Encountering complexity questions traditional scientific assumptions that are grounded in the enlightenment ideas of formalism, determinacy, rationality and stasis; and offers a new grounding in organicism, indeterminacy, contingent behaviour and evolutionary openness. This colloquium will explore this shift in more detail and will reflect on the implications such a reconceptualisation has for doing research and practice differently. Please join us to explore these ideas during an interdisciplinary colloquium.
Date: Friday, May 10th
Time: 09:00 – 12:30
Venue: Room 4045, 5th Floor, Wilcocks Building,
52 Ryneveld Street, Stellenbosch Campus
If you would like to attend, kindly RSVP here.
Agenda
09h00-09h15 Coffee & arrive
09h15-09h45 Welcome & Introduction: Rika Preiser (moderator)
09h45-10h15 Jean Boulton: Complexity Science as Relationship, Patterning and Process
10h15-10h45 Jannie Hofmeyr: Impredicative Relationality: the Heart of Complexity
10h45-11h00 Questions/discussion
11h00-11h15 Tea break & snacks
11h15-11h45 Brian Arthur: Complexity, Process, and the Shift in Modern Science
11h45-12h15 Mark Swilling: From ‘the deep’ to ‘a just transition’: an African search for a relational theory of radical change
12h15-12h30 Questions/discussion
Keynote Speakers:
Jean Boulton is author of the best-selling book “Embracing Complexity: strategic perspectives for an age of turbulence” (2015). She is affiliated to both Bath and Cranfield universities. Her background in theoretical physics coupled with her practical engagement in the fields of management and social research – both through academia, consulting, hands-on management and working as a director, strategy consultant and trustee – give her a multi-faceted, informed and practical perspective on the implications of embracing complexity.
Jannie Hofmeyr is co-founder of the CST and emeritus professor of biochemistry and biocomplexity at Stellenbosch University. Over the past 35 years, he has conducted his research in the field of Computational System Biology with the regulation and regulatory design of metabolism as his main focus. More recently, his work focuses on describing the functional organisation of the living cell for which he developed a theory of molecular fabrication to inform a theoretical basis for both system biology and nanotechnology. During 2017-18 he was the president of the Royal Society of South Africa (RSSAf).
Brian Arthur is an economist and complexity thinker.He is best known for his work on network effects locking markets in to the domination of a single player. He is also one of the pioneers of the science of complexity—the science of how patterns and structures self-organize—and a founding member of the Santa Fe Institute (New Mexico, USA). His most recent book “Complexity and the Economy” (2015) provides a new framework for viewing the economy not as a system in equilibrium but as one in motion, perpetually constructing itself anew. In 2008 he was the (inaugural) winner of Lagrange Prize, complexity’s highest international award.
Mark Swilling is Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development in the School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University where he is also Academic Director of the Sustainability Institute and Co-Director of CST. He is co-author with Eve Annecke of “Just Transitions: Explorations of Sustainability in an Unfair World” (2012). His new book entitled Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World will be published by Routledge in late 2019. His research interests connect global sustainability transitions, theories of change, relational complexity in the African context (Ukama), sustainability-oriented governance, complexity-based development economics, the renewable energy revolution, and urban transitions. His last book was Shadow State: the Politics of State Capture (2018).
If you would like to attend, kindly RSVP here.