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First multi-year cumulation covers six years: 1965-70.
The fundamental question whether, or in which sense, science informs us about the real world has pervaded the history of thought since antiquity. Is what science tells us about the world determined unambiguously by facts or does the content of any scientific theory in some way depend on the human condition? "Sokal`s hoax" added a new dimension to this controversial debate, which very quickly came to been known as "Science Wars". "Knowledge and the World" examines and reviews the broad range of philosophical positions on this issue, stretching from realism to relativism, to expound the epistemic merits of science, and to address the central question: in which sense can science justifiably claim to provide a truthful portrait of reality? This book addresses everyone interested in the philosophy and history of science, and in particular in the interplay between the social and natural sciences.
In an attempt to cease from reducing the world and its (emergent) phenomena to linear modeling and analytic dissection, Dynamic Systems Theories (DST) and Embodiment theories and methods aim at accounting for the complex, dynamic, and non-linear phenomena that we constantly deal with in psychology. For instance, DST and Embodiment can enrich psychology’s understanding of the communicative process both in clinical and non-clinical settings. In psychotherapy, an important amount of research has shown that – next to other ingredients – the therapeutic relationship is the most important active factor contributing to psychotherapy outcome. These findings give communication a central role in...
Hermann Haken (born 1927) is one of the “fathers” of the quantum-mechanical laser theory, formulated between 1962 and 1966, in strong competition with American researchers. Later on, he created Synergetics, the science of cooperation in multicomponent systems. The book concentrates on the development of his scientific work during the first thirty-five years of his career. In 1970 he and his doctoral student Robert Graham were able to show that the laser is an example of a nonlinear system far from thermal equilibrium that shows a phase-transition like behavior. Subsequently, this insight opened the way for the formulation of Synergetics. Synergetics is able to explain, how very large sys...
This book examines systemic family therapy research, addressing key topics across the interrelated disciplines of psychotherapy, social work, and counseling. Drawing from contributions at the 2017 International Systemic Research Conference in Heidelberg, it includes both quantitative and qualitative research perspectives and outlines a wide array of approaches, using systems theory and constructivist epistemology. In addition, the book focuses on innovative paradigms, research strategies, and methods, seeking to bridge the gap between research and practice in the field of systemic family therapy. Finally, it provides guidance on submitting and maximizing the likelihood of research paper acce...
The pandemic, and our response to it, has shown how unpredictable, irrational, illogical, suddenly changing, and muddled human interactions can be in a time of crisis. How can we make sense of such confusing and baffling behavior? This book reveals how chaos and nonlinear dynamics can bring new understanding to everyday topics in social sciences. It brings together chapters from leaders at the intersection of psychology and chaos and complexity theories. Conceptual and user-friendly, it is built around six themes: 1) Seeing nonlinearity, 2) Finding patterns, 3) using Simple models, 4) Intervening nonlinearly, and 6) teaching a new Worldview. It takes no specialized study-although there is mo...
This book was written for systemic practitioners in all psychosocial fields. It provides a set of practical everyday tools as well as being a reference book full of specific and helpful information – of particular importance to anyone learning the trade or in their first years of practice. The authors, experienced in training, consultation, therapy and supervising, take the reader step by step through the various phases of systemic work: observation, understanding, recording of information, clarification, forming hypothesis, defining aims, planning and application.
This book argues that mystical doctrines and practices initiate parallel transformative processes in the consciousness of mystics. This thesis is supported through a comparative analysis of Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen (rdzogs-chen) and the medieval German mysticism of Eckhart, Suso, and Tauler. These traditions are interpreted using a system/cybernetic model of consciousness. This model provides a theoretical framework for assessing the cognitive effects of mystical doctrines and practices and showing how different doctrines and practices may nevertheless initiate common transformative processes. This systems approach contributes to current philosophical discourse on mysticism by (1) making possible a precise analysis of the cognitive effects of mystical doctrines and practices, and (2) reconciling mystical heterogeneity with the essential unity of mystical traditions.
Embark on a riveting journey through the study of social complexity with The Atlas of Social Complexity. Over three decades of scientific exploration unfold, unravelling the enigmatic threads that compose the fabric of society. From the dance of bacteria, to human-machine interactions, to the ever-shifting dynamics of power in social networks, this Atlas maps the evolution of our understanding of social complexity.
The Mind and Brain are usually considered as one and the same nonlinear, complex dynamical system, in which information processing can be described with vector and tensor transformations and with attractors in multidimensional state spaces. Thus, an internal neurocognitive representation concept consists of a dynamical process which filters out statistical prototypes from the sensorial information in terms of coherent and adaptive n-dimensional vector fields. These prototypes serve as a basis for dynamic, probabilistic predictions or probabilistic hypotheses on prospective new data (see the recently introduced approach of "predictive coding" in neurophilosophy). Furthermore, the phenomenon o...