Overcoming the Problem of Complexity for Science in the Age of Complexity

Abstract

This chapter deals with the deep problem of complexity for science in the 21st Century of Complexity. This problem questions the true nature of reality, of what the real world is really about. This problem, then, is a fundamental and foundational transdisciplinary problem for science. Scholars of complexity cannot define complexity in a way which is meaningful for all disciplines. Scholars of all kind need to become aware that science is actually in a pre-paradigm period, waiting for a fundamental shift of paradigm to arrive. This poses the question what the new paradigm and the large shift of science might be about? Such a shift may open up science for the future: both the future of science itself and the future of society at large. This implies a fundamental rethinking and reinventing of science in the Age of Complexity. Science, then, is actually in a transition phase. The new opening may show how complexity and complex phenomena may actually be generated in the real world. The new paradigm of complexifying may not only offer a radical new transdisciplinary view of the world as a complex world. It may also offer “a radically altered account of reality” (Kauffman, 2009).