a critical complexity lens to shift their current spiritual identity praxis towards co-creating alternative complexity-informed change agency praxis. The following framings are explored: new avenues for providing complexity-informed interpretations of change, organisational structure and function in general, but more specifically alternative change agency as informed by identity and spirituality in OCD interventions. 

A critical complexity lens is adopted for exploring and re-thinking the interactional nature of both identity and spirituality of change agents. The study highlights these notions as possible entry points for reflecting on novel change agency praxis. It is argued that the notion of ‘spiritual identity praxis’ (ways of being-becoming) enables the co-exploration and co-creation of complexity-informed theoretical and methodological contributions to organisational change agency and mainstream debates on OCD.

The study explored whether OCD practitioners could reflect on their current spiritual identity praxis and what the implications were of re-thinking their current roles as change agents when employing critical complexity as a lens. Co-operative Inquiry (CI) was used, which is ideally suited to explore a participatory worldview for co-creating propositional, experiential, practical and presentational knowledge. With the aid of multiple qualitative methods, CI enabled the co-creation of a re-imagined spiritual identity praxis heuristics framework.  Collaborating with six OCD practitioners, a co-created community of practice was established which reflected over a period of eighteen months, on processes of: (i) engagement with ideas of complexity thinking and its influence on change agents; (ii) spiritual identity and the co-operative inquiry process in contributing to a deeper reflection on their perspectives as change agents; (iii) spiritual identity praxis in framing the roles of change agents in change interventions; and (iv) authentic co-operation and collaboration during the co-operative inquiry process.

The research findings confirm the importance of: (i) embracing complexity thinking as change agents; (ii) navigating ambiguity and incongruence of spiritual identity; (iii) becoming aware of the relational constitutedness of spiritual identity praxis; and (iv) the utility of critical complexity integrated with CI in co-creating resilient heuristics through authentic collaboration and co-operation, which fosters complexity-informed spiritual identity praxis heuristics. The study contributes to an extended understanding of change agency praxis, provides a framework for re-imagined complexity-informed being-becoming praxis in change agency, and offers non-linear pathways to distil iterative principles and reflective signposts for complexity-informed OCD praxis.